As the dust settled this past week and the weekend was approaching to what appeared could be a very “normal” one I was super excited. The potential for having the kids with me for a few days with no distractions was exactly what was needed. I picked them up on Friday and brought them over to the house, our house. They dropped their stuff in the bedrooms, we got Lucky his dog food out and then I started to make dinner. After the catch up conversations dwindled my son made a comment about how he liked the house but liked the other one more and then it hit me like a ton of bricks.
We were all in this house that is coming along so beautifully, the paint, the floors, the thoughtful items everyone has given us but it all was not ours yet. We all had no idea what to do with ourselves. It was just a shell of a house, there was no memories, no normal, no years of waking up to a hug on the couch, sharing stories, games, tears, basically no history. My heart broke a bit as I could see in my daughter’s eyes she was feeling the same and my sons statement meant the same thing. After one moment of defeat I pulled up my big boy pants and moved on, kind of. I knew that there was no way to rush building memories but instead of ignoring the fact that we had none we better get to work on making some.
We ate dinner and then watched a movie. We made plans for the weekend which included a lot of nothing in the kids eyes. I prepared them for hanging out, sleeping in, a little shopping and very little friend time. The grunts and groans from my son were like nails on a chalkboard, every time it was like a reminder to how I had ruined his life. This is the weird part, somehow I was the one getting the blame when I did nothing to severe the family. Maybe I will always be the one to blame since I finally made a decision to stop the tension in the house and move out. To end the cycle of narcissistic and childlike behavior coming from my husband, their father and the man that had become a stranger to all of us.
The last few months were really awful. I had been living in the “pause and have courage” mode for four months. This period was the constant waiting to see what he would do period. Would he get help? Would it make a difference? Would he see what he had done was so wrong and make changes for our future? Would he come to the table and say I am sorry, I was wrong, here is everything that happened and my plan for changing it? I would see glimmers of this but it came out more like “I said I was sorry, I told you it was wrong” and then a list of his excuses would follow. My childhood, my parents, you working, my need for attention. It never set like a full apology an intense coming to terms and shift in behavior. The work was external, checking boxes and showing off his new book or quotes. It was not a bad thing but it was not enough for what I saw as real change. Real change and commitment does not come with continuing patterns. You don’t live an hour or two as the version you are working towards and then jump back in to the past. Maybe some people see that is okay but to me that is a lazy man’s version. Don’t get me wrong, I know we all make mistakes and it is not always forward motion but it can’t be that the minute you have freedom you take the bait from the devil. It was the last straw after living this way for a while when I took the kids away for the weekend to my moms and the day after we left he decided to stay all night out at some man’s house, ” I mean really?!” that was when it was clear.
Now when I say “pause” I mean with him I was waiting but for me, I had been doing to the work to heal. Yes, I listened to every podcast I could on infidelity, healing a marriage, forgiveness and then it switched to seperation, divorce and moving on. The last topic I studied after he stayed out all night when we were gone, was on narcissism. This one left my jaw on the floor. More on this later.
The weekend started out foreign to all of us but after a couple nights together, church on Sunday and helping out a family in need of support, I felt like my cup had been filled again. The house was warmer by Sunday night and a bit of hope put back in life.
The Kindness Storm 