Part 2: Divorce

A 43-year old Mother's Memory

Raw Wednesdays Writings explore the deep emotions we face and personal challenges that connect us as humans. Thank you for reading! With all my love and gratitude, Chelsea

I am 43 years old when these memories surface with such intensity. I am her now. I am beautiful like her, similar but different. My hair is pale and pin-straight, though a bit thicker. My lips are full, and my eyes are green. My cheekbones may not match her beauty, but my wide smile and tall, slender frame are often admired by others.

We have two children. They aren’t babies anymore, but they are my babies. She is a beauty who does not resemble me or my mother; she looks like her father—brown hair, giant blue bedroom eyes, and a round youthful face. Eleven years old and fierce, yet shy. He is 12 and handsome in the way that his mother is beautiful, with eyes that match those of his father—the same eyes that their mother, me, fell in love with and could gaze into for hours. Our son shares his father's temperament—mellow and easygoing, a graceful genius.

I adore them, yet I am going to hurt them. I am going to cut and scar them just as my parents once did to me. I know better; I understand it both personally and academically. I know that we have 30 seconds to “get it right.” Those 30 seconds will embed our words into their little brains as core memories of their formative years.

He doesn’t want this—my husband of 12 years. His actions sometimes suggest otherwise, exacerbating an existing anxiety that makes me want to leave my body and sever my head to escape the thoughts and paranoia that keep me awake at night when he travels for work as an audio engineer on tour. I am not perfect either. So far from it. Being a human is messy you see. Two humans trying to sort through their own mess and that of another combined with new mess is a disaster.

Photo by Nancy Hughes on Unsplash

I love who I am but hate my reactivity. I find myself at an impasse: choose me or choose him, choose our family as a unit or change this family in a different way. I have made my choice, and I cannot unsee it—the choice to love him, the choice to keep our family separate. I cannot be his wife, but I can still be his family. We can be a family that is different. We love, but this love looks different. It is different because it chooses me.

This will cost everyone. This will be the most awful choice that slices and scars those we are both trying to protect. He refuses. I hand him the papers I have printed that contain the research on the 30 seconds. The papers outline what to say and what not to say. The script deceives our children by claiming we are both on the same page, so they don’t feel the need to choose sides.

I place the ball in his court. I will pull the grenade pin alone, and this impact will guarantee the outcome outlined in the printed paper, or we will face it together, lessening the explosion that will shatter their world. He loves them. He will do the right thing.

We explode their world together. Our little girl screams, cries, and protests. Our son freezes like a deer in headlights. Both reactions are a result of trauma. It is brutal. It is the most painful decision I have ever made. I want to stop it. I want to take it all back.

My heart and mind are at odds. The wisest inner knowing refuses to comply with these conflicting parts, reminding me of the truth: Choose yourself, or you will die. Choose yourself, or you will become a controlling, paranoid bitch who screams at her children and controls her husband because the anxiety that hijacks my body and brain when he leaves on tour will destroy us all.

We model how to be a different family. It is so hard, and we are not perfect. We model how to love and not badmouth each other. We learn this new way. The reflection of our children, no longer babies but adolescents, mirrors two adults who couldn’t make it work. Two adults who kept getting it wrong. Two humans who married their deepest, unresolved wounds.

This memory still breaks my heart, time and time again. I believe heartbreak is true for most couples who couldn’t make it work and had to make the brave and hard decision to split up their family. I believe that most people are good their intentions don’t necessarily match all the of complicated layers we have as humans. I know statistically how normalized this is true. I also know that divorce being “normal” doesn’t take away the impact it will have on each individual in the family.

Stay tuned for Friday’s writing, Part 3: Divorce

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