Time

Time is such a funny thing. When they say that it "heals" well, I'm not sure how accurate that is, but I can vouch that it takes the sting away from the pain. I went through and re-read some of my previous posts, and embarrassingly feel like I should take them down. Not because I'm ashamed really, but because I should have given myself more time. I should have let the sting fade. So, I may or may not revert them back to drafts.

It's been six months (give or take a few days) since life as I knew it kind of crumbled. I went through some really low lows, and some medium acceptable days. There were a lot of tears, some smiles, and a lot of family and friends that lent me strength when I needed it most. I'm completely grateful for each and every one of them. Currently, I am still married. Though we're both leaning towards divorce. My estranged husband did a lot of damage to himself, our relationship, and to our family. We've talked about trying to work things out, but as of right now we aren't sure that's a realistic goal for us. He's currently on his road to getting better though he's had a few hiccups along the way. As of right now I'm helping in a small way to get him back on his feet. We are remaining amicable, and residing in the same house. I know some people have asked if this is confusing for our daughter, to which I normally answer that I believe it's not. I've had many discussions with her about how our family is changing, and what exactly that means. When my husband first left she started having a lot of separation anxiety from me. She would start to hyperventilate, and she would cry every day at school. There were times when she refused to speak to him, and on the times he did visit she would just hide. When we finally started to get back on the right track we gradually started having him back in our day to day life, and those issues started going away. Recently when I spoke to her about how our living arrangements would one day go back to her daddy having another home she responded by telling me: "That's okay mommy, I just don't want you and daddy to fight." There's no bad blood between the two of us, and I've forgiven a lot. After a recent conversation I think we both just feel that we're happier co-parenting, and living separately because we want different things as well as to live different lifestyles. So that's currently the stage that we're in, and we're doing our best to get through it.

Our living arrangement went from staying at my parents home, to moving back into our own place. Though we've not ruled out moving back in with my parents over the summer in order to save up some money once my husband officially gets back on his own feet. But for now, as we take things day by day, we are still in our own home. Our own space. Things are surprisingly peaceful, which I'm happy about. On another note, we found out in January that Emery has a hernia, and it's in a pretty unusual spot for a 6 year old. We have to see a specialist at the end of the month and then schedule a surgery. I've heard that these are pretty easy fixes, but it' still hard knowing that she'll be put under. On top of that my employer stopped paying for family insurance. Our attempt to get her on ObamaCare was a complete bust because none of the specialist take it, and neither does the Children's Hospital. So this will have to be an out of pocket procedure. Having her on her own insurance plan through the regular market place (they go based off of our combined income from last year) would cost me between $375-$450 a month. That's not possible for me to swing right now so it's not an option. On that front we're still trying to figure things out though.

Other than that I've been having to relearn some things. Habits are hard to break, you know? I'm trying to stand on my own two feet, and really put an effort into discovering who I am. I know that even though our family dynamic is changing there's still a lot of love between all of us. I'm not sure what the final outcome will be, but I do know that we'll always be a family no matter what. It just might not look like the traditional version, but that's okay. It's been a slow process that at times seemed almost impossible to go through, and there are still times when I get scared at the reality of what the future holds for us. But in the end I know that I can handle whatever life throws at me next. And we're all going to be okay.