written on 8/9/19
When I realized my marriage was deteriorating, I kept thinking about something one of Beau’s uncles told us during our California trip several years ago. He said, “I’m proud of you both. I’m proud of you for sticking through it. For not giving up. Family is such an important thing and you’re doing this for her. She’ll grow up with two parents who love her and she’ll have a family. So, I’m really proud of you.” And those words stayed with me during that entire trip. They still linger in my heart to this day. When Beau and I first got together I was welcomed into his family with open arms. In the blink of an eye, I had double holidays, birthdays, and cookouts to attend. I had gained an extended family and in case you haven’t noticed, my family is a really big deal to me.
So, I carried those words with me. With every slamming of a door. Every object thrown in anger. The names and the yelling. The drugs, affairs, and altercations. I would think back to those words and I’d tell myself, “Not yet. You can’t let go yet.” I kept trying and trying to make things work. To put a bandaid over what was happening, and tell myself that if I just stayed the course everything would work out. It would get better, I just had to be patient. But it wasn’t. And when the time finally came to uncurl my fingers I felt like I had let them all down. I told myself, “This is it. You’re going to lose so much more than just him.” And I wasn’t necessarily wrong. I was told so many times, “It doesn’t matter, you and Em will always be family.” I wanted to believe those words every time I forced myself to smile through the sadness. I wanted to believe that one of them would tell B, “You may not want her in your life but she will always be family to us.” Not surprisingly, other than with my sister-in-law, this didn't ever happen. Instead, I slowly started hearing less and less from them. And I knew that things were going to change, but even when you expect it, that pill can still be a hard one to swallow.
You see, no one tells you how much it hurts to be slowly pushed out of a family. Sure it’s one that you married into, but there are still bonds that you create with them. No one tells you how much it sucks when texts go ignored and plans you ask to make never actually happen. No one tells you how much it hurts to find out that not only is your former spouse replacing you, but eventually, so will their family. Soon this other “woman” will be the one invited to dinners, holiday get-togethers, birthday celebrations, and cookouts. She’ll be sitting in rooms and taking up space that used to belong to you. And the only reason you’ll ever be contacted by that former family is to find out if your daughter will be allowed to accompany her father and his girlfriend to whatever family function is taking place if it's not his weekend. No one tells you how upsetting it can be to see your place within a family be erased. To see someone else fill that void as if you had never been there at all. No, no one bothers to tell you any of that at all.
Having to accept this truth, this untangling of our family ties has not been an easy thing for me to deal with. I hope that one day when the dust settles I’ll still have some of them in my life. At the very least, I hope Em still has them in her’s. But I also hope that we can all get through this awkward phase one day; this in-between. I hope that one day I won’t be sad over the ones who chose to distance themselves but instead be grateful for the ones who still found it in their hearts to love me when everything fell apart.
