I need to post this here, otherwise I’m going to text it to someone and seem like a crazy person. Thanks to whomever reads this. I just need it out of my head.
Ok so here’s the thing. You are/were a perfect sounding board. You don’t know me, though you once did. You have no clue what the 20 years since then has made me. I try hard. I work harder. I’m a great nurse, with impeccable bedside manner. I can tell when someone needs a hand to hold and when someone needs to be smacked in the face with the truth of the situation. I’m a great nurse, but I’m a phenomenal mother. I have a beautiful amazing daughter, who at 2, I can tell will be smarter than I could ever hope to be. I never wanted to be a mom. I was told I never could be, and I was fine with it. I had made my peace. (Man was I wrong) I was in a failing marriage with a man whose charming wit and charisma had turned cruel. He could and would suck all the joy from the room with one comment, then claim he was just being honest. It was hurtful. I soon learned it was easier to shrink and hide, it was easier to excuse the behavior than confront it. It became my defining characteristic. The dutiful wife who saw what others couldn’t. The only one who could see the “real” (ex husbands name), even though every one else saw the pain he caused. I’m not not proud of it. But that’s the truth if it.
My daughter, she showed me, even before she was born, that life isn’t what I thought it was. She taught me that I have a duty to be a person in my own right, strong and proud. She taught me that to stand up for her, I had to stand up for myself first. She’s amazing. She’ll never know what she brought to my life, and she shouldn’t, it wouldn’t be fair for her to know.
I hate that my life is so linked to a person who outside of helping bring (my daughter) into the world, I can’t stand the sight of. A person who has hurt me in ways I’m still trying to understand.
I’m ok with being a single mom. I’m ok with starting over. I’m ok with having to live with my parents for a few months even as I pay rent somewhere else to keep her safe. I’m ok with being a statistic. I’m ok with being 37 and alone. My support system is vast and strong. I don’t need love. I have it. I don’t need friendship. I have that too.
I don’t need pity. I’ve seen enough of it.
I don’t need people to see me for who I used to be. I’m not weak or fragile. I go to work and see death almost every shift, up close and personal with no regard for age race or family. I cry coming home hoping I don’t don’t contract covid, praying (although I don’t believe) that I don’t give it to someone else.
I’m strong as fuck, but my supply of strength is running low. I’m going through a divorce, a custody battle and a law suit for emotional distress (yeah my ex is that special kind of asshole who is suing me for leaving him) all while working through a pandemic that could kill me at anytime. I’m a fucking warrior.
I may cry, but I get up and do what needs to be done because anything less is failure.
Above all, what I don’t need is someone to reduce me and my experiences to one thing. I’m more than that. I assumed people who took the time to talk to me could see that, could look beyond their preconceived notions of my life.
It hurts me to know that that isn’t true.
It’s not your fault of course. I can’t blame you for your feelings, but I can resent them. I’m not (my ex) I’m a person in my own right. I don’t need to be reduced to someone’s wife because even when I was married I was always more than that. Even when I was hiding behind a facade of happiness and love that didn’t exist I was more than that.
I hope you find happiness. I hope you find a new job that you love. I hope one day you stop hiding too. It was nice catching up.
Also fuck you.
