A mom to come home to.

Seven years ago my husband sent me a text that would make me a single mom. 

A paragraph, describing an undefined and ambiguous period of multiple instances of infidelity that he had to get off his chest. My first thought was how to hide it from everyone. I wanted to be married. I wanted to be in a family where I could be the mom with a partner by my side. Where we would go on trips and own a house together; have pets, work on projects, go camping and hiking, build photo albums of our adventures, raise kids, watch our kids grow up and maybe one day be grandparents together. After one text, that was over and I would begin to realize, it had never been the reality. 

As I navigated my way forward, while trying to piece together the twisted mess before me, I wasn't given context, so I got a shovel and began to dig. That digging uncovered several years of lies. Lies that went so deep the ground beneath my feet gave way until I landed at my bottom. I had, for years, been blind. Blind to betrayals, disrespect, personal and financial isolation that I'd grown to accept; blind to my own addiction and codependence. 

I was a mom but my partner was not often by my side. Waking in the night to care for a new baby was in my playbook, not his. I endured long nights alone as a new mom and navigated what I know now was postpartum depression. Then, attending doctors appointments, taking my kids to the park, on hikes, the library and to museums, to playgroups, eventually to their first days of school, parent teacher conferences, dance classes; these all became pleasures I enjoyed alone as my family grew from one baby to two, then to three. Eating dinner as a family and church on Sunday's, were all in my playbook, not his. 

To cope with this, I would put my kids to bed at night, then rush downstairs to a drink waiting for me. That's when I had someone by my side, a drinking partner. Sometimes the drinking seemed to bond us, we would make elaborate plans that would often be forgotten by morning, sometimes we would be reduced to two miserable drunks, arguing loud enough to wake up our kids and neighbors. 

In our ten year marriage, we went on one family trip to the Redwood Forest with my first baby, it was like pulling teeth to convince him to let me drive parts of the way. It was the beginning of convincing myself that my ideas were okay to have, that I was normal for wanting to enjoy what it means to be a parent and a part of a family, a fight against myself I would begin losing as time went on. 

I came to believe I was overbearing for wanting my husband to join me at family funerals or weddings. And although being surrounded by my family took the edge off, in a way, it almost drove home just how alone I was.  

Eventually, I began to believe I was crazy. Our arguing had progressed to fighting and my desire to escape the confrontations turned to self destruction. At one point my intuition told me something was off but coupled with not wanting to doubt the marriage that I so desperately wanted and being told my suspicions were not true became too overwhelming. Succumbing to a fit of anger, I gave myself a concussion. After several hours, not able to see straight enough to call for help, I was terrified and I begged him to call anyone even if it was the police. He called his mom. 

After a violent fight between us, I began to see a therapist. Our talks helped me understand that my mere existence deemed me worthwhile, that I mattered. I started looking at what it would take to support myself and my kids. Some mornings, after dropping my girls off at school I would look for cheap apartments and try to figure out how many cleaning jobs I would have to take to afford rent. Then I found a job at a restaurant. Even though the pay wasn’t great, I knew it was a step in the right direction toward financial independence. 

I was afraid to tell anyone what was happening, I clung to hope that circumstances would get better although there wasn't anything tangible or consistent showing me that they would. 

Back in 2008, I was on my way to law school. I took and passed the LSAT while pregnant with my first baby. After she was born, I decided to put those plans on hold not knowing there would be no support toward going back, and that my life would take a very different path. However smart I thought I was, it would all fall away in the years to come. 

I would be reduced to waiting for a man to come home to me and three kids, some nights, not knowing where he was or if he would be back. I was to be washed back and forth in the waves of an ocean of emotional turmoil, made to feel like his life depended on me accepting his behavior no matter what that meant. At times made to fear he would kill himself, his suicide threats became tiring and wore me down until I became apathetic and began to disassociate from my life, causing me to act in ways that were contrary to the woman I desired to be. 

Following one night of drinking and fighting, he disappeared. I looked everywhere for him, after several hours, unable to locate him, I drove home to begin the all too familiar waiting routine. As soon as I arrived I got a text - if I didn't drive forty miles to pick him up he would be killing himself and it would be my fault. I made that drive with my kids, tired, not having slept. This was my normal. I was not a mom who went to law school; that playbook was long gone.    

Of course, in any relationship, nothing is black and white. We continued to celebrate birthdays, milestones and even bought a new house together. Steps I told myself were us heading in the right direction, even though the fighting between us was growing more violent and more frequent. 

I thought wearing sunglasses inside to show my siblings my new house was enough to cover a black eye. Wearing a lot of makeup to start my new job that same week and not directly facing my coworkers had become part of my blindness. I was determined to do whatever it took to save my marriage, because above all I wanted to be married. I was going to stick to the last threads of my life plans; maybe there would be no partner by my side, no family vacations, no law school and I was raising my kids in turmoil but I always clung to hope that circumstances could turn around. 

Then one evening, my therapist asked me what I would do if he made good on his threat to leave; a threat that would always bring me to my knees, one that would make me look past whatever had happened, forget the worst and blind myself to reality. I sat for a moment and very clearly remember saying, "I would move to a place of my own, and ask my parents and siblings for help, I would just figure it out." 

The next time he set forth that ultimatum, I responded, "I would be sad if you did, but I would be okay" and I meant it. I knew I would be okay. All those years spent in therapy, joining recovery groups, and taking small steps to gain financial independence, had brought me to an island of safety in the middle of an ocean, on that island I wasn't so afraid. That was the last time he threatened to leave. 

A month later, I woke up to his text. We had fought the night before. He expressed it was too hard to stay home with the kids while I worked what was now an official office job for me, no more restaurants and cleaning jobs. It was an 11 to 7 shift, I would come home to find him in the garage, like we'd agreed - he would pick the kids up from school and I would come home, make dinner, help with homework, run baths, do bedtime. 

By that time drinks weren't waiting for me anymore but I still drank and instead of bonding over to be forgotten futures, we fought. When I tried to go to sleep, he grabbed the mattress on my bed and shook it violently up and down. Where my normal had become to engage in similar destructive behavior, grace granted me the choice not to. Instead, I locked myself in my son's room. I snuggled into that little, three year old boy and forced myself to shut everything else out and fall asleep. 

When I woke up in the morning he was gone. I read his message and it didn't seem real. I probably read it a hundred times. I woke my kids, I took them to school and went to work. I tried to shut everything else out. I believe I was in shock. Before I left work the next evening, I asked him to move out. 

When I got home he was there with his mom. She asked me to consider what it would mean to break up my family as we walked through the grocery store and I tried to remember what garbage bags I bought - I couldn't pick a type of garbage bag. 

He moved out. I continued therapy. I went to recovery groups. I felt like Marla from fight club, misplaced. I started to dig and found information he hadn’t disclosed. I called the company Ashley Madison to inquire about his account only to reach a dead end, they couldn't reveal information about their clients; it was maddening knowing our finances were supporting a habit I had not even been aware of. A playbook not shared. I unleashed my rage on the operator. 

My drinking ramped up, I did not want to feel the anger, the upset and the disappointment. I confronted him about the accounts, and he denied it all, not knowing I knew. After ten years, my marriage was over. I could no longer follow someone blindly, hoping circumstances would change. I valued myself just enough. 

I sat alone in a doctors office, getting tested for sexually transmitted diseases. That was in my playbook. 

Where I worked, I was on the eleventh floor of an office building, looking out over the city. From there I could see the freeway, its long corridor stretching into the vastness until it disappeared. I imagined it was my life, I could stay on that road and continue the routine of being the mom with no partner by her side, raising my kids, waiting desperately some nights off in the distance for him to come home, not knowing if he would. I could ride along in the car with a suicidal driver, feeling responsible for his life; all I had to do was forgive everything forever, no matter how bad it got. Or, I could take the exit and whatever went along with that I would figure it out, just like I had told my therapist all those years ago. I decided to take the exit. 

Over the next few months my life became an unimaginable hell. I would arrive home from work to a trashed house. My kids telling me later that he'd been there with them, ripping all of my clothes out of the closet saying I could have fun cleaning it up. I would wake up to flat tires on my car, and my sprinkler system broken and flooding my yard. My therapist advised me to call the police the next time something like this happened, I had until then been too afraid to do that, afraid to make him mad. Still thinking I must have somehow caused this disrespect or that I deserved it for some reason. 

Then, one night I startled awake to hear my favorite movie playing in the living room at full volume. Faster than I could gather my thoughts, my bedroom door burst open. I could see his silhouette holding a glass of wine swirling it back and forth, wine spilling over onto the carpet and "I'm home!" My next instinct was to find my kids, the girls were sitting in the living room just staring at the television, it blaring, my son was asleep in his room. 

He was adamant that he was my husband and I was his wife, that he would never leave. Our toxic banter began, he picked up a coffee mug and threw it at me, and in that moment my therapist's advice, call the police, came to mind.

The kids and I waited for the police to arrived as we could hear the house being trashed, cabinets and furniture being broken. When the police arrived, so did his mom. She tried to tell them they weren't needed but I interjected, and asked them to come in, afraid if they didn’t he might not go.   

The police pressed charges on behalf of the city and subpoenaed me as witness in the trial. His mom insisted that I'd done the wrong thing by calling the police, although in my heart I knew I had not. Being a mother myself is how I know that what I did was right. That morning, watching him get in her car to leave, he slammed his fists on her dashboard and she jumped, then continued to back out of the driveway. I saw then, that she, like me, must've been blind to it as she pulled away to take him home with her. 

What happened traumatized me. I was afraid to be alone in my house, afraid he would retaliate even though I didn't press charges along with the city, or go on to attest as a witness at his trial; even though at the urging of my sister I obtained a restraining order. 

I persisted with the divorce through an attorney. During the proceedings he started dating someone else and left me to sell our home, move everything out of it and pay the remaining mortgage payments. I still don’t know exactly how I accomplished that but I know I had a lot of support from family. 

For four months after the decree was ordered, I continued to drink. Losing an entire family of in-laws who I had grown to know and love for over a decade hit me like a ton of bricks. I ran the other way from grief. It was a friend who told me, “your kids want a mom to come home to.” That shook me awake. I couldn't afford to numb myself to the pain. 

When he brought the kids home he would drive away before they made it to my door. I had a sinking feeling that if I continued to drink the way I was, since I was doing most of it alone, there might be a day they got to my door and I wouldn't answer - but he would have already driven away, leaving my three small kids waiting for a mom who was passed out or worse.  

I stopped drinking on February 6th, 2018. That has meant making mistakes, learning to tamper my temper, navigating feelings that I numbed for years and uncovering hard truths about myself. It has meant confronting fear by running toward it and not away. Accepting my past and my part in it.

My girls are now approaching the age that I was when I set foot on the path that would lead me to him, the drinking and codependence. Being their mom is why I left. I wasn't, at that time strong enough to do it for the woman who didn't go to law school, or the woman who wanted a partner by her side, or the woman who wanted to go on family vacations. 

I was strong enough to leave for three kids who didn't deserve to wake up to fighting, or to have a mom who took so many steps to gain independence only to let fear keep her from taking one more. They were watching me. 

Motherhood is my most precious gift, it saved my life. I’ve given my kids a mom to come home to, even if it means a single mom who has needed this last seven years to rebuild her strength and step out of fear, leave the island of safety that I'd found in the tumultuous ocean that was my life and become the woman I am today - the example of strength and determination that I am.  

Now, years later, his familiar behavior still present and uncovering that he still entertains his old haunts, I am strong enough to say I didn't cause his behavior, I can't control his behavior and I can't cure his behavior. 

I am worthy of being loved. Being a mom taught me that. I deserve respect. Being a mom taught me that. I can make mistakes, I'm human. Being a mom taught me that. I deserve safety. Being a mom taught me that. I can dream big. Being a mom taught me that. Life is long. Being a mom taught me that. I can start over as many times as I need to. Being a mom taught me that. I can apologize and ask for forgiveness. Being a mom taught me that. Every day is a blessing, even the hardest days. Being a mom taught me that. I am accountable and I can hold others accountable. Being a mom taught me that. 

Life is an adventure worth sticking around for. Being a mom taught me that.

Klamath, CA 2009

Kapaa, Kauai 2017

Valley of the Gods, Monument Valley, UT 2018

Arches National Park, Moab, Utah 2018

UT/CO border 2018

Hot Air Balloon Fiesta, Albuquerque, NM 2018

Meow Wolf, Santa Fe, NM 2018

Legoland, Carlsbad, CA 2018

Las Vegas, NV 2019

Santa Monica, CA 2019

Endeavor Space Shuttle at California Science Center, Los Angeles, CA 2019

Kapaa, Kauai 2022

Disneyland, Anaheim, CA 2022

Las Vegas, NV 2023

Saint George, Utah 2023

:)