The class lists are out and I am scanning the names quickly. Searching. Hoping. Further and further down the list I go. There must be one. Just one other. Nope, I am the only one again. How could this be? I know the statistics. How could this happen again. Is the neighbourhood immune? Does it only happen when the children are older? My house used to feel like it had highlighter marker around the outside. It felt so different the day he moved out. I felt so naked. So raw. Alone. No partner. No team mate. No partner in crime. No us against them. I suppose it had been like that for a long time, but suddenly with only my clothes hanging in the closet, it seemed different. Just me and my children. Family of three. Well, family of four as I am reminded with each picture my children draw at school, but only three under this roof.
Seeing the class lists of my children brings back the feelings of anxiety I used to have and I thought I had moved on from. I felt different. I was different. I didn’t have a second set of hands at home. I didn’t have someone to pick up my older child because the baby was sleeping. I didn’t have someone coming home at the end of the day to rescue me from being with the kids all day. I didn’t have someone at home to share the first day of school with or the first time the tooth fairy visited. I felt alone. Not alone in my marriage. Not alone in my partnership. I had felt like that for years. Now I felt alone in a world made up of couples. Alone in a world made up of families. Families with a Mommy and a Daddy at home. A family with two Mommies. A family with two Daddies. A family broken. A family interrupted. My family was broken.
I realize that a lot of families are not traditional. I realize in fact that a “traditional” family by definition is changing, but in my tiny little world, it still means a Mommy and a Daddy under one roof, with their children. I also know that a lot of families suffer the same fate as my family, but when it is happening to you, to me, it feels like I am the only one. It still feels that way. I don’t have any divorced friends. I don’t have single parents among my peers. The adult in my head knows this is a false reality, but the child inside me is filled with questions and doubts.
It had been my choice to end the almost ten year marriage. At least I was the one who said the words out loud. I was the one who was ready to admit defeat. I was ready to admit failure. It was time to start over again. This time was different though. I wasn’t breaking up with a boyfriend. I wasn’t ending a relationship with a boy. He is a man. He is the father of my children. He was my soul mate. Or so I thought. I was ending the dreams I had. I was ending all the pictures in my head of what my life was going to be like. I was ending the marriage we had built. I was ending the marriage we had ruined. And I was taking two very young children along for the ride. It wasn’t their choice. It was mine. It was ours. They just had to deal with the consequences of what we had done, of what we couldn’t do. The family was changing and we had to tell the children that Daddy was moving out.
This article was contributed anonymously from an urbanmoms.ca member who has offered to share, through a series of articles, the struggle and heartbreak of the end of her marriage. Please share your comments below or click here to email us your story.