Mom

I need to talk. This is the central point of frustration in my life – I need to talk to someone all the time. I need to check in. I need to connect and tell what I’m thinking and feeling. Not everyone wants to hear it.

Sometimes I’ll get on the phone with Jack, and I am just getting to the point at hand, I’m just getting warmed up and opening my heart and getting on a riff, and he suddenly says, “I have to go.” It stops me. Dead. And I have so much more to say. Nothing reaches its logical conclusion with him. Nothing runs its course, even by phone.

It’s frustrating and painful.

I discovered something today. This is what it is. I had to get a divorce so that I could work with my kids. So that they could be all right. I think I knew that, but today I have empirical proof.

Yesterday, on the therapist's advice, I put the training wheels on the bicycle and let Emily decide that she wanted to ride it. She has been telling me for three years that she doesn't want to learn to ride the bike, and she has refused to get on it. Anyway, she got on it yesterday. She is so big that she bent the training wheels, but bless her heart, she gave it a try.

She was thrilled. At one point, one of the wheels snapped off, but she kept pedaling. After about an hour of wobbling around with one training wheel, she asked to take the other one off. Then she just rode the bike. She talked about it all evening, almost as if to convince herself that she'd really done it. "Mom," she said, "Can you believe I rode my bike?" And again, first thing when she woke up today. She even asked if she could hug me - this from the kid who has been so angry that she's been hitting me.

When she was out learning, she smashed into another little girl, and they both got knocked off their bikes. Emily jumped up yelling, “that was awesome!” I was so proud, I nearly cried. You see, I have known her to pretend to fall down and then sob for hours in order to get my attention. If you could have seen her racing up and down the parking lot, pumping her legs, screaming at the top of her lungs. It was entirely appropriate. What a wonderful way for her to let off her energy. What a gift!

I have been feeling guilty about being divorced, but there is no way that any of this could have happened if I were married to her father. I had to get a divorce to be able to focus on my kids like this, to be able to see how much wreckage was in their lives and mine. Michael sits indoors with the shades drawn, the windows closed, the doors locked. Emily is very similar to him in temperament and how she experiences the world. She gets anxious if the windows are open - and we live on the third floor. I am trying to help her, but she fights me, the same way her father fought me. I couldn't help her with him sucking the life out of me day and night. I couldn’t help her with him undermining me, telling her there was nothing wrong with being glued to the television on a sunny day, the air conditioner blasting, eating cereal out of the box.

The truth of it is that I picked her over him. I had to. He picked his neurosis over us. He was using her – turning her into his own little head case – to make himself important and ok in the world.

Michael fell off his bike once when he was 6 years old. He threw the bike on the ground and said, "fuck this shit". He went back in the house and never tried again to learn how to ride a bike. His father laughed and let him. To this day, he cannot ride a bicyle. Same with mostly everything else in his life.

Today, I wanted to share my joy with someone, but somehow it is just ringing a little hollow with everyone I try to tell. Jack had to go in the middle of the conversation. In the end, I guess it’s a personal thing -- between me and God. All those people at church who cut me off, they thought it was ok to offer up my kid as ransom for my mistakes – they wouldn’t have had to live with themselves knowing that if I stayed with Michael, I’d be doing to Emily what my mother did to me – making my bed and forcing my daughter to lie in it.

God is merciful. I believe He will let me off the hook for this one.

I’m at my desk eating those miniature Hershey bars and it’s just not doing the trick. I want to cry and have Jack hold me and tell me I’m safe now, I did it. I broke the cycle of abuse.

It’s not happening.