What Gets Left Behind

A rant for my mother. (The 'you' is in reference to my mother)

You are unhappy.

You don’t love the man you married, not anymore.

You haven’t loved him for a long time.

The two of you say you agree, a separation, is best.

You start to sleep on the couch, and then you get your own apartment.

He moves out of the house you bought together.

He moves back just as you decide to leave the city you two started your lives in together.

You have a few boyfriends. Nothing serious at first.

Then one is serious. But you’re still legally married.

You push and pull asking for more than you’re owed, the separation takes nearly ten years to go through.

You go to start your new life.

It’s different. But you seem to like it.

In the house, the night you start to sleep on the couch, your kid cries themself to sleep in their bed.

When their dad moves out they still spend one week with you and the next with him.

Their friends only know the base details, they don’t have too many to listen.

Their teachers don’t know at all until they write about it as a school project. They don’t write about how they felt. They write about how they were brave when their parents weren’t.

But they were never brave.

They were scared.

A long time ago your sadness had turned to anger.

Your kid had to live with the consequences.

They became a people pleaser. A pushover.

That worked out great for you, because now all you needed to do was point them in the direction you wanted and they would go.

And they went. They went where you pointed for all of their childhood.

And they followed on into their late teens.

But by then you made less effort.

Your kid wasn’t a sweet little cherub you could flaunt on the internet.

They cut off their long hair. They stopped doing ballet.

You blamed them when things went wrong for you.

And they started to confide in others.

People who told them that what you were doing was wrong.

People that said you shouldn’t put up with that.

It was incredible really. That when you made a last ditch effort to get them back.

You cut the final cord that connected the two of you.

It shouldn’t have surprised anyone that you didn’t make an effort that Christmas.

Or the next birthday.

You didn’t reach out when they graduated.

Or started university.

Or the next Christmas

Or the next birthday.

Not a word.

Not a card.

Nothing.

But now when someone you knew reaches out to them they are immediately filled with distrust.

What if its you, they think.

What if she’s spying, they think.

What if she doesn’t care enough to reach out in person so she tries to worm her way in, to get leverage, they think.

You left your husband. Whatever. Who cares.

But what exactly got left behind?

Reviews

[Kim S.]

I can feel the emotion through out this, nicely written