And so I mourned. I mourned the loss of my marriage, and my ideals. I mourned that I would now have the "Divorced Stamp" across my forehead. I mourned that D had never stepped up, and had become (always been?) a giant, freeloading moron. I mourned that I was such a fool as to have believed that he had my back.
But mostly, I mourned the loss of my second child, the child I would now never know, the child who would have been Little One's little brother or sister, who would be there for Little One in good times and bad. I had always wanted to have two children, and to not let Little One go too long without the prospect of a sibling. I had been 7 when my parents had my sibling, and I had always wished it had been sooner.
Even though I knew that being married to D was hard, and even though I knew that it was certainly not going to get better if things became more challenging or complicated, all I had thought about since having Little One was providing a little brother or sister. I was ready - I thought - because Little One was 2, and wasn't that just the perfect age difference?
In these early days after making the decision to divorce, I mourned this unborn child like I already knew him or her. Perhaps I did, because I was so in love with Little One. But now I knew that this child would never, ever exist.
And it was sometimes just too much to bear. I'd be going about my day, working, or being the homemaker, or taking care of Little One, and I'd literally lose my breath and just have to sit down and cry for a few minutes. The grief was occasionally overwhelming, especially against the backdrop of everything else that had happened. It was a weight that would squeeze my heart and nearly collapse me with the littlest of warning.
I apologized to that little life that would never be, the one that I had been so excited to meet for so long. I was so sorry that I hadn't figured out how to be a better wife, so that I could have made D happier and kept things at least at an even keel.
In my heart, I also apologized to Little One for allowing such a wreck of a man to be Little One's dad, and realized that Little One v.2 would have suffered the same fate. When I remembered D's stellar track record as a parent so far, it almost seemed the most humane thing to do, not to have another child with this man.
I was mourning the death of the future I'd thought I would have, the only one I'd been able to see for years. It truly was like mourning the death of a loved one. This life that I had committed to had broken apart, and I could not tell how to put the pieces back together in a new way. It was...gone. Simply, irretrievably gone. And so I mourned, staring into the black hole that had replaced the future I was planning on.
In the process of some late-night googling, I came upon this quote by Joseph Campbell:
"We must let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting for us."
Other people have felt this way! I thought. I'm not alone, even Joseph Campbell figured this shit out!
I felt like I was going through at least 5 stages of grief, all at once, with about an extra 4 or 5 thrown in. (Shame, humiliation, vengeance, you name it.) Then D informed me that he was going to start going out late at night with his new truck, and wouldn't be home until 2 or 3 most nights. He was going to go to AA and then go play pool. Play pool? I thought. Sure, buddy, whatever floats your boat. I'll be here taking care of everything, like I always do.
Oh, it was about to get so much worse.
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