It has been over a year since I set out on my own, my girls with me half time, my heart with them full time. Just over a year ago, I left the family home I'd settled into with my husband, left the comfort of dual incomes, left the safety of a having a backup parent, left the security of being married. The reasons are, as always, more complicated than one can describe in a blog post, deeper than a few paragraphs can convey, too intimate to share with the world. And they are immaterial to the life I will describe here.
When I had first decided I would move out permanently, I took a week off work to deal with the emotions, with the details, with the panic attacks that followed phone calls and appointments that set up my new housing. I couldn't bring myself to tell people at work what had happened, but I didn't want them to ask me how my husband was doing. So I dispatched two good work friends to tell the rest, quietly, that I was separating. Within weeks, I learned to accept my new situation, learned to say, "I'm separated."
After a year of separation, it became clear that a final decision, one way or another, was in order. My life in limbo, in the in-between place, needed formality. It needed direction. And we settled upon formal and final separation. A d....
The D word is one that I have uttered fewer than five times in the month since we decided. I was talking to a friend of mine who is also separated about it.
"I know, right? It's just such an ugly word!"
And I agreed. Separated is a smoother, kinder word. D... is harsh, angry, almost violent.
But it is my new reality. I head into the world, not just a separated person, but soon to be a divorcée. I'm building a life on my own, with my two little girls. We are settled nicely into a little house I rent, not far from their dad's house so that the commute back and forth isn't too rough. Nestled among the little houses on our narrow street is our red-doored A-framed house, we've made a home for the three of us.
This is the story of that home.
