The father of my children moved out three weeks ago. We had effectively been together for 24 years. All those years and children together. We watched our children grow as we continued to grow up. Somewhere along the way I think we started to grow apart. I became a mother to many children and got lost in the whirlwind of all the things. I can't speak for him, but I suspect he also got lost in fatherhood, trying to provide for us. He has spent much of our years together with undiagnosed ADHD. Essentially, his entire life undiagnosed. In hindsight, its impact on our relationship was insidious. It became a running joke that he was my extra child. Eventually it wasn't funny anymore. For either of us. The more I tried to address issues and things that I felt we needed to work on, the more he would shut down. It felt like he slowly disappeared and trying to actively engage him with working on our relationship became pointless. I felt ignored, unseen, invisible for the most part. On the surface he was there but when I would dig a little deeper into aspects of our relationship, it's like I would come up against some invisible roadblock. He wasn't the villain. He's a good man. His ADHD just meant that he operated differently, he still does and I had no compass as to how to cut through the layers of our dysfunctional relationship. It was like our relationship operating system never updated from 2005 onwards. With medication and more insight into himself, he has been able to recognise the challenges of the past and the impact it has had on us. I'm not proud of how I behaved in our relationship. Resentment, belittling, anger, frustration. It was all masking how alone and sad I felt while also taking on more than my fair share of running the household and much of the children's needs. All 6 of our children have special needs. They are all beautiful, unique human beings. They just operate differently. Like their Dad. Five of them have ADHD. They are all Autistic as well. That bit is likely from me, probably from him too. Neither of us have had a formal Autism diagnosis, but it's highly likely we would meet the criteria. So we all operate differently. It's a colourful, neurodiverse household. It always will be. It just looks a bit different now. It definitely feels different. Sadness and grief, but new and hopeful too.
The last three years have been the most difficult of my life. In 2019 when I had my mental breakdown, I was convinced I was going to kill myself. I didn't see any other way out. A dreadful compulsion to get away from myself. By taking my life. I fought hard to get better. To find the mental stability needed to continue living. And after everything that has happened this year, I do feel somewhat stable. But I'm on alert. Quietly cautious of stumbling off a cliff. Maybe it won't be a cliff, perhaps a sinkhole will open up underneath me. Back in the hole of hell I go. Not without a fight though. He supported me through that entire ordeal. For a long time since I have felt an obligation to him because of his support. Despite how miserable our relationship had become. His health gradually declined and then fell off a cliff this time last year, some of it due to circumstance beyond his control, but a large dose due to his denial to help himself where he could make changes. He never seemed to fully grasp where he was at and where he was heading. No amount of begging and pleading with him to try and make changes for his health sake, made any difference. I became angry and frustrated with him. I fought my way through hell to get myself well, why wasn't he doing the same? I started to regard his health as terminal and gradually emotionally disconnected myself. A way to protect myself and a way to prepare for what I felt was his inevitable death. I felt like I was preparing to be a single mum to 6 special needs kids and a life on my own. I am in the exact situation I was so afraid of, except it was my relationship that died, not my partner. I'm thankful he didn't. I'm thankful that he got treatment and is continuing to get treatment and that he is here for our children. I still love him. Love was never our problem. It was all the other stuff that became a problem. So here I am stuck in parallel grief. My Mum has died and my relationship is over. Two of the most stable things in my life, my security blankets, have been stripped away. I don't know what's next. I'm too scared, exhausted and heartbroken to begin to know what to do. Other than to just survive. I know in the three weeks since he moved out, I feel like a heavy cloak of resentment has fallen away from me. I didn't realise how heavily it weighed on me, until it wasn't there anymore. I'm having trouble navigating what to call him though. Ex... Ex-partner. Former partner. Old partner. I have issue with ex. It just feels like it has negative connotations which I don't like. Children's father sounds like I only value him as a direct result of providing me with children. Though it's a very important gift we gave each other. All our weirdos. Is he a friend I have children with? It has actually annoyed me significantly enough to search Google for an alternative. A word I came across was whilom. It means former or in the past. Erstwhile was another word. My whilom partner. Or erstwhile partner. Not really user friendly in everyday conversation. Previous partner? That kind of makes it sounds like I have a current partner.
Anyway. Getting bogged down with semantics. Well, I think I am. Maybe I don't know words very well. I feel like I don't know me very well at the moment. I don't trust my judgement, clouded by grief and confusion and complicated emotions. Yet, I do trust my intuition. I always have. And at the moment it's just telling me to be still. To find grace in all the uncertainty. To honour the process of grief. Love and grief reside on parallel paths, intersecting and separating through time. But never too far from one another. Sometimes they're so intertwined you can barely tell the difference. For me, right now is one of those times. Even my dreams hurt. Eternally heartbroken in infinite dimensions. Life is irrevocably altered.
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