After years of heartbreak, I'm learning to redefine love.
It's dark, cold, and rainy outside. I'm listening to a beautiful but melancholy playlist on YouTube and trying to figure out exactly what I'm feeling.
I've pivoted between sadness and hope all day. At times I've pushed down tears; at others I've reveled in my newfound freedom, having recently finalized my divorce from an intensely abusive individual. Still, it's hard not to feel a sense of regret on your first Valentine's Day as a divorcee.
Not regret that I left my ex. Never that. I regret not leaving sooner. I regret not sparing my children more pain. What if I'd left years ago? What if I'd taken my older son and fled the first time my ex hit me?
Well ... then I wouldn't have my little guy. Would it be worth escaping years of trauma to miss out on him?
I don't have any answers. I've often thought that no matter how much I love my sons, if I had the chance to go back and do it all over, I'd make a different choice. I wouldn't have married that man.
So maybe it's good that I don't have that choice.
Making a horrible decision and ruining my own life did result in two boys being born into this world that wouldn't have existed otherwise. And it's useless to ask those "what if" questions, because I can't change the past. I'm stuck with the choices I made.
I've dithered over this stupid blog post that no one will read for days, so I'm going to publish it now, as the broken and disjointed thing that it is. I was always better at fiction, anyway. At least with fiction, you can write your own happy ending.
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