Just sharing (LFS pt 4)

Imagine 98% of the nights of your child's first year of life spent with just you.

As a mother healing from natural birth. As a mother on the slow ride that includes postpartum depression.

Trying to rediscover your beauty after the rare form of body dismorphia caused by pregnancy.

Even though others look at you and congratulate you on the quick bounce back, not once considering that you had a different idea of a post pregnancy weight. Trying to readjust your dreams and keep them active while you have a full time human who needs you for every ounce of life they experience.

Watching laundry pile up around you, clean and dirty; as perhaps you find time to wash it, but no time to fold and store it.

Imagine the smell of smoke as the season reverts to cold, and you just want to turn on the heat to bump the chill from the air. With no time to clean the vents first so now you think a fire could be brewing at the only place you and your children truly call home.

Feeling weak and dehydrated from breastfeeding coupled with just one show for some extra change, but your partner failing to deliver.

Wondering why you're alone every night when this was never the plan.

Why you barely go to work even though you have your own space to keep afloat for your children.

Why even when you do go to work there is no one there to make sure you have time to bathe, eat, or get efficient sleep.

Why his dreams still are in motion, and he gets the laughter and calling of "da-da" yet you get the sleep regression, teething screams, 99.5% of the diapers and baths, the majority of the spit up, no affection, no massage, no gratitude.

When you mention the promises we made before the labor I went into and you drove to work instead, giving my mother time to drop my oldest off to school, return, call in my sister, and for me to shower and change... still beat you to the hospital.

Lay in labor for 12 hours while you stood in the corner and when I called for you, you couldn't even hold my hand.

Now barely a check in. Mimicking the first trimester I continuously reached out with little or no response.

I feel like I have a child with a stranger.

I'm working on a lot in the background, but this looms over me. It seeps into my wildly vivid dreams. When I am shown love from my family, colleagues, friends, and fans.... I feel traces of emptiness cause he is never shared in those moments. Damn. Like is it so bad I want my child's father to love me... to notice me? Believe in me? Publicly??? Without a request... it's like I love that everyone else loves me. It hurts like hell to have a child, a daughter, who will grow up and realize that her dad never loved her mother. Is it stupid that I care? A child shouldn't be an exchange item... a transaction we pass between each other.

I wanted to be loved... I wanted to share the time of parenting. I didn't want to be alone... it sucks. I love my baby, but how could he do this to me? And think that a few hours a week with her is enough... how could he do that to us? And even though I hear him say he appreciates me, I do not feel it. Appreciation is shown through consideration of how someone else feels and putting aside how you may not WANT to.

I really thought he loved me too. I combatted every red flag he showed me with an excuse. In the midst of my journey in "Love For Sport" I thought he was my one even though he had already lied to me about 2 women. I am not dumb, but I was wrong. It's hard to accept. It's hard to let go... even when I begin too. Even when I have a good day. Because I feel this huge void... like I created a universe with someone who has left and what remains is a gaping hole leaving me feeling incredibly vulnerable. Afraid to do anything. Afraid to date someone new because I don't feel safe. I don't feel like my children deserve to be exposed. My home exposed. So I seclude myself from meeting anyone.... from creating. From embarking on anything else new, cause last time I did that. I was betrayed. Made a fool. Lied to. Left in the dark with the echo of broken promises....

Now after being sick and then having two sick kids... begging for at least my friend back. I was met with the same excuses. So now, I'm just convinced I'm in this alone. So... I'm adjusting. For my sanity.

Trust the process,

Tbj