Page 38 of Enough
I take a deep breath. This isn’t a pissing match. It’s serious. It’s time for me to think about what’s best for all of us right now. I speak calmly and quietly. “What I really need, more than anything, is just some space and some time.”
“What do you mean space and time?”
“If you ever cared for me, at all, could you please just give me some alone time? I need to think things through. I need to heal. Not just my body, but my heart.”
“I said I was sorry. Why are you doing this to our family?”
My eyes protrude, and I feel anger rise up like bile in my throat. I force myself to remain calm. “I’mnot doing anything. I’m just asking for a few days. A week, maybe. Can’t you just stay with your parents?”
“This is my house! Why should I have to leave?”
“Mike, please!” As much as I want to be strong, I have zero control over my emotions and the tears begin to flow. His attitude reminds me of how I felt yesterday when my world was crashing down around me. I thought his words would be the worst pain I could feel. Little did I know, in a matter of a few hours, I would experience a pain that would tear my soul in two. He wasn’t capable of inflicting that kind of pain on me, because as much as I thought I loved him, I loved hermore.
“Oh man… Stop crying! Just stop,” he begs.
I can’t look at him. I don’t care if my tears make him uncomfortable. I’ve yet to see him shed one tear for her. Does he even realize what he’s lost? It’s not just her. It’s me. He’s lost the part of me that believed in his words and his actions—the part of me that believed in him. I tell myself that someday he’ll regret losing me because he never deserved the love I felt for him. Someday, maybe he’ll regret everything he ever said to me. At least that’s what I hope.
The silence of the room coupled with my light sobs appears to be more than he can handle. “Fine! I’ll go. But you have one week. No more! And I expect to see the kids. You won’t keep them from me.”
I nod my head and he stomps up the stairs. Twenty minutes later, he returns with a bag and several shirts draped over his arm. “Did you pick up my blue dress shirt from the cleaners? The one with the stripes?” he asks.
I stare at him blankly. I don’t give two shits about his shirt.
He glares at me for a few seconds before he tells me to forget it. He grabs his laptop and his keys. He looks me over for a moment before he struts out the door. I hear the door slam shut behind him, and I see red. I remember what Grandma Kay told me about my father’s father, and I wonder if painting my door will keep him away forever. I’ve had enough.
I’M AMAZED BY how much easier life has become with Grandma Kay and Gwen here to help. I’ve been so used to doing everything on my own that I never gave the work a second thought. Mike came to get the kids on Sunday. They went out for dinner and a movie. The kids were thrilled. They seemed mostly unaffected by Mike’s departure. They weren’t used to seeing him anyway, and Gwen and Grandma Kay provided a needed distraction.
I’ve had a lot of time to weigh my options. Neither Gwen nor my grandmother have brought up Mike, and I’m thankful for it. I needed to think things through and make my own decisions. I needed those decisions to be smart. I needed to know they were the right ones in both my head and my heart. I’ve thought back through everything Mike and I have been through. Ten years is nothing to shake your fist at. It was a significant portion of my life, even if it was based on a lie. I needed to decide if he waspartof my story or if he was mywholestory. Something inside clicked after I lost her. Nothing would ever be the same again. I’ve wondered if Mike has another deal in the works with his parents. Then I’ve wondered if maybe he really does love me like he says he does.Maybe it was a lie in a lie just to hurt me. Maybe he didn’t mean it after all. Am I being the selfish one by asking him to leave?
His mom calls me three days later to tell me how sad Mike is and how badly she feels for him. She asks me how I could be so cruel as to kick him out of his house after he suffered the devastating loss of our baby. I cringe and bite my tongue. In her eyes, Mike can do no wrong. She does what she thinks is best for her child. Even though I know he’s lying to her, I don’t feel too badly for her after she slips up and admits that Mike would have married me with or without their ultimatum. She says he just loves me that much.
It’s all I need to hear. For days I’ve considered if maybe hewastelling me the truth. If maybe he just made it up to upset me, like he said. I’ve agonized over it because I no longer trusted myself or my instincts. Years of questioning my gut has left me constantly doubting my true feelings and needs. Her words confirm what I’ve known inside all along. That night I got the truth out of him, probably for the first time in his life. I think back to all the times he made me doubt myself. All the times he said I’d heard him wrong or I misunderstood. Where has Everly London gone? Before I met him, I was mostly confident and self-assured. Now all I’m sure of is that I’m not sufficient to make him happy or make him want me. It’s a regular thought pattern for me. Somewhere in my life, I went from knowing everything to knowing nothing—from knowing who I was to not recognizing myself anymore. I’m so used to doing what I think everyone else wants or needs that I forget to think about me. Now I’m not sure I want anything at all.
My emotions are in complete disarray. I try to compartmentalize them. I try to put on a show for the kids, acting likeeverything is fine. But after they leave for school, I find myself crawling back into bed and crying my eyes out on my pillow.
Five days after I lose her, I stop bleeding. I don’t want it to stop. It means my body is healing, and I’m not ready. My soul will never heal, and I feel like my body is betraying my heart. I hate myself for healing. I hate myself for getting past the miscarriage. I want to mourn her forever. I want to curl up into a ball and live in my guilt and self-hatred for not being enough to keep her safe. Even though my intellectual brain knows I didn’t cause her death, I still curse myself for losing control that night. For letting her slip away. Somehow it makes it easier to have someone to blame. My guilt keeps me in pain, and I want to suffer. I deserve it.
Grandma Kay must be able to sense that I’ve taken a turn for the worse. She forces me to get up and take a shower. She forces me to eat breakfast, and then she forces me to look at myself in the mirror.
“What do you see?” she asks me.
I can’t bring myself to look at my reflection. Inside that mirror is the woman who is singlehandedly responsible for my self-hate and lack of self-respect. She’s ruined my life. She’s taken my smile. She hates me and I hate her.
“Look at yourself, child. Look! What do you see?”
“I can’t! I can’t look at her. I hate her.”
“She’s you, songbird. You can’t hate yourself!”
“Yes I can. She’s a monster. She destroyed me. I trusted her judgement and she failed me.”
“Oh, child.” Grandma Kay hugs me close. “Let me tell you what I see when I look at you. I see a girl who was forced to grow up before it was time. I see a child who lost her parents just when she needed them the most. I see a girl who keptme sane. Who gave me a reason to get up every day. That girl made me smile. She made me laugh and look at life for the beautiful gift that it is. She taught me to be grateful every day. She was, is, and always will be my most precious gift.”
“You see what you want to see,” I tell her. “You look at the world through rose-colored glasses, Gram, and I’ve never owned a pair. I’m not you. I can’t paint a door and move on. I lost a child. How can I move on from that?”
Grandma Kay squares my shoulders and stares me straight in the eyes. “I lost my baby too. He was my everything. I get it. I really do. But God, he also gave me you, just like he gave you Kale and Marlow. You can’t give up. Yes, you lost a child. If I could save you from that pain in life, songbird, I would. But there’s a reason for everything under the sun. You have two children who live, and they need their momma. Mike has never been much of a father. I’ve seen it from day one, but I’ve kept my mouth shut because it’s none of my business. But you need to hear this, so I’m gonna say it. Those kids would not be the amazing forces of light they are without you. Do you hear me? You need to stop looking at everything that went wrong and start focusing on what is right.”
“I don’t want to,” I say honestly. “I just want to be sad. I want to hate me. I want to be miserable. It’s what I know. I want the pain to stay, that way I know I won’t forget.”
