As we gathered in my children’s living room and spoke about the divorce, it happened.
That dreadful thing that has become such a big part of me.
I was unable to hold back Bilingual Mom.
I cried and cried and cried some more..
And then I cried again.
Then I apologized for crying.
This would become my pattern.
Crying had become my superpower-only it wasn’t super.
I have prayed so many times for God to help control my crying.
I know it is hard on my boys to have their Mom cry so much.
I also knew it took so much away from me.
The crying controlled me and I hated that.
I needed to be strong and have self-control if I was going to walk through this process.
My boys felt confident after they had spoken with their Dad that he was going to treat
me fairly in the divorce.
If Dad messes their Mom over, he messes them over, they told me.
And they didn’t believe their Dad would do the right thing.
I knew that what my husband wanted my boys to believe of him would not be the
reality of what I would actually be dealing with.
You learn things about people when you are with them for so much of your life.
Something I had always known about my husband is that he has very strong
anti-woman feelings regarding certain things including divorce and I knew that this
would be directed toward me as well.
I knew he would do everything possible to make sure I received the kind of divorce
treatment he felt I was “worthy” of-not what was actually fair or appropriate.
For most of our marriage I had listened to him tell me how much he did for our family.
How hard he worked for our family.
How only his paycheck had ever really mattered or made a difference for our family.
How only “he” had made any real contributions to our family.
He was not about to walk away from the divorce giving anything to me he wasn’t
absolutely required to by law-if that.
I had seen how he viewed the divorces of other men.
As a Dad, he wanted our boys to think he was going to be a good person and do the
“right thing”.
How he looked in their eyes was important to him.
What he actually did to me was another matter…