I have a confession. I love binge watching. Currently, my show is Grey’s anatomy. I can usually find something to relate to. The episode I watched today was the divorce episode of April and Jackson. I had this episode going while I was working on custody paperwork, while emotionally processing the things I did that are not helpful to where we ended up now. It stuck me so much I have given up the song lyrics for this occasion. I am unsure Who would be saying the above quote, maybe both of us. Because I know, he is doing the same thing as me. Preparing paperwork as to why you are the better parent. It is a nasty thing. I do not enjoy it because I choose him as the father of my children, and the rest of my life. He was my person. I don’t want to get evidence, or discredit him. I want to build him up. I want to cheer him on from a distance. It makes me really sad and mad that it came to this. I will always love him to some extent just not as what it was.
“Until you look at each and every injury, you can’t see what went wrong.”
– April
The second downfall between this paperwork and being in my support group is that it gets very into me. What I did? What I didn’t do? I had go through all of our text messages to decide what was important to pass on and what was just what it is. I started in the sexy texting, full of dirty things and love. Full of sweet nothings and we are perfect for each other. All those thing you send to the love of your life. In the middle it gets more sexual and you can tell the fighting. You can see me getting short after I left. You can see his lies in the timing of what I know now. You can see where I was running. Where I was too hurt to come close, where I felt pressured. I can see where maybe if I would have listened to him instead of telling him good night, maybe if he would have listened to what I said. Maybe if…
You can see two people fighting the same battle in very different ways. I needed space and time to heal, he needed the opposite. I tried to meet him how he needed before, he did the same. So many wrong choices from both of us. Then you see him detach. You see me cling or run away.
You see it all play out step by step with more knowledge behind it. You see more clearly what seemed so foggy and unsure. You see so much more than you want to. You start seeing beyond the pain and anger you saw it from before. You see how others could have seen it, just with a lot more visualization. You see what you should have said or done. In my support group we toss around, “should have’s don’t come from God”. It is very true. It does not stop them from swimming in your head. I have been super emotional, which is worse because I am still hormonal. Oy the hormones! It is a very crazy roller coaster.
You also see what has become of the players. You see where we went with the cards you were dealt and where they did. You see the death of what should have been crystal clear. Sometimes it leads to more questions. How? Why? The details I have no desire to know, well a small tiny one. I am human. We question things a lot. That is why I distance myself more from it all for my growth.
Now I am envisioning a future of two homes and two families as a unit working hopefully well. Phone calls instead of seeing the kids every night. No more lazy weekends as family with his pancakes in the morning. No more of the good that came worlds before the bad. The good that formed our family. That also means no more of the bad as well. It means a life starting over. That is a really hard thought. I dislike starting over. I like what the routine I had, even if it was not the best ending.
Jackson: “See, you can’t ever take responsibility. You never apologize.”
April: “I apologize all the time.”
Jackson: “Not for the things that matter.”
So I end up here, and April Kepner says it a lot better then me. She has a script to go by, I have life. I have the middle of the journey. So I leave with her.
I will leave you with the wise words of April Kepner, whom has a script. While I am in the middle of the storm. She will say the words of my heart.
“We talk about the mechanism of injury, about where it all started, but the truth is, it’s sort of a myth. We can’t boil every injury down to one single blow. What hurts us is cumulative. It happens over time. We absorb blow after blow, shock after shock, painful hit after hit. But even then, even if we know exactly how we got here, it doesn’t mean we can fix it. You can’t heal every wound, and that’s okay. I have to believe it’s okay. I have to believe that even if something seems like it cannot be fixed, it doesn’t mean it’s broken.”
– April