It’s been 5 years and 4 days since I moved back to Columbia. I only know that because of a Facebook memory my mom sent me 4 days ago.
I can’t even process how much my life has changed in that timeframe.
Tonight Facebook memories showed me this memory of L1 and I at a local pizza place on a mommy and son date night.
On this night, he didn’t know we weren’t going back to Georgia. He didn’t know that 4 days prior I was on a 48 hour round trip cross country road trip packing our entire life into a uhaul to bring to Missouri. He didn’t know that he would never live in the same house with his mommy and daddy again. He didn’t know that his mommy had to get out of the house tonight before she had another breakdown about how unfair life is. He just knew that his mommy let him pick the location, and they were going on a date. Oh, how carefree life is for a 3 year old.
I felt like I was living a lie at this point in my life. I didn’t know how to explain to him what was going on. Most of my friends didn’t know that I was back in town forever yet. In fact, through tearful eyes, I had really only told a handful of people. I always thought it was because I wasn’t convinced it was over. I didn’t want to tell people and then work out and have to explain it all over again. Looking back, I think it was embarrassing or I wasn’t ready to admit that I failed at being married. I knew it was over, or at least 97% sure. But if I told people, it solidified that. I couldn’t accept the failure from everyone I knew. It was hard enough to accept it from my son, my husband, and myself.
But here I am, 5 years later. I don’t think that was failure now. I think it was triumph. I know now that dinner with my son was the first of many dinners that I would eat alone with just one or two little boys. I can see now that those dark times were sculpting me into someone that I needed to become. I can see that the dark times were just reminding me that life is not always easy and pretty. But if you can work through it, there is always going to be better days.
I am trying to remember the exact timeline of how everything went down, and for the life of me I can’t. I remember thinking several times over the last 5 years about it all in such detail, feeling as though that pain was forever burned inside me. Now it feels like a different lifetime, or maybe that it didn’t even really happen to me.
I don’t really know what point I am trying to get across here. I do think it’s important to realize that eventually, even the most monumental and life changing moments, will be seemingly small. If you think about your life in the full spectrum, the treatment you are going through, the year long custody battle you are in, or the temporary frustration with your job, or the coping with life changes/diagnosis until it becomes your norm, the rebuilding you are doing- they are all so small scale. Just keep going. You’ll look back one day and feel peace or understanding. I really think so!
❤ MS Andrea Jackson
Days with Andrea 