There's a saying among the horse and hound set: If you treat a dog like a person, they'll treat you like a dog. It's not exactly the same principle with people but, if you act like a slave long enough to your family, don't be surprised when your people sell you down the river.
Your boss comes in and tells you there’s a project due tomorrow, you’ll need to stay late. You find someone to pick your child up from soccer/ballet/dance/flute practice, you pull a ten-hour day and then take the rest of the work home with you.
It takes you close to an hour to drive home in wall-to-wall traffic. You walk in the door, your teenager breezes by you and you try to speak to her. She turns at her bedroom door and says, “No wonder Dad left you,” and slams the door in your face. The door attached to the house that’s attached to a mortgage you have to pay for alone now. Last week she said you were a lousy mother. 'Clearly,' you answered her, and she looked like you slapped her.
The other two kids are bickering in front of the TV as you make dinner for them. You cook from scratch (as much as possible), avoiding frozen meals because of chemicals. You don’t want to damage their brains. But face it, you also like the feedback you get from the delicious food. Your ex used to say, "Your cooking is so good, it's pornographic." His analogy should have been a warning sign. You call the kids for ten minutes to come to the table. There probably won't be any good feedback tonight.
Finally, two out of your three kids show up. They announce that they both have projects due tomorrow. You begin to pray over the food but can’t think of anything, so you ask your fourth-grader to pray. He does the “God is great” prayer. The two children eat three bites between them and then start whining to go play video games.
“After your projects are done,” you say. You’re too tired to eat, much less argue with them or follow up on their homework. Maybe it’s time they did their own projects and if they don’t finish them, then suffer the consequences. No, that would be cruel, you think.
They leave their plates on the table and run. You clear the table and clean up the kitchen, packing lunches. You sit on the couch and wonder how and when did it go wrong? For a little while, your home looked like a Norman Rockwell painting. Mom, Dad, grandparents, children and extended family were all there at holidays. You always set the table just right and the food you made from scratch was delicious!
But life is more than a pretty painting made for a magazine cover. Now you wonder where your ex-husband is, if he’ll show up this weekend to take his children somewhere, anywhere. He’s in someone else’s painting now, someone else’s family. The phone rings but you don’t hear it. Your teen hands you the phone and you hear your ex-husband snarling at you. Speak of the devil.
“I can’t do this anymore,” you tell him. Not one more fight, not one more broken promise you have to pass along to the children.
“You have to” he barks, “because you did this to yourself!”
Let's see, he had an affair and broke up the family but that's your fault. You hang up the phone and you know he’s right; you raised your children as if you were the slave, neglecting to teach them about gratitude in a meaningful way. You picked a lousy man to marry and for twenty years you taught that lesson to your kids. The smaller you felt, the bigger he felt until he walked right over you and out the door.
You’ve made a lot of good choices but those two bigger choices canceled out the rest of your life. Or so you think. Soon the kids will leave your house and leave your life, just like your husband did. They won't speak to you and you don't know why not. You’ll wonder if you have any grandchildren or if your own children ever miss you on Thanksgiving when there’s no one to make Sausage Cornbread Stuffing from scratch.
The years will drag on into decades and despite the fact that at least twenty or thirty friends would show up at your funeral, your kids won’t be there. Your grandkids won’t even know you or know that you died. Your kids will tell everyone they know (including the Internet) that you abused them and that’s why they never see you.
Stop. This has gone on long enough. Find something to be thankful for, Woman, because even though you’re alone, it could be worse. You could still be married to him.
You live in a free country (for as long as you can keep it), you don’t have someone picking your mind apart, beating you down emotionally. You don’t have a daily reminder about how ungrateful your children are, other than the gaping maw of loneliness. And you don’t have to cook and clean on Thanksgiving. You won’t have to do it on Christmas, either.
You can’t choose your children or your ex or your family. The choices you made so long ago have now made their own choices. But you can choose not to be alone. Your heart is free and God still loves you. He saw what they did to you and tells you to leave it to Him. So leave it.
You have the chance to start over, so take it. Let God bind up your wounds, ask Him to forgive your mistakes, and your sins, and begin again. Forgive those who hurt you because you are chained to them. That's why you can't move. Explore the idea of the rest of your life without them and be thankful that the possibilities are wide open. Even if no one else is thankful for you or what you’ve done, that’s not your responsibility.
And while you’re at it, try something you have never been very good at; have some fun. Instead of painting an exact replica of someone else's artwork, paint that picture you've had in your mind that you never verbalized, the one you were never brave enough to paint.
You left behind Normal Rockwell's painting of a happy family. Paint a new life. You're free now.
"Give Thanks, You're Alone" by Mare Loch, November 23, 2023
© Mare Loch
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