For most people April 23rd is just another spring day, but for me, this year, it marked the end to a very challenging and life changing year. By writing this down it is my intent to finally close the book on this chapter of my life, I have spent enough of my time dealing with the issues of this last year and it now the time has come to go forward. I must cry my final tears of grief over this situation and put it neatly away on the bookshelf of my life.
If you have ever been accused of something you didn't do and had punishment inflicted on you for it, then you can understand what I'm about to relate. After years of trying to make a relationship work that just wasn't meant to work, my ex-husband and I decided to separate towards the end of 2009. Because of economic reasons we had decided to stay living together until we could figure things out. It was my thought, and plan, that come the end of the school year for both he and I and our daughter that we would finally move apart. In the interim he and I distanced ourselves from each other's lives. It was a difficult thing to do since we still had to live with each other and have so much history together; but after years of tolerating many things I didn't agree with, I knew that it was the right choice. So did he. This was something I believed to be a mutual agreement between us. When I started spending more time away from home because that was where he was, he supported it. Told me that it helped him to better "deal with me", and in fact it did make life easier. Looking back now I should have moved out as soon as possible, should not have let fear dictate my life. But I did, and I told myself over and over again as the warning signs surfaced that "it would be fine" that we "had an agreement" that it would "all blow over". At the time I didn't realize that there was something coming, I was clueless. And why wouldn't I be? When we decided that it was time to end our relationship it was with the the intent to remain friends and parent together as we always had. Despite our differences and our troubles this was still the person I trusted most in the world. I may not have liked him very much at times, but still, after 7+ years and 2 children I trusted him. That was until the night of April 23, 2010.
