Wolves

I think about it. I think about it all the time. I don't want to. Of all the things that are on the list that ranges from top to bottom of my most favorite things to think about to the very least favorite, this most definitely falls to the bowels of the underworld part of any amoebic cell of thought-range.

So. I do what most other apparently (if only externally) with-it people do. I chuck it out, toss it over to the rails when the radar of my brain picks up the thought like an annoying beep, I flush it away with a cringe that starts from my eyes and finishes through my shuttering shoulders, sometimes physically, sometimes just psychosomatically. I shake it out of my wrists like I'm flicking water droplets from my finger tips. Then I take a deep breath and remember to thank God that I'm not there anymore and that the present is the best place to be.

But it's hard to not let it go.

It's very challenging to let it go with a wisp and a fairy godmother-like woosh of the wand because I am reminded of it every day even, reminded of that hell I once lived, because the purgative present is a living reminder of a very fucked up place I once was and the very fucked up decision(s) I made.

Their giggles, their laughter, their bickering, their now-drenched lives of teenage dramahood, their stories, their tears, and their smiles all skimmed off my every day life because he couldn't do it and because I chose to go for something that ignored every red flag that popped up.

I find myself in pretty fortunate circumstances now. I take a look around and without having to shift my eyes downward in the shame I know I more deservedly ought to dress myself in, I'm doing well even for a kind of person who would have never sacrificed their children and their friendships or torched bridges behind them to follow a sick wolf in sheep's clothing. I have, in no particular order, a host of magnanimous blessings in my life and around me for which I am deeply, intrinsically grateful for. The highest sense of authentic living. Real friends, real family, but most crucial and critical, a return to the real me and a sense of center.

But that didn't come from the wolf saving me, like he would like to believe and (if he is reading this) would like to try and remind me. It came from the beautiful, if painful-as-hell lesson God worked into the creation of our ungrateful souls and creation as a whole that true growth is not without pain. And, thusly, that greater pain (and suffering) is for greater growth. But ALSO... that pain is not only just temporary, but is sweet in the context of a whole, entire span of life.

This is not to say the pain I am suffering for the consequences of my decisions is my saving grace. That is the purgative punishment for my decisions.

It is only saying that for the part that has been pain born of love (bringing my daughters to live with their dad)--the missing out on every day life, the terrifying lack of me in their day-to-day toils and tribulations at this most influential part of their lives (adolescence)--is not something I wanted and is something I struggle with every day.

And it's just that for a moment, just a little tiny moment of each day, the magnitude of the situation hits me like ton of bricks. And I can't help it. Because every. Single. Day. Goes by that I miss them and feel this complicated, twisted crunch of sadness because there are there and I am here.

These are consequences, folks. Good old fashioned consequences.