It’s Not You, It’s Me.
{source}
I’m sorry I am not the wife you deserve. I know that I am changing the game on you and it isn’t fair.
I rushed every step of my life running to create a safe and stable external environment. A life that wants for nothing. That provides for our children. That shows beautifully to the world. And we created that. You and I created everything that I ran towards, everything I told you I wanted. You fell in love with that woman, the only side of me that I allowed you to see.
Because that’s the thing that can happen when you are young and searching for your place in the world before you even know the places within your own heart and soul. You meet someone, fall in love, but are only sharing one aspect of yourself.
Maybe because that’s all you know about yourself, or maybe because you haven’t come to terms with the fact that there is more to you than what you are currently willing to show the rest of the world.
I am that mom in the black SUV with the sunshades on the back windows to protect the kids. The mom who is running errands, testing the limits to see how many stores and stops we can make before there’s a breakdown in the backseat. The mom who tries to weave in outside free play, yet stresses over our children’s progress and development.
The mom who gives them opportunities to go to the zoo, the aquarium, music class, soccer, and then just ‘plain old beach days’. The mom who breastfed, and made her own baby food, who rakes the leaves with the kids and shows them the beauty of a budding flower and the fading sunset. This is the mom and wife I told you I would be.
The problem is, somewhere along the way, when I started running so many years ago, I ran from everything that made me feel vulnerable. Every thought, wish and dream I had for myself. I hid away with tasks and titles so that I didn’t have to look at myself in the mirror. So I couldn’t fail at my goals.
It was easier to be swept up as the accountant, the fiancé, the wife, the mom, the party-planner and volunteer, than to stare at myself and really see me. My weaknesses. My goals. How I love. What I love.
To try to figure out why I always run when I feel exposed, why I find comfort in taking on new projects, new tasks, and changing life instead of just living and embracing the blessings I have and reaching for the dreams that are stuck like a knot in my chest. And the worst part is, I’ve been running so long, I feel those bottled-up hopes and dreams, but I don’t even remember what they are.
So how could I have asked you to love me when I didn’t even know me? How could I have told you the kind of wife and mother I would or wouldn’t be when I didn’t even understand the depth of my strength or the limits of my boundaries? How could I raise our children to follow their hopes and dreams when I have forgotten mine?
Please, don’t get me wrong, I know that I am blessed to have the life I have and the babies we have. I love being their mother, and I am grateful that you have afforded us the financial stability for me to be home with them.
But I know that the years we have with our children are precious few. They will be going off to tackle their world before we know it, as they should. While I will always be their mom and here for them, I hope that they are going to go and live their lives the way they want. And soon it will be just you and I sitting across the kitchen table.
I want to know who I am. Not the masks that I wear, the roles that I play, or the talents that I have or don’t have. That isn’t who I am.
I want to know what lights up my soul. What I need on a daily basis to be able to breathe. Where I find peace. What makes me laugh until my sides hurt, and what will drop me to my knees in tears. Where my strength rises from inside of me, and where a gentle touch will leave me vulnerable.
Because that is what brings two people together. Truly knowing ourselves and wanting to share everything we are with the other person. Not just being a mom or a wife, but being authentic and looking at oneself in the mirror, even the ugly side of our reflection.
This isn’t your fault, even though I may have told you that it was. This weighs on me. You can’t be the plug that fills the emptiness in me — I have to find that source of emptiness, and I have to fix that hole. To rely on someone else, anyone else, even my husband to ‘fix me’ is an easy way out for me, and unfair to you.
Time caught up to me. Maybe it was because I stopped working. I slowed down so quickly that I realized I didn’t even know who I was. I realized that our children have their own souls, and they need to flourish and grow in ways that I haven’t. I felt like crap. I looked like crap. I acted like crap.
Finally I just broke. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t continue in this spiral. I could continue to hide, or run, or fill my days with new projects and tasks to keep my mind busy so I wouldn’t have to think or to feel, but I don’t want to. I want to feel the pain. I want it to wear me down, leaving me exhausted and spent.
I want to break and rebuild myself. Because to rebuild, I will have to examine every aspect of my being. I will have to know me. I just don’t know if you will still love who I become, or if you’ll be able to stand by and watch the process.
You are a good man. A provider. A loving father. A loving husband. I am lucky to have you in my life. But you can’t fix me, and this is a journey that I have to take, in some part, by myself. I am not open to being loved right now, and some days all the love I have to give is to our children.
I know you think I’ve turned my back on you, and in some ways you are right. But the truth is, I’ve always put you and the family before me, and so in more ways I turned my back on myself. I can’t do that anymore.
It feels extreme, I get it. There was a time I didn’t even want to go out with my girlfriends because I felt my time away at work was my allotted time away from the family and now I need that time away. Not to run away from the family but to try to give myself some time to just be.
I hope at some point you can understand or maybe appreciate this journey that I am on. I hope you can stop and see that this isn’t your fault, but rather a culmination of experiences and life choices that led me (us) to this moment.
I hope this will be an experience where we both come out as better people, better lovers, and better parents on the other side. Where I can find myself, and maybe you can find a deeper level of yourself as well, if that is what you truly want.
This isn’t how I thought we would end, or where I thought I would end up. But that is the crazy part about life. Sometimes, the very thing you try to control, and hold on to so tightly, is the exact thing you need to let go.
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Sarah Mangiarelli is a mom of two beautiful babies. While her career is in accounting, her passion is in writing from the soul and being out in nature. She is on the precipice of a new journey in her life, and hopes that the words she writes through her struggles and triumphs may bring some peace to others who are brave enough to begin their own new adventures.
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