The moment
About a week after I was in my house on my own with my daughters, I had a “moment”. From my bedroom, I could hear one of the girls pulling something out from the dishwasher, making that clanking sound we know all too well.
And all of a sudden, I felt my stomach clench. It was the first time I had been calm enough to notice that my stomach did that when I heard that sound, and I thought to myself: that is some weird shit.
Why does the sound of a dishwasher being unloaded make me clench up? I realized that usually, when I heard that sound, it had been my ex unloading the dishwasher. And that immediately, I would tense up because if he was doing it, it meant I wasn’t doing it, and I would feel guilty because although he wouldn’t call me out specifically, he would often complain that no one else helped clean the kitchen. Being the only other adult in the house though, it was hard not to take that personally, even though I worked so many hours in the business and carried a big share of the load at home outside of the kitchen. (Let’s just say it - I’m not a great cook and I was living off of pizza pockets while trying to recover from burnout and not drop balls elsewhere in our lives)
I started to realize just how much I had been walking on eggshells. Worried about so many odd little things, without even realizing it. I noticed how much calmer my daughters were, and how much calmer I was with them. How things that I would usually tell them to stop suddenly didn’t seem to bother me. It hit me that those things didn’t bother me, but I’d ask them to stop in anticipation that they might be bothersome to others.
It didn’t take long for my house to start feeling a lot more peaceful.
But then another interesting thing happened.
You know that nesting thing they say happens to pregnant folks? Well I think there is a post-separation nesting phase. Where you start looking at your home and realize all the compromises you made from décor to organization to the purpose assigned to each room.
And then it hits you - I CAN DO WHATEVER THE HELL I WANT NOW! 🎉
Florals. Pastels. Fairy lights. Plants. Crystals. A mini kitchen reno. Who’s gonna stop me? NOBODY!!!!!
It was also a much needed outlet at a time where I felt helpless about a lot of other things. And I like to think that it lightened the mood at home, and that it was good for the girls to see me moving forward and being excited about things. And learning new things. Look at that, mom can put up a shelf in my room. She can fix stuff. She’s good at figuring things out.
I mean, there were definitely a lot of hard moments, but it was nice to have a project to immerse myself in once I had had enough of stressing about something I couldn’t fix.
But most of all, it made the home feel like it belonged to me and the girls. Like we belonged there, and it was happy to shape-shift to make us feel at home and set the stage for new happy memories.
Thank you for letting me share my story with you. Here are the other parts I've shared so far:
