Making It

It has taken me two and a half years to get here, to this point, to where my head is at this morning, feeling clear and unburdened and really ok.

I think I am really ok.

For the last many months, my life has been defined by all the little pieces I have been picking up after my husband's suicide. My fatherless children. A home with a ghost in it. Figuring out how to work a job and take care of three children and pay bills and deal with taxes and finances and move states and towns and put down new roots and somehow still find the time to take care of myself so I don't also fall to pieces.

I had no choice. My life was whole and then it fell to pieces, and I had to get down on the floor and pick those pieces up with my hands so my kids could walk around in bare feet. I had to clean it up. I cut my hands more than a few times. I know I did. But I had to pick up the pieces so my kids would not be in danger.

The floor seems pretty clean now. There may be some teeny tiny sharp pieces hiding under the table. There may be a few in the corner I failed to see. My hands have cuts in them. And I know that days or months or years from now, I may step on a shard. My kids may step on a shard. I know there are hidden pieces. But I look around and I don't see any big glass. I look around and I see a floor that looks like a floor again, rather than the scene of a disaster. It is relatively safe to walk on. Even in bare feet.

My life is not going to be defined by the hanging body of the father of my children, the man who said he was going to be my husband but then slowly disappeared and then completely disappeared,  and broke our lives into a million little pieces.

My life is no longer that life. It is this life. It is a clean floor. I have cleaned it up. I am ready to walk around again. In bare feet.