Full moons and broken marraiges

You hear the statistics all the time, I don't know what the exact numbers are I just know that they exist.

Even really wonderful marriages sometimes don't survive the loss of a child.

I would be hard-pressed to find an example of my marriage ever being one of the good or strong ones and I am not sure it was ever wonderful.

My husband and I dated briefly. I became pregnant at a very young age, and although he was not ready at 26 to become a father he married me.

He tells me now that he would have married me eventually even if I had not become pregnant. I think that is meant to make me feel hopeful but it doesn't.

We were friends for a long time. We loved each other. We became a family.

Then it started falling apart, we seemed to be missing some important adhesive that made it all work perfectly.

We have had so much resentment towards each other over so many years that it is hard to see who we really are or what kind of marriage we could have had.

I lost me.

I have many regrets about this relationship, I have lists and lists of all the wrongs, all reasons, all the blame. The three things I hold precious, the three wonderful things that have happened to me that I will never feel regret for, but instead greatly blessed are my children. They have always been my focus. I may have fallen out of love with my husband after a certain February but I have never fallen out of love with them.

They are the reason I believe I have stayed, left and come back.

It sounds mean and I sound heartless and maybe I am but after 23 years honesty becomes not only easy but vital to my survival.

The death of my daughter left me unafraid of things I use to be so afraid of. My worst fear was being alone.

I am truly alone yet I survive.

The fear is gone.

I don't know what being alive means. I don't understand the purpose or the illusion. I am not sure what role "Love" plays. I understand and respect the love between a mother and a child but the love between a man and a woman seems like a far away memory, or a story I read.

I am on auto pilot.

There is a part of me that needs to keep everything the same so she can find us, so we won't lose her, so home is here for her always.

There is a part of me that doesn't want anything from before. Maybe it wouldn't hurt so much if I could get rid of all of it, every memory.

Somehow it isn't my call, not right now. I have to be still in this hurting place and wait.

God will have what he will have, and there is nothing more he can take. I am knocking on wood, I still have two children and it would be the end of me to lose them. I guess there is more he can take.

Last night the harvest moon was golden and heavy in the sky. It is always the same moon hanging there every fall but each year it seems new and different. because I see it with different eyes, from a different place.

I am so tired but I know it is a skin I will shed. Stevie leaving was like a burn caused by fire. I am hurting but I will heal and this old tissue will peel away leaving me with a new skin, new energy.

Like the moon I am the same me but soon I will be different, because I will be looking out of my eyes differently, from a very different place.

I am not sure what will happen now, I just know that I don't want to live the rest of my life in one place waiting for something good to happen. I don't want to keep praying for the same things.

I want it to change, all of it. I want it to be a life that embraces me, has meaning and a life that wakes me up in the morning telling where to put my feet next.

I don't want to be tired anymore.