What Do You Want?

And that's when I heard it. What do you want? What does this mean? Do you want a divorce? Wow... talk about waves of fear coming up... my mind raced over how to answer. Do I say yes, and then figure out how I am going to support myself and the kids tomorrow, do I say I want to try and work things out, do I say no, I just want him to get help?
I went ambiguous, I couldn't really answer...I said I didn't know...

I thought I had gotten all the signs, all those pieces of paper that might say the wrong thing to him... But then he asked if I was sure that I didn't know, if I was sure I wanted to try to work through things, because number 2 on that list over there was "leave my husband". OOPS! The list was behind me, and I didn't know exactly what it said, but I knew it was a list of why that goal was important that I had made over a month ago. I told him it was an old list, it was a thought, it was something that I had been considering. I didn't want to turn around, and prayed desperately that there was nothing else on that list to explain. And then it was quiet.

"I really have supported all your ideas, and I really do love you," he said. I knew that, I felt it in my soul. And I really didn't want to hurt him, I still love him. A momentary fleeting thought that we could work things out.... But we have grown so far apart, we want things that are so different, splitting up would be the right thing for us. I asked him to consider the possibility that he could have said things that hurt us. I told him that I was willing to accept the possibility that he hadn't meant to hurt us when he said those things. I asked him to consider that since the kids and I are so energetically sensitive, that we felt the things he said or did more deeply. And he agreed that he could accept the possibility that he had said things that had hurt us. After all, he has never been good at dealing with the kids, he never seems to actually understand them the way that I do.

Wow, we have both grown. We have both changed so much from a year ago when it would all have been screaming, crying, accusations...