Sometimes I still feel guilty for having left the Little Man. I know his life is going to go on being his life and it isn’t about me and who am I to think I am so important anyway? But also, I think it wasn’t right to get down at his level in that wedding dress that day, even though my promise was literally to be the best stepmom I could be, and then just a few short years later up and leave.
Sometimes people ask me how or when I decided to leave… but it wasn’t like that. There were many moments, sure, that led me there… especially leading up to calling 911 in 2002 when his father was arrested. Then there was one moment in an Embassy Suites hotel in the winter of 2004, two years after the arrest. S was basically threatening to kill me and/or rip the door out of the wall. The Little Man was in the next room watching the tv, and could hear the whole thing. When S would get like that, I would be very, very still… not knowing what might make him escalate. I was sitting up in the bed in my pajamas very quiet and very still thinking, “This is insane.” He doesn’t seem to recall any of that and will never be held accountable.
Anyway, I read this poem by Mary Oliver today and it made me think of all that…
The Journey
One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice–
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do–
determined to save
the only life you could save.
- Mary Oliver
I wanted to save Zach’s life; I’m clear that’s why I got married. In the end, mine was the only life I could save.
