This Is Me Choosing To Love You Despite Every Reason Why I Shouldn’t

You’ve given me about a million reasons to walk away, in the words of Lady Gaga. My one reason to stay—our son—may be a big one, but it’s the wrong one.

We got here because we screwed up. Yeah, you royally screwed up, but if I’m going to be painfully honest, there were almost a million missteps that led me to you. Those are mine to own and mine to fix before I drop them down to the next generation perhaps in the same way they were thrown to me like a box of rocks. Now is the time for change because my end goal is love.

Love for me. Love for our little boy. And even love for you.

Yeah dude, there are many moments I want to Rhonda Roussey your ass. Junk punch you. Grab the back of your head and brush your lips with mine while I vomit all the bullshit you’ve given me right back into your mouth and make you swallow it down. Let it land in your gut and rot there and make you sick to your stomach like I’ve been for years. I want you to know my pain.

Because that’s what all this angst, anger, stress and sarcasm really is: It’s my pain and my hurt and my disappointment that we didn’t give our son the start to life that I so completely believed we could and should. We failed him and we failed ourselves. But, we now have a chance to make some lemonade. So, let’s do it.

I’m tired of hating you.

Despite all the awful stuff that has transpired between us, I am choosing to let it go and focus on love instead. I have to love you for me. I have given my anger and rage its fair due, and now it’s time for me to grieve what was and finally lay it down in its proper peaceful resting place. Otherwise, it’ll only turn that box of rocks into a boulder. Harder to lift, harder to remove…likely to crush me flat.

I want to love you.

You can be a jerk. I mean a REAL jerk. But, I do believe that you also have a heart and you, too, are hurting from years of carrying your own rocks. I see you. That’s why I’ve stayed, but it’s time for you to put down your rocks and find some lightness, too. For him. For me. For you. The water under the bridge may have washed away the love we once had, or thought we had, but we have to build a new bridge. A different one, but a stronger one.

I need to love you.

I want us to both grow from this and be the people and the parents that I know we can be if we roll the boulders aside. I want to find a way to pick up your hand again and hold it in a new partnership that is respectful and honest. For him. For me. For you. For the sake of our family.

I will choose to love you.

Our son deserves to know that even though a marriage may not work, the family that still stands can. I want him to see forgiveness, honesty and authenticity firsthand. Pretending may have its place in his playroom, but not in authentic, messy, human relationships. Let’s get real on this shit and show him the best versions of ourselves starting now. It’s not too late.

There are a million reasons to get this next stage right for all of us. It’s been hard, but let’s love harder.