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The three of us sat quietly around a small, round table meant for two.
I pulled over a folding chair for my son from the closet of the small Airbnb I was staying at for the next two days. This was not a vacation by any means. In fact, I hadn’t even seen the rental that my mother and friend found for me, my children, and our pets while I was traveling the week before.
My hands were in my lap and still shaking. They hadn’t stopped for nearly a week. They would eventually stop, only to hold thousands of tissues in the months to come, but not yet. I wasn’t there yet.
I couldn’t possibly shed a tear. I was in fight or flight mode, literally, having just returned from a cross-country business trip. But instead of going home, I came here to be with my family and think through what my next steps would be.
Not even a week before, I nearly missed my flight for the trip, which had never happened to me in the 20-plus years of my career. After a sleepless night, when I stayed awake wondering how I could make it work so I could go on this “must-be-there” business trip, I was lucky to have friends and family who answered my call for help at daybreak to arrange an alternate schedule for my children and a home for my pets to stay at while I was away.
It was during my Lyft ride to the airport that I noticed my shaking hands. I promised myself I would exhale when I was on the plane. I used those 45 minutes in the car to practice breathing exercises to settle myself and visualized my young ones being well cared for.
After racing through airport security, I had enough time to buy water and a few snacks for the long flight ahead. When I handed my debit card to the cashier to pay for them, she asked if I was okay. It was those shaking hands again. I lied and told her I was a nervous traveler.
What happened next proved that to be a lie a thousand times over. As the plane was barreling down the runway and other passengers who were less fond of flying enjoyed their alcoholic drinks and Xanax, I exhaled and felt a sense of safety as we ascended into the clouds. I love flying so much that I often record takeoff and landings, which I did this time as well. I recorded the takeoff with the intent to watch it any time I felt like I couldn’t go forward with my decision, reminding myself that I would never, ever allow myself to be in this position again, feeling like a refugee fleeing from my own home.
That video clip would become my talisman.
I don’t know how or where the strength came from the days that followed to fully focus on the work I needed to do (on little sleep, in a different time zone) but I silenced the disturbing texts I was receiving that were clearly meant to induce more anxiety and did just that. I realized more than ever that week how my educational pursuits and professional accomplishments had always been the safest and most secure parts of my life. Each day I was there, engaged in strategic planning and presenting, helped me to remember who I was and the power I had within.
Still, in the wee hours of the morning, in the dark hotel room, I was afraid of what was to come, and most of all, having to apologize to my children for it. It would be, I thought, the hardest apology I would ever have to make.
So, there we were—just the three of us—and before apologizing, I had to first explain why we were staying at an Airbnb, which would be the first of three rentals over the next few months before settling into our new home. But they already knew. They knew before I did. Everyone did.
Only five weeks before, we had moved from our home of 11 years, the only one they had known, and now I had to tell them we would be moving again. “I made a mistake. I love you so much, but I made a big mistake. I’m your mother and I should have done better, I should have known…” My words trailed off as I heard my own voice rebut in my mind, “But you did. You did know, and you didn’t listen.”
I silenced that voice and continued, “We need to move…again.” I watched as tears streamed down their faces and repeated what my therapist had told me to say the day before while on the phone with her, sitting on the floor of a loud and crowded airport before boarding my return flight: “I don’t have all the answers yet, but I will figure this out. You know I will. We will be okay. We will be okay.”
Their response was not what I expected and made my heart break into a million pieces. They weren’t crying for themselves, they were crying for me. My son, who had pointedly asked me months before when we talked about moving in together, “What will happen when he breaks up with you…again? Or stops talking to you…again?” didn’t have any questions or remarks like, “I knew this would happen.” He instead said, “I’m so sad for you, Mom. I’m really, really sorry. You tried so hard.”
My God. They were sad for me, not themselves, and that made the situation excruciating. It wasn’t that they knew, like everyone did, that this would be a failed dream. It was that I knew the feeling of sadness for a parent from an early age and had wanted to do everything as their mother to not have my own children feel that. And I had failed.
I’ll take the memories of that conversation with me to my grave and the regret that comes with it, but what I thought was the hardest apology, in fact, was not. As time went on, and I focused on self-love and the healing that comes with it, I realized the hardest apology wasn’t the one I made to my children, but the one I had yet to make to myself.
That voice again, like those shaking hands, “But you did know, and you didn’t listen.” I still grapple with the fact that the situation had to become so dire for me to say, “That’s enough.” The one person in my life who should have made me feel safe and loved and not like a refugee escaping to another city three time zones away let me down—again.
No, not him. He did not have the capacity to do that, which is clear now. It was me.
Why did she not love herself enough to protect her heart, her body, her sweet energy? These types of questions come often, although less so now thanks to the work I’ve done in therapy and the books I’ve read by Dr. Ramani Durvasula and Debbie Mirza, who have helped me understand the “why.”
But when those questions persist, I simply say what I did to my children: “I’m sorry. I love you so much, but I made a mistake. I’m sorry. I love you and you will be okay.”
And then I close my eyes and exhale, like I did during takeoff that day on the plane.
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