Please Exclude Me

I left him. I divorced him. I got custody of the kids. That was 17 years ago. I've been remarried since then -- happily so -- yet every day I have to defend myself. To the kids who are now adults, to former friends who chose sides, to his parents and mine who somehow managed to retain a friendship through all this, to the church I left, and worst of all, to myself.

One of my kids -- the one who's almost 30 and isn't childlike in any way whatsoever -- is no longer speaking to me. He never told me off or confronted me. He just slipped away, stopped returning my calls or responding to my texts, made his visits shorter and farther between, until one day I realized it had been over a month since we'd spoken. I reached out, and never heard back. I knocked on his door, and heard rustling through the door as curtains twitched. Nobody answered.

At one time, I just wanted my son to love me again. That day has long passed. It's been two years since I heard his sweet voice or felt one of his strong, warm hugs, enjoyed his boysterous laughter or witnessed his silly frolicking around the room. Now I just want him to be happy, healthy, and prosperous. I don't have energy to wish he'd come back into my life. I don't have any tears left. I'm all dried out and used up. Sometimes at night, I whisper into the dark, "Just let him feel love and be well." That's all the emotional energy I can spare for my baby boy -- the one who saved my life just by existing -- the bulking beast of a man who was born premature and only weighed 4 pounds and was tiny enough to fit in my hands -- the one who collected batman comics with me -- the one who is probably still angry that I drove away from the McDonald's Playland with his tiny Toy Story sneakers still sitting on the roof of my car so that they blew away somewhere on the highway -- the one who hated when I called him Macaroni or Squirrel or Honey Boy... God how I miss him. Just let him be well.

And then there's my daughter. At one time I snuggled her to sleep at night, but now the beauty who will turn 19 soon