Today, I cried.

My whole life it seems I have been extremely good at putting on masks. A sad face to get my way, a happy face to hide pain, a game face to close the deal. I became the character of the mask I wore and somewhere along the lines, the characters have taken over and I don't really know who I am anymore. Maybe I never really knew who I was to begin with. I seek to please. I yearn for acceptance. I need affirmations. I want unconditional and undying love. I support my friends, and despise my enemies. I hold grudges. I love too easily. I give up too quickly. I very rarely show true emotions. I suppress feelings and try to pretend everything is as it should be. But those things don't tell me who I am.
Eight months ago I asked my husband, the father of my child, my supposed soul mate and life partner to move out. Little did I know that was the beginning of my world crumbling down around me. The wife and mother I had worked so hard to become disappeared. I became a lost soul that even I didn't recognize. I was a different person depending on the company I happened to be in that day. I somehow managed to make it through the work day, counting down the hours until party time. I turned my back on long time friends. I made so called new friends that came and went. This went on for several months. All of a sudden one day I looked at a picture of my daughter from before this all happened and realized I hadn't seen her smile like that in months. And it was all my fault.
I turned her life upside down with one sentence...five words to her Daddy..."You need to move out." Yes there were problems in our marriage, but nothing that couldn't have been and shouldn't have been worked out. A counselor. A minister. An acknowledgement of the problem, and a plan to find solutions would have been so much better. But at the time, I thought I needed to move on to bigger and better things. I thought I was meant for so much more. I didn't consider anyone but myself. I wish I had known then what I know now. Bigger doesn't always mean better.
Since the moment of realization came that I was becoming the parent I swore I would never be, I have done my best to get back to being her Mommy. I hold her. I read to her. I sing to her. I dance with her to silly songs. I tell her I love her every chance I get. I miss her when she's away from me, and I spoil her when I have her.
But still, I never grieved for the loss of my marriage. I have had emotional down spots, but from a state of the poor me's, not the poor family that I broke apart. Today, that all changed. Today, I cried. I got mad. I let my heart finally break in order to begin making it whole again. I grieved for my loss. I grieved for my husband's loss. But most of all, I grieved for my daughter's loss. The loss of the chance to grow up in a non-broken household. Something I never got to experience and promised myself she would. I finally admitted that I was wrong. I finally apologized to my ex-husband. I apologized to my daughter. I apologized to God and begged for mercy and guidance. I prayed that any pain, fear or suffering that my daughter was experiencing be placed on my shoulders and taken from her heart. Then I watched her as she slept. I snuggled right up next to her and tried to sleep too. I couldn't. So I laid there and cried some more. Normally, I would have just taken a sleeping pill or had a glass of wine to numb the pain and put me to sleep and quoted Scarlet O'Hara that tomorrow is another day. But not this time. This time I cried.
I cried hard and long and deep. I took all the pain, the doubt, the fear, the guilt, the sorrow and everything else I had tried not to feel and felt it for the first time. And I accepted responsibility. A responsibility to never allow myself to fall back into that deep dark place again. A responsibility to admit when I'm wrong and ask for help when I need it. A responsibility to ensure that my daughter does have a happy family, even if Mommy and Daddy don't live together anymore.
I don't necessarily feel better, but I do have a new outlook. I'm sure tomorrow I will cry again. And the next day too. But one day, I will have a day with no tears. But it won't be because I didn't allow myself to cry. It will be because I will have finally allowed myself to go through the process and start anew. And when that day comes, I will give thanks to God and love to my daughter. Without them, I would never have seen the light at the end of my tunnel.