Conundrum (Part III)
By: Mia L. Hazlett
8/31/10
As a little girl, I always believed there was a happily ever after. The concept of spending forever with someone was perfectly logical. But some how life got in the way of me spending my life with my forever. So now the only life that existed for me would be spent alone raising three children.
I wasn’t going to share the news of my pregnancy with my husband. Instead I was going to allow myself the joy of telling him quite the opposite should he decide to care or ask. I really didn’t care how big my stomach got, I would lie to him as he so enjoyed doing to me. But the God in me wouldn’t allow me to join the devil, so I called him and said I was locked out of the house and needed his keys. Granted still a lie, but it was the only way I could guarantee he would come home. Funny I was so afraid to lose my forever, even when I was lying to get it to come home and see me.
Luckily it was a lie and I had my set of keys, because I would have gone the bathroom on myself waiting the 45 minutes it took him to get home. He arrived in the bedroom with a quizzical expression. I continued to paint my nails and with a stroke of the brush, shared my news. He punched a hole in the wall and left without a word. My tears didn’t break until I heard the front door close. I had promised myself the night he dropped me off to go to his mother’s, he would never see me cry for him again.
It’s not that it was my forever that was now lost, but this is not the forever I had promised my children. The moment the nurse placed my daughters in my arms, I promised them that their parents would give them the world. Not that I would give them the world, but we would give them the world. But now I truly had to wrap my mind around the concept that he wasn’t going to be here forever. I, solely, will be my children’s forever.
Days passed without return. The house no longer skipped a beat and I started to run my home as if he no longer lived with us. The third day he returned and searched the kitchen for his dinner plate. Because his forever consisted of dinner on the table or in the microwave waiting when he arrived. But like I said, in my mind, he no longer lived here. There were no leftovers. I cooked for three now…well four.
Work was grueling now. It wasn’t like my other pregnancies when I was working. I had to treat this job as the sole income for my family now. I already carried all of the benefits, but I really had to stretch each check to ensure it covered all expenses. As I came to realize, I was short $260 dollars. If I could come up with that, I could sustain our lifestyle. I took the money he gave me for bills and began to save. Little did he know he was being worked out of our lives.
As I returned home from work two nights after he discovered he was no longer going to be served dinner, my realization from weeks past came true. The girls and I ate. My oldest bathed my youngest, because bending and kneeling were just too cumbersome and painful now. She than took a shower. I read them a story and tucked them in. As I hunted for my bathrobe, I noticed the space in my closet. There was a small space on both the floor and the rack. He had taken his clothes and shoes. I quickly checked the drawers in the bureau, only to find the same emptiness. He was gone. My forever-their forever was gone.
A Young Writer Coming Up 