I can’t explain the anguish caused by the response to my “any hope” email. My good friend Emi­ly sent me this video. I could not believe it. Was @drdougweiss watch­ing my life for the past 13 years?? This was total­ly my mar­riage. I felt so released, real­iz­ing it wasn’t just me. It’s an actu­al diag­no­sis. I knew it changed noth­ing, and that I couldn’t send it to my hus­band, because he doesn’t have an ear to hear, espe­cial­ly from me. And he’s no longer my min­istry. But I reached out any­way to them. 

Here’s my email.

And here was the response I received today. 

Talk about cut to the quick. In hind­sight, I won­der if that were writ­ten by a ther­a­pist or just a recep­tion­ist, because it’s not very “psy­chol­o­gist.” But it doesn’t mat­ter. It served its pur­pose. It splin­tered my sliv­er. Imag­ine the crush­ing weight of los­ing all hope. And that’s what I felt. 

And yet I had to per­sist. I made myself play soc­cer/rock-paper-scis­sors/­play-doh/watch a movie. And once more, I told God, “This is too heavy for me, so I’m giv­ing it to You. You car­ry it for me.”

The kids and I spent the evening watch­ing “Dol­phin Tale,” my heart break­ing all the while. I could hard­ly bear it. My son could not under­stand why I couldn’t be at Thanks­giv­ing with his dad’s fam­i­ly. I had already explained that when 2 peo­ple are no longer mar­ried, they can’t keep act­ing like they are. So I expand­ed now to say when I still love him, and he doesn’t love me, it’s real­ly hard to be there. And with a star­tled look on her face, my 4‑yo daugh­ter asked, “Dada doesn’t love you anymore?” 

I felt like it was such a huge mis­take on my part. We’ve both worked to teach her no mat­ter what she does or what mood she’s in, we always love her. Have I just plant­ed a weed in that gar­den? Will she now doubt if we’ll always love her, since her dad’s love for Mom could end so seem­ing­ly abruptly?