There’s nothing harder when you split up than 7pm. For the first few weeks, even if they’re filled with rage and resentment and heart break…7pm comes around and that’s when daddy would be home and there’s no one walking in the door.
There’s no, "How was your day? What’s for dinner? You know, I heard a funny story on the way home from work." That is sometimes the most heartbreaking part of being a single parent. The loneliness at night. Sleeping alone, you get used to. Hell, sometimes you look forward to no one fighting you for covers, sweating and snoring or maybe even pawing at you. You can wake up alone, fine, cuz it’s another day and there’s some sort of agenda and things are going to be done to take away the missing person’s absence.
But 7pm, the time between dinner and when you lay your kid down for the night. It’s hell for the first little while.
I don’t know anyone who has separated and not lost it a little bit. The routine’s gone out the window, the chores get left undone, guilt overwhelms at the fact that you feel like you’re just not enough. Knowing that everything you do or don’t is being watched and heard and learned from, when sometimes, all you want is to put on eight movies in a row and go to bed.
Then one day, you wake up and go, "Holy shit, look at all of that fucking laundry! What the hell is my kid wearing? A bathing suit and yogurt moustache?" And you get productive. Shit gets taken care of.
You clean, you shop for healthy food with a vengeance, you make lists and plans again. You think of how you want your next week, month, year to look and you don’t feel weird picturing it with just you and your kid. You start to think of the two of you as a family, not a broken one. You view friends as part of your everyday, not just as people you sometimes get to hang out with. You seek out support and hugs, meals and laughter, from places you hadn’t looked. Cuz you were too busy being a family, before.
Everything becomes more…important and easier-seeming.
The next thing you know, you’ve gotten out of your doom and gloom stage and entered a new one that you didn’t know you could live in. It’s full of possibilities, self-respect, the future. It’s full, is the point; it’s not empty like months ago seemed.
And then you go past that stage even further.
You see yourself doing things everyday, alone, that months ago would have seemed wrong or unwise, or even just not done.
Kids don’t need a bath everyday, really. Clothes without stains can be worn more often than once. Dinner doesn’t have to be meat, potatoes, a complimentary vegetable and some form of multigrain roll. You can let them pick out their own clothes at two years old, and pick their own snacks from the variety of choices you’ve got kicking around, and pick their own toys up.
You find that prior to doing it all alone, time outs were a consequence; after, they’re a necessity for both of you, sometimes cuz you’re just losing your shit and so’s she. Before, you used to think that you would never let your child have sugar/ice cream/chips/more than 4oz of diluted juice. Then enters the rewards and distractions and juice boxes because honestly, it makes you both happier when things are easier. Maybe you do healthier versions of those things – like brown rice chips, no-sugar added frozen yogurt and Happy Planet juice blends with spirulina added – but you’re still serving them up as you’re cruising the aisle of the Walmart, Target or Costco.
And you find for the most part, you don’t miss them coming home. You don’t resent that missing partner for not being there, doing this, anymore. You actually feel a little sorry for them for everything that they’re missing. You might welcome the break daycare, visits and school provide, but you feel most rewarded when you’re exhausted from being what you never knew you could be so well.
A single mama.
