Home alone

I was talking to friends, really lovely friends, who have been through this phase of children leaving home and they have shared stories of being in tears as they waved their off-spring goodbye.

They.

They waved

And cried together.

Then went home to an empty home

together.

But I will be going home to an empty home,

alone.

And it brings up some of the shame I felt being a single parent, a sense of failure that I had made such a mistake in my marriage, that there must be something wrong with me, and indeed, in spite of having had a long term relationship for nearly a decade, I find myself alone again.

Now logically I know the percentage of marriages which end in divorce, I know why those relationships ended and have no regrets that they did. I know there is nothing more than the usual human frailty wrong with me, but still I am alone.

And not just for the goodbye, but there is no other person who has shared the entirety of my kid’s lives with me, no one person who I can say, ‘remember when’ to. No one who the kids can call who know as much of their lives as I do.

And the shame I think comes from still that bright shiny dream I believed in of happy ever after, the ‘one’, the soul mate, the till-death-do-us-part.

It brings up a sense of failure, that the kids didn’t have the perfect 2 parents and that I didn’t have the perfect co-parent.

All rubbish I know, but still the shame is there.