Broken

I am broken. We are broken. When this happened or how we got here, I am unsure of. I see myself shards of glass. Sharp, shattered, and scattered. A million little pieces in need of restoration and restoring.

Over the years I have felt lonely. Isolated, lost and locked in a world of special needs. Advocating alone for the betterment of our children. Maybe I’m to blame for not including you more or forcing your involvement. I wanted you to show up, be involved, and when you didn’t the resentment settled in.

The more time that passed by, the more involved I became and the less you did. My heart began to harden, my strength grew, and it became easier to carry the burden alone. I felt abandoned. I already knew isolation, so being alone made sense. It was simple. I made all the decisions and I suffered the consequences. I relied on myself. Less disappointment and less hurt when you weren’t there. You saw it as a strength, I saw it as power. The outcome developed resentment towards each other.

I felt unappreciated for my efforts and you felt unloved; the combination developed resentment towards each other . I threw myself into our children and their needs; you escaped into places that made sense to you. I felt taken for granted, abused, and disrespected; you felt unworthy, lost, and unimportant. Both of us were left feeling unloved and alone.

The more I immersed into the isolating world of autism and advocacy, the further you stayed away and the more we became strangers. Until one day we neither one of us knew ourselves or each other.

Strangers to each other connected only by our beautiful children whom we both love. Broken and empty, we are no longer husband and wife united as one.

Along the way we lost each other, and we lost ourselves. Career wise we know exactly who we are. We are successful, hardworking, and we excel. We also hide well in that world. Our home life or our personal self, we no longer recognize. And if I’m being honest, I’ve been waking up to a stranger for months now.

Over the past 20 years life has thrown us lots of challenges, more than most families. I would like to say that we handled them with grace and with the best possible outcomes. As much as we don’t want to admit it, we experienced trauma. Our lives changed in the process. We traveled different paths alone, instead of together. Over time we sacrificed each other and ourselves. We are now two individuals who barely know one another. Broken and lost, filled with dreams of the past, and a future that is unaccustomed to us.

We are two broken individuals in need of time to heal and rediscover ourselves.

He heals the brokenhearted and bandages their wounds. Psalms 147:3