In my last post, April from It’s All About Balance shared how she had to choose a new life or marriage to a drug addict. Sometimes we make decisions that set in motion a chain reaction, a reaction that we often don’t see until we’re looking back. April’s decision was one of those and she now has a life that has little semblance of her married life. The transformation all started with a decision about where to live after her marriage was over. Here’s April:
When I first decided to leave, we were living in Rochester, New York and I thought I would try to stick it out there. Then I realized it was just going to be too difficult to do it without the support of my family, plus I kind of hated my job. I was getting a tax refund and a really good friend was the one who said,
“Listen, use this to get out of here and start a new life.”
That’s exactly what I did.
My ex wasn’t working at the time, he was pretty caught up in his drug addiction and I figured it wasn’t his place to decide where we should live. It was me who was going to be the one who would be financially responsible for the children and it was me who was going to be emotionally responsible for them also. I certainly told him we were going and he actually helped us.
He knew it was the right thing for us to do, to be able to start again. We were broke, it was a bad situation. Our housing was provided by my employer and if I was going to leave that employer I’d have to figure everything out anyway so going to my parents seemed like a good way to do that. At least we would have a roof over our heads while I tried to find a new job.
The girls were almost three and six and they obviously didn’t know a lot about why I was leaving him. It was hard for them. My little one was too young to really know what was going on but my older one was definitely going to miss him. He was good about saying to them that this is the best thing and that he’d see them when he could.
“No, you’re going to go live with your mom, you’re going to live in L.A. I’ll visit you when I can.”
That helped.
This segment makes me sad – I absolutely believe April made the right choice. My sadness comes from the damage that drug addiction causes. I do believe drug addiction is an illness, a disease and we haven’t found the right way to treat it. April’s ex couldn’t fight his demons but he was smart enough to know what was best for his children. There are plenty of ex’s that would fight an out-of-state move. April was also fortunate that she could turn to her mom and dad for support – divorce is a hard transition to go through, it’s even harder when your parents don’t support your divorce.
Photo Credit: BriYYZ at Flickr
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