The Moment I Knew

Today my baby girls are 5 years old. It's so hard to believe - it's different, somehow, than my other two kids. Each of my children has changed my life in unimaginable ways, but becoming a mother of twins is just different. Twins is what happens to "other people", not to me. Those days during the first couple years that seemed like they would never end, the sleepless nights dealing with two infants, are now really a faded memory...almost surreal. It's sad because as we were all just "surviving" those early days there are many moments that I seem to have lost in my memory.

It's a bittersweet day for me. I love these girls something fierce. They are truly an extraordinary gift in my life, but their coming to be was not exactly the way I would like to remember it. For us, expecting twins was the surprise of a lifetime. I never dreamed there would be two "in there". And among the other thoughts that quickly ran through my head as I was laying on the table, looking at those two heartbeats on the ultrasound screen..."I'm really stuck now." Feeling stuck and feeling like I was going to have to spend the next 18 years "getting by", raising my kids and waiting for them to be grown so I could finally leave was probably the most suffocating feeling I've ever known. And it stayed with me...until I decided to do something about it.

A lot of people ask me if there was a single moment in my marriage that was the defining moment, the "moment I knew" I was done. There were many, but I do know that when my [ex] husband left me in the hospital with our two newborn daughters because he was "bored" and wanted to go home and drink wine and smoke cigars on the back patio was a moment that I knew, for sure that I was leaving as soon as I felt like I could make it on my own. I would love to say that I'm in a place where I'm so over it now and it just doesn't phase me anymore, but I'm not. It makes me really angry that I can't write this without crying, that I can't think about that day without being bitter and angry. Our engagement night, our wedding weekend, birthdays, holidays...many of those "life moments" have horrible memories and I still haven't forgiven him for that.

I allow myself to have my moment to be mad, to cry and to feel the anger that I still have today but only until my girls wake up. I want to process it and get over it and let the rest of the day be about what it's supposed to be about...my Washbellies who are truly amazing gifts in my life and I am blessed to be their mom. I can't imagine what my life would be like without my girls and everyday they do new things that amaze me and make me so proud to be their mom. I wouldn't have it any other way!