Well, what a weekend! Okay, it still is weekend in a way as it's the carnival holiday (read more about the fun here), so tomorrow is another free day. Wednesday will be regular again.
After a couple of hard weeks with a lot of fighting, things finally escalated to today. The preliminary final confrontation. It took a huge amount of courage to do that, even though I knew it was necessary and the right thing to do. It didn't let me sleep much, though. I spent the weekend with several mild anxiety attacks, and it was hard to fall asleep.
But I'm not alone. Many friends helped me and supported me. After the foam party on Friday, Ellie and I went to a Valentine's Dinner with my brother and her sister, to a friend's restaurant who had invited us. It was a beautiful evening. The food was amazing:
We normally don't plan anything on Valentine's. And still we end up being invited or we turn up at the right place at the right time by accident. Maybe that's true love, we don't have to proof it, good things just happen.
Everything about that evening was great, and it was an important reminder for me - despite everything going on, my life is pretty amazing. The life that I share with Lily, too. And Lily knows that, and she does appreciate it. There were a few bad words spewed at me in the morning, but I remained my calm and just asked Lily what she thought. She smiled and said that both her parents are great, and I replied that we both love her a lot.
And that's the trick. Be the "other". Not going down on that level, staying on mine. Being kind. Not letting the attacks get to me. Focusing on what is important: Lily. What's best for her. Trying to keep my ego out of it.
In the end, it all went well. My friends came with me as witnesses in case I had to invoke the legal mediation agreement with the police. I kept my cool, I kept control, and now Lily is watching a movie while I'm writing this. Some weird movie about trolls. I started to watch, but it wasn't that good, so here I sit, reflecting.
Hoping that today served as a catharsis. As a climax, and that now things will finally calm down again, structure and stability will come back to our lives. The chaos was exhausting. Not being able to plan anything as everything is subdued to the mood swings of another person. It wasn't good for Lily, either, her teacher notified me of her having trouble concentrating and participating.
It would be a break, not a final solution. There is none, really, gotta take things each day at a time and enjoy the small wins for Lily. But a break is good now, to get things back in the right direction. Lily is more and more vocal about what she wants and prefers, which is usually right in the middle. In this case, it was half the time with her mom, half the time with me. We kind of have that, at least for this week. Who knows what comes next week...
What are your thoughts about this topic? Please feel free to engage in any original way, including dropping links to your posts on similar topics. I'm happy to read (and curate) any quality content that is not created by LLM/AI.
Thank you for reading!
