Hellobee

Even though I spent the better part of four years aiming to keep my marriage together with everything from couples counseling, personal therapy, postpartum depression medication, and even diving into major spiritual practices, I’ve now finally acknowledged that divorce is the best option for me — which will ideally prove to be the best option for our daughter, almost four years old, too.

I grew up with two traditional Chinese parents who fought constantly, to the point that one night, our next door neighbor knocked on front door past midnight, because my parents were shouting to the point that even they couldn’t handle it anymore.

I stood there, with my straight cut bangs and bowl cut, just barely ten years old, and held back my tears. “Oh, everything’s okay,” I lied to our neighbor. His white hair stood atop his head in a disheveled kind of way, as he looked at me skeptically through his glasses. “You can go back to bed.”

He stood there, reluctant to move, then realized that there was no way I was about to break the façade that everything was okay, so he turned around and went home. I shut the door, and tried to go back to bed at the bottom of the bunk I shared with my sister, but stayed awake until my parents became too exhausted to fight any longer.

I promised myself that if I were ever to become a mother, I would never put my child through that same experience. I would make sure that my child would have a safe home, would have parents who modeled a loving relationship, would feel secure in knowing that the adults around them had everything handled: emotionally, financially, physically, mentally. Even, spiritually.

Imagine my surprise when now, four years after marrying my husband, we’re about to get divorced.

Six months into our marriage after a whirlwind romance, my husband stood there in the carport of our home in Hawaii, holding our daughter in his hands, and yelled to me, “I want a divorce!” I likely should’ve listened then instead of trying to “make things work” as I’ve done since that time — and many other requests on his part to be done with our marriage.

I have spent many nights, crying over failing my daughter at the one promise I made to her before she was ever an idea in my mind, that I would never replicate what my parents had done.

Sure, we don’t fight the same way where we’re yelling at each other, but we definitely don’t have the foundation of love that I know is possible.

When I first opened up to my three younger siblings about the fact that divorce was now a concrete option, they each echoed the same sentiment, “Don’t do what mom and dad did. Don’t stay together for the kids. Get a divorce.”

So, here we are. We’ve moved countless times over, from state to city to country, until recently, as we packed up an apartment in Taiwan to find a different one more suited within our budget, I realized once we walked into the empty space, ‘Oh. Here is where our family is going to end.’

It was an intuitive feeling. A truth I could no longer deny.

I asked the housing manager to show us different units, as though that would prevent the inevitable, but I knew that what had been looming in my heart for so long was now a physical reality.

I wanted the perfect family for my daughter. And, I can see now that only in giving up what’s no longer right will I actually be able to create that for her.

It won’t look the way I thought: mother, father, child. It’ll likely look something along the lines of: mother, daughter, partner-who-becomes-a-loving-step-parent-and-role-model. And: father, daughter, whatever-he-decides-to-do-that’s-no-longer-my-business.

It took an epic journey to get to this point. To be a smart woman willing to yield beyond what was healthy for me in hopes that I could “be better” or “show up differently” and then will a different reality into existence.

The one thing I can say after all this time and effort is that I tried. I will never look back upon this time with regret that I didn’t do my damndest to create the dynamic I had always wished for my daughter with the person who helped bring her into the world.

Sometimes, I feel hits of regret at the fact that I didn’t leave sooner to preserve my mental well-being and emotional health, but my compassionate friends will tell me, “You did everything you could for your daughter. You wanted to do the best for her. That’s a noble thing.”

So, three couples’ counselor coaches, two personal therapists, one mediator, many self-help books later, I’m finally looking forward to the freedom that I’ll experience as I now make space to welcome a life beyond my imagination.

What I was doing before was making the best out of a broken situation. What I’m doing now is starting from scratch. As unnerving as that can be sometimes, to the point that fear threatens to take over and I cannot catch my next breath, I’m being brought closer to faith in the world, people, and the Universe than ever before.

Because I don’t know all the answers. What I see unfolding is the love of friends, the generosity of people who are showing up for me, attesting to my value and the potential of my future. They see that everything will be all right when I can’t quite see it clearly as I’m healing and figuring out next steps.

And, isn’t that what life is all about in the end? The beauty of how we all come together to thrive — and how everything works out in the end. My friend posted a quote from Steve Backlund on Instagram recently that I’ve taken to heart and maybe you will, too:

“Don’t trust any conclusion in life that doesn’t glisten with hope.”

Keep believing. I am. It’s all upward from here.