The Secrets Were Plentiful

I don't remember exactly at what point things changed so drastically that we were literally walking on egg shells around the house.  I was a stay at home mom (my dream), he was working (A LOT).  If I would take the kids out to do stuff while he slept during the day, or while he worked on the weekends, I was a bitch, or a cunt or a terrible wife.  I remember thinking to myself how can someone who claims to love me so much call me these names, over and over again?  But I accepted apology after apology.

There were times I would take Breauna out to eat and I would have to tell her not to tell Dad because he would get mad and it would break my heart to have to have her lie to him, but it was the only way I could keep the peace, and still do little things with Breauna.  She knew why too, she would always ask me why Dad would not let us go to the movies together, or why we couldn't go shopping together, just little things that we should have been able to do.

It started effecting her health, to the point she had to have medical procedures, so serious they had to put her to sleep and put tubes down her throat and now I believe it was all the stress of my marriage.  The abuse we were enduring was putting this stress on my baby to the point she was making herself sick, it breaks my heart.  There is still a chance it is something else, but her flare ups are few are far between since we left that situation. 

Today I learned that Austin learned how to ride his two wheeler.  It is probably one of the first real milestones he has reached without me by his side since he was 2 years old, and it breaks my heart that I missed it.  I have been chocking back tears all day.  He is my baby and that situation was as difficult on him as it was the rest of us and if I could have taken him with me I would have in a second.  I close my eyes every night and imagine my arms wrapped around him, his smell, and those big brown eyes that will turn that "No" into "Yes" in a heartbeat.  He called me Mom all these years and even the last "secret" meet up I had with him where his "real" mom brought him to see me, he begged her to let him come back and live with me.  All I can do is hope and pray that he grows up knowing how to treat a woman, and that this woman, his Mom, loves him with all her heart and soul.  Whether I carried him for 9 months or not, he is still my baby.