And others, even when filled with good intentions, feel heavy
This morning I was taking my youngest son to school when I ran into the mother of some of his little classmates – someone I genuinely like very much. She asked me how I was doing. Gently. Carefully. In that soft way people do when they know something painful has happened.
She didn’t mean anything by it. But the look was there. That look of pity I’ve come across so many times since my life changed.
And I know it doesn’t come from a bad place. I truly do. People don’t mean harm. Sometimes it’s empathy. Sometimes discomfort. Sometimes it’s simply their way of saying, “I’m here.”
But there’s something about that look that hurts me. Because I don’t want to be seen as “the woman who was left”. And ever since people found out about the separation, I feel they look at me differently. Especially the ones who know he was the one who decided to leave the relationship. There’s a sadness in their eyes. Almost a sense of fragility. As if they’re looking at me and thinking: “Poor girl…”.
The others, the ones who don’t know the details, look at me differently. With a silent curiosity. Full of questions no one asks out loud, but that you can almost hear anyway: “What happened?”; “Was it her?”; “Was it him?”; “Was there someone else?”; “How does a family like that fall apart? They seemed so happy together”.
And suddenly it feels like we stop being people… and become stories others are trying to figure out.
But what hurts me most isn’t even that. It’s when I feel that same look directed at my children. That look of pity that sometimes appears when people realise their parents are separated.
“Poor kids…”
And I know that comes from love too. From compassion. From imagining the pain a child must feel in the middle of a separation. But my children are not “poor kids.” They are deeply loved. They have a present father. A good father. A father who loves them completely. And they have a mother who still shows up every single day, even on the days she feels like she’s barely surviving inside. A mother who would do absolutely anything for them.
Yes, it hurts. A lot.
Especially because they’re still so small. Because I wish they could grow up inside the family I once imagined for us. Because I am still learning how to live in the middle of all this change too.
But I don’t want my children to grow up feeling like they come from a broken family. I want them to feel they come from a different family. A family that changed shape, but where love still exists.
And I don’t want people to see their father as a villain either. Because even in the middle of my pain, there is one thing I still believe deeply: no one should stay in a relationship just because they feel they have to. Not for the children. Not for habit. Not out of fear of hurting someone. Love should not be a prison either.
Sometimes I think the hardest part of separation isn’t only losing the life we had. It’s learning how to exist under other people’s eyes afterwards. The looks of pity. The looks of curiosity. The looks of judgment. The looks that silently say: “I could never do it”…
But the truth is… we all somehow do. Even when we don’t want to. Even when it hurts. Even when we’re still learning how.
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