REWRITING FAMILY

(it was just a version of me that never really existed)

Yesterday, I found myself planning a trip. With a friend who is also going through a separation. With our children.

Before that, I wrote. I spoke to friends on the phone. I made lunch plans. I bought a course to learn how to make collages from my oldest son’s drawings and another to learn how to use WordPress. They cost me one euro each.

I found myself organizing the house. Throwing things away. Setting things aside to sell. Trying on clothes. Looking at myself in the mirror and recognizing parts of me.
I took a shower. Slowly. Booked a hair appointment.

I started making plans for the summer. Imagining. Dreaming. Thinking about my life ahead from a different perspective.

And, for the first time in a long time, I felt relief.

I’m starting to find myself again. Little by little. And in the middle of that, I began to understand something important: the person he chose to leave… doesn’t exist. Never did.

For a while, I believed it.

When he told me he couldn’t imagine a future with me anymore, he described someone I almost started to recognize. A woman obsessed with her children. With no desire to do anything. No dreams. No plans. No ambition. Stuck. Still. Small.

And I listened. And I stayed. And I wondered.

“Is that really who I am?”

I spent nights awake thinking about it. Re-examining myself. Taking myself apart. Trying to understand where I had gone wrong. But the truth is different.

I didn’t lose myself. I adapted. I adapted to two small children. To a baby who still doesn’t sleep through the night. Waking up five, six times. Always getting up. Surviving on exhaustion.
I adapted to a life where my only support system was him. Where there was no real space to go out, to travel, to do things differently – not because I didn’t want to, but because I had no one to leave my children with safely.

I postponed things. Yes. But postponing is not giving up. And being tired is not the same as lacking ambition. Prioritizing is not the absence of identity.

My children are, without a doubt, the most important thing in my life. But they have never been the only thing.

I am still someone full of desire. Curiosity. Plans. Dreams. I just needed space. Time. Air.

And maybe that’s what is finally starting to appear. Not because everything is resolved – it isn’t. But because, in the middle of the chaos, something is opening.

Today, I’m starting to see myself again. Not as someone who needs to be rebuilt, but as someone who never stopped being whole. I was just tired. Just busy caring. Just living a phase that demanded everything from me.

For months, I tried to understand where I had lost myself. But now I know: I didn’t lose myself. I just believed in a version of me that never really existed.

And maybe the most ironic part is this: it took losing a relationship for me to stop doubting who I am.