Sit With Me Awhile

There was a night when the weight of everything finally caught up with me.

Up until that point, I had been moving through the days doing what needed to be done.

Working.
Taking care of my children.
Trying to carry the consequences of my choices with as much strength as I could manage.

But grief doesn’t always stay contained forever.

Sometimes it waits quietly until the moment when you’re finally alone.

And that night, it came all at once.

I remember sitting on the floor, my back against the wall, feeling the kind of pain that doesn’t just sit in your chest but seems to take over your whole body.

Everything that had happened felt impossibly heavy.

The affair.

The loss of my family as I had known it.

The house I had been removed from in four hours.

Watching life move forward without me.

And the shame that came with knowing that some of that pain had been created by my own choices.

It’s hard to describe what that kind of moment feels like.

It’s not just sadness.

It’s grief mixed with guilt, regret, heartbreak, and the terrifying feeling that you may have destroyed something you can never rebuild.

That night I cried harder than I ever had before.

Not quiet tears.

The kind of crying that leaves you exhausted.

The kind where you don’t even know what you’re asking for anymore — forgiveness, time to go backwards, or just a moment where the pain stops.

There were moments that night when I didn’t know how I was going to stand back up again.

But morning still came.

It always does.

The sun came through the window the same way it always had.

The world kept moving.

And even though nothing about my life felt normal anymore, I was still there.

Still breathing.

Still here to face whatever healing would eventually require of me.

That night didn’t fix anything.

It didn’t answer the questions I had.

But it was the night I allowed myself to feel the full weight of what had happened.

And sometimes healing doesn’t begin with strength.

Sometimes it begins on the floor, in the middle of the night, with tears you can’t hold back anymore.