Seeing the Forest For The Trees

Perspective is a choice. It doesn't matter how many times she tells herself this, how many affirmations she tapes to the wall next to the bathroom sink, her sense of perspective left the building long ago. She's been in the weeds for months. A dark, black hole of despair curdled with anger and deep, bewildering sadness. A slow processor. Jessie's friends are tired and wary. Let it go, move on, you're better off. Breathe. As if. Suddenly single with 2 small kids after thirteen years as Someone's Person rocked her sense of self, shattering her foundation. Pat didn't love her. He was playing at marriage with kids. He felt nothing but disappointment. Jess could fill tomes dedicated to disappointment, entire libraries. Risperdal took the edge off but she couldn't be high and keep it together for the girls. Grandparents, daycare, long runs on the seawall, primal screams in old growth forest, these consume her. She is too late. She missed her chance. Moments of self doubt swallowed, years of sleepless nights exhausted with herself, with Pat, with all of it, thinking how did she get here? If she was brave enough, selfish enough, she might have changed perspectives, beat him to the punch. Left him knee deep in dirty diapers, adrift in a sea of failed expectations. Then what? At some point perspective shifts and all Jess will be left with is her own reflection in the mirror, in her girls' faces. Waving, not drowning.

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