Sometimes life feels like it gives you a glimpse of happiness, only to pull it away and leave you in a darker place than before. I’ve been living through that cycle, and it’s exhausting. Yesterday, my heart broke when I was told that my partner and I aren’t allowed to spend Christmas together with our daughter. Only one of us is allowed to be with her. Christmas was the one thing I was holding onto, the one thing I looked forward to. Now, I have nothing left to anticipate, and it feels like the ground beneath me has been pulled away.
It doesn’t help that I’m carrying so much resentment toward his ex. He’s the one who painted this terrible picture of her—sharing every nasty thing about her—and then she started reaching out to me, acting erratically, which only solidified my hatred. If he hadn’t said those things about her, I probably would’ve stayed neutral. But now, I feel trapped in this toxic triangle that I never asked to be part of.
To make things worse, today is his son’s birthday, and he didn’t tell me about the party until this morning. Not only that, but it’s happening at his ex’s house, and I wasn’t invited. That’s not even what angers me the most. It’s the fact that he hid it from me, as if it were some secret. When I confronted him, asking why he didn’t tell me or invite me, his response was, “I just did.” The dismissal hit me like a slap.
It’s not that I don’t want him to spend time with his kids—I do. What I don’t like is the secrecy, because it makes me wonder if there’s more going on. Why would someone hide spending time with their kids unless there’s something deeper?
When I tried to express my feelings, the conversation escalated. He called me names—things no one should hear from someone who claims to love them. I lost my cool and threw my bathrobe at him, which angered him even more. He pushed me down hard enough to scrape my hand, and I know bruises will appear soon. His words stung even more: “Why don’t you get out of bed and do something for once? Clean the house!”
But I did clean. Just yesterday, I spent hours trying to make our home look better. Still, it wasn’t enough. It never is.
The hardest part of all this is asking myself the same questions over and over: Why does he stay? Why do I stay? The truth is, I don’t want to stay. Not even a little. But leaving feels impossible.
I’m grateful my mom has custody of my daughter. At least she’s not seeing this chaos firsthand. The thought of her witnessing this kind of relationship and thinking it’s normal would shatter me. I can’t let her grow up believing this is how women deserve to be treated.
What’s ironic—and painful—is that last night we watched It Ends With Us, a movie about domestic violence. He made a comment about how he couldn’t understand how a man could ever put his hands on a woman. The hypocrisy made me want to scream because he does it to me all the time.
Writing this feels like a small act of defiance, a way of saying, I see the cracks, and I’m not okay with them anymore. Maybe I’m not ready to leave yet, but I know I can’t live like this forever. I owe it to myself—and to my daughter—to find the strength to break this cycle.
If you’re reading this and feel trapped too, know you’re not alone. There’s a way out, even if it feels impossible right now. One small step at a time. For me, writing this is step one.
The Fourth Trimester 