Unchosen

We told the children today.

We had planned the words carefully. There were things they needed to hear.

This wasn’t their fault.

They hadn’t caused it.

They couldn’t fix it.

They weren’t losing either of us.

They would never have to choose between their parents.

That last one mattered to me.

You don’t have to choose.

I wanted them to know that. I wanted them to know they could love us both. That there would never be a test. Never a correct answer.

Never a parent waiting to see which direction they walked.

And then they chose.

Not because anyone asked them to. Not because there was a decision to make.

They just did.

The children went to their mother.

And I sat alone.

There was nothing wrong with it.

That’s almost what made it worse.

Nobody had done anything cruel. Nobody was trying to hurt me. There was no argument I could make.

Children were hurting, and they went where hurting children wanted to go.

It wasn’t me.

So I watched.

I watched the family gather together a few feet away from me. And for a moment I understood something I hadn’t prepared myself to understand.

You can be inside your own family and still be standing outside of it.

I had spent months thinking about what I was going to lose.

The house.

The pancake mornings.

The family dinners.

Making gingerbread houses.

The thousand stupid little things nobody notices until someone tells you they are going away.

I thought that was the grief.

I thought I was grieving my place in the family. But sitting there, I wondered whether I had misunderstood.

Maybe I was grieving a place I had already lost, or maybe I had never occupied it in quite the way I thought I did.

I don’t know.

I only know that when the worst thing happened, nobody reached for me.

And God! I wanted someone to.

I wanted my daughter.

Not because I wanted her to reject her mother. Not because I wanted to win.

I just wanted my daughter to want me; to need me.

I wanted her to cross those few feet and collapse into me.

I wanted to put my arms around her and be, for one moment, the place she went when the world became unbearable.

She didn’t.

She wanted Mom.

So I stayed where I was.

Because loving her meant letting her go where she needed to go, even when every part of me wanted her to come to me.

And then I looked at my wife.

For a moment, I didn’t see the woman from which we had both grown so far apart.

There she was again; the woman I had known for nearly my entire conscious life. The woman I once imagined growing old beside.

The woman whose face I knew before I knew what adulthood was going to look like.

For a moment, through all of this grief, I could see her again.

And some ancient part of me felt exactly what my children had.

It wanted her.

It wanted to go toward her.

It wanted to believe that if I crossed those few feet, maybe she would look at me the way she once did.

Maybe I could still be someone she wanted.

Maybe I could still be chosen.

She didn’t look at me; of course she didn’t.

And suddenly the room seemed to contain the whole thing.

My children wanted their mother.

I wanted their mother.

And nobody wanted me.

There was no villain in the room; no betrayal, no cruelty.

Just three people reaching instinctively toward the person they wanted.

And me.

I had spent so much time worrying about choosing.

Choosing whether to stay, choosing whether to leave.

Choosing how much conflict I could tolerate, and choosing what I was willing to lose.

Today I discovered the other side of choosing.

Sometimes you aren’t the person making the choice.

Sometimes you’re just the person nobody reaches for.

And there is nothing to argue with; nothing to fix, nothing to negotiate.

You just sit there.

A few feet away from everyone you love.

And understand what it feels like to be unchosen.