“I met your beloved son, nephew, grandson, cousin, brother at the age of 20. I was also your daughter in law, niece, granddaughter, cousin and sister, but after eleven years of having all these roles and feeling like a welcomed part of your family you all left me because he left me.
He left at 10:30 p.m. on a cold Sunday night in February; he walked out of our home with all his clothes and belongings and left me and our three dogs. I didn’t eat, sleep, or go to work for weeks, and I eventually quit my job due to my depression. I struggled financially; I struggled with my mental health, I struggled with wanting to live, I struggled with not having a close family of my own, I struggled even telling what family I did have – but they were hours away. They weren’t local like you were.
You allowed my husband a place to stay and accepted him with open arms and helped him financially knowing that I was struggling. A couple of you told me to just give up and divorce my husband, instead of encouraging him to come home. You all ignored his need for mental health help that you knew was recommended by two doctors and his therapist. You did not say anything to him, knowing he was going out on the weekends and using drugs. Through all of this, you supported him, but I’m the one who needed you the most.
Three people in your family checked on me, for the first month or so but then this stopped. No one ever asked me how I was, how I was adjusting, how I felt, how all this affected me. Some of you even deleted or block me on social media with no explanation. Phone calls and texts to you went unanswered; your abandonment hurt worse than his, your support of him abandoning his family destroyed me. He went out of town every weekend, while I was home because I could not afford gas, or to pay someone to watch the three dogs. You knew that he was not paying for credit cards, helping with our mortgage, paying his car insurance, paying utilities, or help paying for the dog’s care, but everyone looked the other way and coddled him.
Not having family around for holidays and spending Thanksgiving alone, without a call or text from any of you, crushed me. Truth is, I didn’t have the money to travel to spend Thanksgiving with my family, and I will not have the money to travel for Christmas as well. Truth is you all abandoned me just as my husband had. I was a part of your family for 11 years and I had been written off like I never existed, like I was never a part of your family. My sister in law even once told me, ‘we loved having you as our family and we’ll miss you.’ Sure, this was a nice gesture, but then I never heard from her again, and it felt very cold, short, and like I was just a second-rate girlfriend who your brother broke up with after 6 months.
My husband is your oldest sibling; I watch all three of his siblings grow up. I watched all of you get married, have babies, I held each of my nieces and nephew in the hospital when they were born. I loved your children and I could not wait for the day when they would want to spend the night or weekend with their Aunt and Uncle. I looked forward to treating them as my own because even after eleven years your brother didn’t feel ready to have children. I never had a close family, by the time I was 21 all my grandparents had passed away as well as my father. You were my family, I loved all of you but when he left, I no longer felt a part of your family. I felt betrayed by you, I felt abandoned by you, and I felt like I never matter to you. I’ve had to come with terms that nothing will ever be the same because my trust and faith in each one of you is broken. I am capable of forgiving I will never forget how you dropped me like a bad habit, how you wrote me off, how no one checked on me, and how when he left so did all of you.
Today, almost a year of not seeing or hearing from most of you the hurt is still there, the pain of not having family to spend the holidays with is still there. However, I would like to say thank you. Yes, thank you for teaching me that I can be my own best friend, I can be my own family, I can create happiness within myself that no one can ever take from me. I’m stronger because I made it through this alone. I made it through the sleepless nights, the crying on the floor, the crying myself to sleep on the couch because I was afraid to sleep alone. I made it through the days and weeks I lost due to depression and drinking. I made it through being negative in my bank account for weeks because I was adjusting to a single income that I had not planned for. I made it through being completing blindsided by him leaving at 10:30 p.m. on that cold February night and losing the family I was a part of for eleven years.”
This story was submitted to Love What Matters by Cortney McBride. Follow her journey on Instagram here. Do you have a similar experience? We’d like to hear your important journey. Submit your own story here. Be sure to subscribe to our free email newsletter for our best stories, and YouTube for our best videos.
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