Prologue
Now, while most people might think me crazy for daring to open a business at this time in my life, it was time that I did something crazy. However, as I looked around the shop with only the light from the moon outside to guide me, this didn’t feel crazy.
It felt right.
For twenty years, I had lived my life always doing the right and safe thing, as I should have when you considered that I’d had a child to raise and set an example for.
Nonetheless, the safe road that I’d taken had also been a boring one.
So boring that I had lost my sense of self somewhere along the way.
Now, did I regret it? The obvious answer would be no, simply because there wasn’t anything that I wouldn’t do for Leah.
However, I regretted how I had confused safe with boring, and I couldn’t believe how much I’d begun to miss the old me.
Once upon a time, I hadn’t cared what people thought of me, but becoming a wife and mother had changed all that.
I’d been so concerned about making sure that I was someone that my husband and child could be proud of, and I’d forgotten that love didn’t work like that.
I’d lost sight of what real love was supposed to be, and that had contributed to the end of my marriage.
Nevertheless, things could be worse, and I understood that.
My marriage might be over, but my life wasn’t, and the proof was all around me.
For the first time in my life, I was a business owner, and tomorrow was our grand opening.
Every cent that I’d gotten from the divorce had gone into this place, and while the world might not need another flower shop, my life needed one.
I needed something for myself, and this was it.
Leah was also heading into high school, and instead of sending her in there as a confused kid that was doing her best to navigate her parents’ divorce, I wanted to send her in there with the belief that life was still good, despite the hard times.
No matter how I felt about her father, I wanted Leah to see both of her parents thriving, and I wanted her to see that bad things didn’t equal the end of everything.
I wanted her to always be grateful for what she had.
I wanted us all to always be grateful for what we had.
Including her father.
~
I stared at the front door, still refusing to believe that this was happening.
When I’d gotten the email this morning, I had convinced myself that it’d been a mistake; that it’d been referring to another office.
After all, this was all that we had to help get us through the rough times.
Yeah, I had my parents, but they didn’t need my shit at their age.
Honestly, no one needed my shit.
Not being able to help myself, I reached out, grabbed the door handle, then yanked on it like it was going to help. However, as the door remained locked, it was hard to ignore the reality that this was actually happening; that it had actually happened.
As I took a step back, my eyes scanned every inch of the building for some additional hope, but when I couldn’t find any, I could feel myself crumbling that damn email in my hand.
This was wrong on so many levels, and it was getting harder and harder to breathe with the weight of this mistake pushing on my chest. After all, that’s what this was. ..a mistake.
A huge one.
This was also about more than just finding another support group.
I’d already poured my heart out to these people, and the pain of experiencing that kind of transparency wasn’t anything that I wanted to go through again.
While I knew that other groups would still understand it all the same, shutting these doors had just cost me another band of brotherhood that I hadn’t been prepared to lose like this.
There was also the issue of availability. None of the referred offices on the flyer were here in town, and the nearest one was three towns over, and I needed something that was readily available to me, not something that I had to make an appointment for.
With my chest feeling tight and my mind threatening to go down another rabbit hole, I stared at the now empty building, and I wondered how they could do this to us.
After all, I wasn’t the only one who was going to be affected by this.
There were a bunch of other men and women that were going to feel just as angry and lost as I felt right now, and for what?
What had we all done this for?