17 Years

The moment I said it out loud, was the moment it was time to go.

I'd remembered reading a book about leaving one's home so they could move forward and survive, but the name of it escapes me.  The words do not.

"Come, it is time to go."

It was a story about primitive people living in South America. I believe they were the Yanomami people. They moved from place to place following the destruction of their forests by American corporations.

I was also leaving because of destruction but of a different kind.  Destruction of my marriage.  But this didn't begin at the time the marriage completed.  It began long before we said our vows.  It began with two young people, who hardly know themselves, much less each other.

The ins and outs of the reasons I wanted to end this were more about our differences than our similarities. I was incredibly young at nineteen when we met.  My father had walked out on my parents twenty-five year marriage. He never told us he was leaving.  The U-Haul truck backing into our tiny driveway told the story.

At sixteen I knew what abandonment felt like.  I knew it at twelve when my father refused to talk to me for three months.  People have their problems and I was just in the middle of them.  Undeveloped emotionally, I hoped I wouldn't repeat their history.

It was 'time to go.'

There have been a few such times in my life when I recalled those six words.  One was when my last child left home for college.  As a parent, you are more excited than you can image to see your children grow.  You gave your child wings.  They are ready to emerge from the cocoon, to fly.  You couldn't be happier for them.  You know this day will never come again. That they are gone for good. Forever.

You hold that moment in a special place in your heart. You are thrilled about their growth; they are everything a parent could hope for.  Kind, motivated, bright.

The other time I uttered the six words was when I left my marriage.  When I summoned the courage to speak the words outloud,  there was no turning back.

My son was twenty three and going to south America with the Peace Corps.  I had moved out of our family home two years before.  He's been gone for a year living his dream.  My daughter has just graduated from college.  She was moving to Boston to get away from the pressure she felt when her father and I ended our twenty-eight year marriage.   I wasn't going to be a place holder anymore.  Waiting for my husband to atttain all his degrees and certificates.  Waiting for my beloved children to take their flights.  It was time to live my own dream.  I was going to live in the Great Smoky Mountains of western North Carolina.

It was the first time in my life when I took a leap.  Alone.