What It’s Like Not Having Your Children Everyday

They’re a timeshare in divorce.

It’s Tuesday night. This is the day that my daughter comes home with her homework folder for us parents to empty and sign any forms. This is the night that kicks the week into high gear, scrambling with leftover laundry and figuring out school lunches for the rest of the week.

But not for me.

Tonight, I’m alone in my new house.

And I miss them. God, do I miss them.

It’s like being in an alternate universe where you can’t just walk to another room and see your kids like you used to. Or, realistically, have them barge in like they always do.

Like they always did. Before the divorce.

Before the pandemic and before separating, I was almost a full-time single mom. My soon-to-be ex-husband worked far away. I was the one who did all the work for them and was present for everything, despite also having a full-time job. Sometimes he made it just in time for bedtime, which I loathed because I had a system to get them to sleep consistently; his random arrivals amped them up and disrupted the structure which took days to fix.

When Joseph raged against me about the divorce, I made peace that I wouldn’t see my kids every day. There were no late nights of staying away from them at work; I got the guilt trip if I slept in on weekends because it took me away from them. I was the one who was there for a decade when it mattered most.

It’s been three weeks since I moved out. In the grand scheme, I’ve seen them almost every day because my house wasn’t in any condition to have the kids over, especially on school nights when I was still unpacking.

Moving with children is much harder when you only have half of everything. Little things make an impact, like realizing you didn’t get the can opener in the divorce.

Thank you, Amazon. You’ve been my lifesaver every time I realize that I need something that I lost in the divorce. Like my OXO can opener which they don’t make anymore.

I picked them up from school and spent evenings with them. Sometimes I took them out to dinner then dropped them off at home, other times I took them straight home (I should say, their dad’s home) and made dinner for them there since I still have a good chunk of my stuff there. I haven’t fully moved out.

I don’t know if I’ll ever be fully moved out since he has 60% more real estate than I do now. He’ll have to hold onto holiday decorations and beach chairs until I can afford a bigger place.

We agreed to start our official custody schedule this month. It’s a series of rotating days, including one night of us doing a Family Dinner every Wednesday.

This new house has kept me busy. I gutted the kitchen and my bathroom (thank you Amazon Fresh for your delivery of bottled water when I realized my main source of water was my bathtub faucet). The living room needed construction to handle a television larger than 13" because this isn’t the eighties anymore. I’ve tackled everything from building new closets to unpacking to even mopping my garage floor in hope of turning it into a usable space.

However, tonight feels different.

This is the first night where it hit me why it all feels so weird. It’s not the new house or the weirdness of it all. It’s that my kids aren’t with me and I feel like I’m missing a limb.

Before the divorce, I spent most of my evenings after the kids went to sleep in my bedroom. It was also my office during the pandemic. I never felt like my house was mine because Joseph moped downstairs in front of the TV. Like a teenager, my bedroom was my only escape.

Here I am, in my new home, where I spend 99% of my time: in my bedroom.

I keep looking at the door, waiting for one of my kids to barge in.

Some people hate being alone. I love it. I’m an introvert and growing up in a family with constant fighting, being by myself always felt safe and comfortable. Being single feels like a reward, not a punishment after a bad marriage.

But with kids it’s different. While I very much enjoy nights out with my mom friends or wandering alone in Target’s aisles, they’re a part of me. They’re always there whenever I got back. They didn’t ruffle my introvert feathers or take up my personal space.

My heart is aching. My God, my heart is aching right now.

In my head, I imagined my non-custodial evenings would be spent reading, baking, or cleaning. It would be my time to catch up on work.

Instead, I sit here feeling…bored. I have plenty to do. I’m not motivated to do it. Trying to shake this feeling, I took a three-hour depressed nap earlier today.

There’s not a lot of fun I can do when the entire first floor of my house is covered in tarps and construction mayhem. I should stream Netflix on an old iPad while organizing my hastily-unpacked drawers. I also need to work out (with my son not here and construction everywhere, his room for the next two days is a workout space).

I don’t have a sense of urgency anymore.

Before, everything is a time crunch when you have your children. Once they’re asleep, there’s a small window to clean their mess, do the laundry, run out to buy groceries, work out, catch up on work, reply to messages, and do other random things that fill up time.

I have no time crunch. I’ll be up all night courtesy of my long, sad nap earlier today.

Right now, my life is in flux. Most of the house is gutted, the only overhead lighting I have is a crappy $10 floor lamp, and I spent a solid hour scouring boxes to find tampons. In the absence of a kitchen sink to wash food preparation tools, I’ve survived on cereal served in paper bowls and a Costco-sized bag of cookies.

In other words, things are pretty grim. This won’t be the norm.

But not having my kids every night, that is the new norm. I want to crawl in next to them and hear their little snores. I want to sneak kisses on their cheeks since they’ve reached an age where I can’t smother them with kisses anymore without an “eww, gross” shove.

I know I’ll get used to it and it will get better.

I just don’t want to get used to this. It doesn’t feel right to ever be used to not having your young children around. I don’t ever want to be okay with this even though I know the pain will dull and eventually it will become a sad part of life that I accept.

The worst part? I chose this.

This was a choice I made, one that hurts everyone, in my attempt to not feel like I’m dying every day.