There are many truths to divorce that people – married people – don’t understand. You see the times where I’m happy with my daughter and I don’t have to worry about a husband. You see the times when my daughter is with her dad and I’m free to do my own thing, a luxury moms rarely have.

You see our lives three years later. Three – almost four – years after the biggest decision of my life completely changed all of our lives. We have a routine now and are settled. We have a well-adjusted and happy daughter. Life keeps moving forward.

It wasn’t always like this.

And even now almost four years later we still hit bumps in the road. I try to avoid these bumps, but you have two separate people, two separate lives and two separate ways of doing things. You are no longer one cohesive unit. That partnership is gone.

Now add in other dynamics – friends and family and significant others – and it can sometimes go to shit. And that’s where I am currently. Sitting in a pile of shit and trying to figure out the next move.

And if it’s not frustrating enough disagreeing with someone I used to love – with someone I made a baby with and who is this most amazing baby, now almost EIGHT years old – then you add in the other assholes who make it even harder.

And it’s not like it used to be. Co-parenting I mean. By the way, who invented this word? It is such an annoyingly overused word.

Now there’s co-parenting and 50/50 custody and no child support and it is a mother fucking joke! And who suffers? The kids do. The kids suffer.

When do you act like the bigger person? When do you say enough is enough and tell someone to fuck off? Again, I don’t know. I’m sitting in my pile of shit trying to figure that out.

I’m praying that God’s next move for me is a checkmate so my daughter won’t be like me – won’t be raised in the throes of divorce and coming of age with anxiety and confusion. Feeling like you are alone outside and peaking in the foggy window at your family. You’re there – but you’re never quite in.

To be a child of divorce and now on the other side raising a child of divorce brings up lots of deep rooted feelings for me: anger, fear, resentment. Three almost four years later I still talk about this a lot in counseling. It’s projecting. Projecting my anger and fear and resentment to protect.

Because that’s something all mothers can understand. Young mothers, old mothers, single mothers, married mothers, mothers of one or of six. That inherent feeling to protect.

Whether they’re 5 or 50. And that’s why no matter how many flies jump in this pile of crap I’m sitting in there are really only two that I care about. Me and my girl (oh, and our cat Daphne). And I will die protecting her. I don’t care about this, that and the other. Giving this girl the best life I can is a win for me. So checkmate.