Heavy Hearted

That's my eldest, Suad, in the blue. She just graduated from
the English School Fahaheel.

It never seems to fail. Since leaving Kuwait, whenever February rolls around, I end up going into a deep depression that takes monumental efforts for me to crawl back out of. I expend huge amounts of energy trying not to drag those around me into the mire.  I think I do a fair to middling job of it.

Why February? Well, it's no mystery to me. My firstborn's birthday is February 2. I haven't had any contact with her (other than a few short Facebook messages) or any of my other children that are in Kuwait in three years. Birthdays are always hard, usually for a few days before, on, and the next day or two after  as I'm inundated with memories of my various pregnancies, their births, and all the wonderful milestones of their infancies, toddler- and childhoods. 

Sure, the choice to leave Kuwait (and my children, by extension) was all mine and I would leave again. But I don't know that I would do it without at least trying to get them out with me. In my heart, having thought about it over and over again, I believed that leaving them with their father was the best thing I could have done for them. Afterall, he makes a tremendous amount of money and they would not ever want for anything in that sense. And honestly, I wasn't a great mom right around the time before I made the choice to leave. Attempting suicide wasn't my brightest hour. There's nothing I can do to change it.

As I sit here, feeling the crushing weight of this sorrow on my chest, all I can pray is that eventually they will find the compassion and understanding to forgive my choice and that they will seek me out when that time comes. In the meantime, I really wish February would end.