I thought I was hiding it well.
The silence.
The sleepless nights.
The way my smile cracked at the edges but never reached my eyes.
I told myself I was enduring for them.
That if I just held on a little longer, my children would grow old enough to understand.
But what I didn't realise was… they already did.
One evening, my daughter sat down beside me in the living room.
Thirteen years old.
Still a child, but with eyes that carried a weight far older than her age.
She looked straight at me and said:
"Mom, just get a divorce.
I know how much you're hurting.
You don't have to keep pretending anymore."
My heart clenched.
I had spent years trying to protect her from my pain.
But instead, I had taught her something cruel, that women must swallow injustice in silence.
A few days later, my son spoke too.
Six years old. Sweet. Innocent. Always smiling.
He leaned against me and whispered,
"Mom… I just want it to be you, me, and my sister.
We don't need that other dad anymore."
I was almost broken.
Tears rose, but I swallowed them back.
They understood.
More than any adult ever could.
A year of separation followed.
I had hoped the distance would wake him up.
It didn't.
I raised the kids alone.
Faced the wounds alone.
Worked by day. Cried at night.
And the more I tried to stand tall, the more I realised: If I stayed, I would die slowly.
On the day of the trial, he came in jeans and a white T-shirt as if signing a business contract, not ending a family.
He looked at us, me and the children, with something that felt like relief.
"He's free now," I thought.
Free to be with her.
Free to stop sneaking, deleting, and hiding.
That house?
It was no longer his.
It was mine.
Ours.
Divorce wasn't the day I lost everything.
It was the day I finally let go of a burden that was never mine to carry.