My Rainbow After the Storm
My pregnancy with my beautiful rainbow was terrifying and lonely. Though I had desperately wanted more children for many years, she was a surprise. I say surprise because surprises may be unexpected and sometimes even scary, but they are good. You walk into a dark room and your loved ones jump out with smiling faces screaming "SURPRISE!" and even though it startled you enough to make you jump back and gasp for air you end up smiling and laughing with joy. Surprise, not mistake. Mistakes are not only unexpected, they are unwanted, they are things you wish didn't happen. My little rainbow is no mistake, and no matter what I do I cannot convince myself to forgive the fact that she was called that.
I had already weathered the storm for six long years when I found out I was expecting my rainbow. Behind the smiles and jokes I was living inside an F5 tornado that was ripping me apart. I had given up all of my hobbies because I was made to believe that I had no talent. I avoided many social gatherings because I assumed if I was so unwanted in my own home there was no possible way that I'd be wanted anywhere. I put up with terrifying and random explosions of anger and I put up with heartbreaking affairs and the gaslighting used to try and cover it up. I felt that it was all my fault. If I was a better person he wouldn't treat me like this. I made excuses for it. If he hadn't have had such a rough and abusive childhood he wouldn't do this. I felt extreme empathy, not anger, never anger. I still do.
The worst part though, is that I let my beloved first-born daughter get caught up in the storm, and harmed by it. I thought I was a mama bear who would kill to protect my cub, yet I failed her during the storm. I told myself, and her, over and over again that it wasn't so bad. She actually identified the storm and sought refuge from it before I. She was much smarter than I was. My biggest failing as a mother was ignoring the signs that she was being harmed as well. I found it too easy to focus on the few good times and make excuses for the storm while believing I deserved it.
And no, the storm wasn't constant. The storm often would settle a bit. A few times the storm actually looked like a gentle summer thunderstorm. Until I was expecting my little rainbow, then the storm raged full force.
My baby daughter was wanted tremendously by her big sister and I, but only by us. I remember when I told her that I was pregnant, my sweet girl erupted into tears and hugged me tighter than I had ever been hugged before, then she spent the rest of the day holding my hand and hugging on me. For the remainder of my pregnancy she was there for me, as she has been since. She'd talk to her sibling through my belly and loved to feel her kick. She tried to help me when I was nauseous or thirsty or tired.
The storm raged on. The storm reacted to any help I requested or any time I mentioned nausea or aches with a cold "you're the one who wanted a baby". The storm never once felt for the baby to kick, in fact he stopped touching me completely as though he was utterly disgusted by the fact that I was growing our child within my body. I grew very depressed, but kept telling myself that the storm would end if I was patient. I was wrong. I had completely misjudged the strength of the storm.
The storm was only present for two nights after I brought that rainbow home. Just a few weeks later, after not coming home, the storm announced that he was not returning, but would still cause as much destruction as possible and spend many months changing his mind and lying about his intentions. The day he first announced he was leaving was when he uttered the word "mistake" about my rainbow. I literally hit the floor gasping in pain. The most wonderful thing in the world to me was called a mistake by someone who was supposed to love her. Not a surprise, not even an accident, a mistake. Mistake. Not only unintended, but unwanted. The word makes me sick now. My little rainbow is no mistake. She came to me after I had weathered more than enough of the storm.
To be honest, the storm has still not ended. The storm continues in the distance mostly. The storm threatened to harm my rainbow at one point, and my older daughter as well. And my oldest daughter has begged mento never let the storm back into our lives. I believe it was a threat meant only to frighten me, but it certainly worked. We seek shelter and stay very aware of the storm now.
It is such a conflicted feeling, to know that I stayed in a terrible storm that I could have ran from long ago and also knowing that if I had not stayed I would have never gotten the miraculous rainbow that is my baby daughter. It rips my heart up in my chest and torments my mind to know that I cannot regret thinking that I deserved to get battered in the storm for years without somehow regretting that rainbow that came at the end.
If I had identified that the storm wasn't going to end and I had run from it could I have had seven years of happiness rather than torment and heartbreak? Could I have had seven years of fulfilling my own dreams instead of tossing them to the side? Could I have saved my older daughter, who was only four when the storm started, from being emotionally abused and harmed for a large portion of her childhood? I could have. But then my rainbow wouldn't exist. What a terrible conflict of the mind and heart.
That beautiful little baby means everything to her big sister and I. It has been a difficult struggle through the aftermath of the storm, but looking at that rainbow makes it all worth it somehow. My biggest fear is letting a storm of any type, the one we've already lived through or another, harm that rainbow or dull her bright colors in any way. It has been almost half a year since my rainbow started shining bright through the storm. I'm still repairing the storm damage, but that rainbow helps give me hope. Isn't that what rainbows are supposed to do anyways? Rainbows offer hope.
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