Author Adelaide Green

Life it alters. Who has warned you about this? When? Who and when? I can’t recall anyone telling me this until it was too late and my life altered. In that moment there was the shift, I could pinpoint it. And there it was. Looking back I felt it altering for months. Our relationship had changed. It first came into my life like a lightning bolt. A flash, so bright that when it set my life on fire I never thought it would extinguish. But all fire must be distinguished right? So how could I not know things would change and alter? How? It changed me. Not in all the good amazing ways. But in the bad dark ways. Ways people don’t want to talk about because it’s a uncomfortable. His words always pressing down on my chest. I no longer felt free. And the facade of it being my choice was no longer there. That’s how domestic abuse is. It’s in the darkness of the home, the quiet, it lies low where most others can’t see it. How can you see it if you don’t know it’s there? He left me for someone else. At first my life alterining felt like my heart was disintegrate. He had said no one else would ever want me or love me, and now I was alone. Forever I thought. I’d like to interject and say I went to therapy, no shame there. She altered my life, my perspective. I was able to breath again, the deep breathing, the kind where you appreciate the oxygen entering your lungs. You let it linger, let out a low breath as you let go of the weight of the world.

My biggest life altering shift came when I held ten tiny toes in my own hands. My son. This altering people had told me about for months. I didn’t understand. I was afraid. But how beautiful it was, his first breaths. My own breath I had held for five years, hoping to not make my partner angry. And here he came in breathing and screaming. Screaming and breathing. So beautiful, those breaths. So free.

The second time, ten more tiny toes. More screams than the first. Wanting to outdue his brother. My life altering again. Me, my husband, one son, now two. My heart grew and it grew in a way I never knew it would or could. Altering in such a magnificent again.

Then the call my father was sick. Cancer. No curing it. No remedy. 90 days to live. My heart crumbled. The bad kind of altering found me again. He made it nearly two years. Luck it may seem or maybe a curse. In the end he couldnt eat, he couldnt drink, clothes hung off his body, words hung on his lips but never made any sense. He passed the day before my first sons third birthday. Now every day I will remember a death, one that took a piece of my heart while celebrating a life that made my heart burst. What a balance. A life altering experience. So many in such a short time. good ones, bad ones. Always altering. Always.