The ugly reason of my absence

I just couldn’t write.

Not because I was busy.

I have been busy before.

Not because life was hard.

Life has been hard before too.

This was different.

I was carrying something I didn’t know how to admit.

Even to myself.

And these things rarely stay contained.

They leak.

Mine leaked into motherhood.

I think what hurts most is that my children got caught in a grief that wasn’t theirs.

They didn’t know it.

How could they?

All they knew was that mumma got irritated faster.

That sometimes I answered without listening.

That some days, the distance entered the room before I did.

They didn’t know that while they were asking me to look at their drawing for the third time, I was trying not to cry over something that had nothing to do with them.

They didn’t know that while they were pulling my hand toward another game, another story, another conversation, a part of me was sitting somewhere else entirely.

Waiting.

Hurting.

Wanting.

And that is the part I can’t stop thinking about.

Because this wasn’t supposed to be the summer.

I had waited for these vacations.

I had imagined memories before they even began.

Late mornings.

Laughter.

Inside jokes.

The kind of ordinary moments that become precious years later.

Instead, I spent so much of it trying not to fall apart.

The work pressure kept growing.

The house help disappeared.

The house became louder.

But if I’m honest, those weren’t the hardest parts.

The hardest part was realizing how much I still needed people.

God, even writing that makes me uncomfortable.

I don’t like needing people.

I especially don’t like discovering I need people after I’ve spent years believing I’ve outgrown it.

Somewhere along the way, without realizing it, I had built little emotional homes inside certain relationships.

Not because anyone promised me anything.

Not because anyone lied.

Just because they had always been there.

Until they weren’t there in quite the same way anymore.

And life being life, nothing dramatic happened.

No betrayal.

No fight.

No ending.

Just a slow realization that the people I reached for automatically were now reaching toward different things.

Different priorities.

Different lives.

Different paths.

And I wish I could tell you I accepted that gracefully.

I didn’t.

I kept waiting.

Not openly.

Not consciously.

Just in all the small humiliating ways people wait.

Checking my phone and pretending I wasn’t.

Seeing their name pop up somewhere and feeling my heart jump before I could stop it.

Feeling disappointed by things I had never actually asked for.

Replaying conversations.

Writing explanations for them in my head.

They’re busy.

They have their own lives.

They still care.

And then quietly hurting anyway.

What shocked me wasn’t the hurt.

It was the need.

How much of me was still leaning.

How much I still wanted someone to notice.

Someone to ask.

Someone to see through the brave face and say,

“You don’t seem okay.”

And if I’m being completely honest, there was resentment too.

Not proud, mature grief.

Resentment.

The kind you immediately judge yourself for having.

Resentment that everyone seemed free to move toward their lives while I was drowning inside mine.

Resentment that I was carrying so much and nobody could see it.

Resentment that I needed people this much at all.

And while all of this was happening, my children were home.

Wanting me.

Constantly.

“Mumma, look.”

“Mumma, come.”

“Mumma, watch this.”

“Mumma.”

“Mumma.”

“Mumma.”

And some days, if I’m brutally honest, every time I heard my name, I felt torn in two.

One part of me wanted to turn toward them.

The other part wanted everyone to stop needing me.

Just for an hour.

Just long enough to put myself back together.

I hate admitting that.

Because these are the same children I love more than my own life.

And suddenly I saw it.

The thing I had been unwilling to see all summer.

I was so busy feeling unseen that I had stopped seeing fully.

Not all the time.

But enough.

Enough that my kids noticed.

Enough that they had to ask for my presence.

Enough that it hurts to write this now.

Today is the last day of their vacation.

And I keep moving between regret and relief.

Regret for the moments I missed while I was emotionally somewhere else.

Relief that tomorrow there will be structure again.

Space again.

A little breathing room.

And that relief comes wrapped in guilt.

Because I waited for these vacations.

And now I am waiting for them to end.

Maybe that’s what this season exposed.

Not my attachment.

I already knew I could love deeply.

It exposed how quickly unmet needs consume attention.

How grief narrows vision.

How a hurting heart can become so occupied with what it isn’t receiving that it loses sight of what is standing right in front of it.

My children spent this summer beside a version of me that was grieving.

A version that was waiting for something she couldn’t receive.

And today, that truth sits heavier than the grief itself that my children paid the price for it.