10,000 Texts

There are approximately 10,000 texts.

Ten thousand messages that can be taken out of context, placed in a folder, printed on paper, counted, highlighted and presented as evidence of my instability.

For a long time, I was ashamed of them.

I wondered how I could have written so much.

How I could have been so angry.

How I could have kept trying to explain myself.

How I could have sent another message after being ignored.

How I could have said things that, when read without the history behind them, sounded difficult, emotional or even unreasonable.

But I don't see them the same way anymore.

I am not ashamed of them.

Because those messages don't just carry evidence of my worst moments.

They carry evidence of how hard I tried.

They carry evidence of how much I loved my husband.

How desperately I wanted my family to survive.

How hard I fought to understand.

How hard I fought to be understood.

And, perhaps most importantly, they show how creative a woman can become when she has something important to say and nowhere safe to say it.

I became incredibly creative in that space

When conversation wasn't working, I wrote.

When I couldn't finish a conversation, I wrote.

When I couldn't make myself understood, I tried another way.

Then another.

And another.

I found different words.

Different approaches.

Different ways of explaining.

Different ways of asking.

Different ways of trying to reach the person I loved.

Sometimes I was gentle.

Sometimes I was angry.

Sometimes I was heartbroken.

Sometimes I was completely exhausted.

Sometimes I probably sounded nothing like the woman I wanted to be.

But underneath all of it was the same desire:

Please see what has happened to us.

Please see what has happened to our marriage.

Please see what has happened to our family.

Please understand what this has done to me.

Please understand what this has done to the people we love.

They are a record of a woman who kept trying

He carries those messages.

He has them.

He can show them.

He can point to them and say, "Look at what she wrote."

And he can.

But I can look at them too.

And when I look at them now, I don't only see an unstable woman.

I see a woman who was trying.

I see a woman who didn't know how to make someone listen.

I see a woman who was desperately trying to save something she believed was worth saving.

I see a woman who kept searching for another way to communicate.

I see a woman who loved her husband and her family so deeply that she kept trying long after she was exhausted.

I see a woman who had not yet understood that she could not make another person take responsibility.

And I see a woman who eventually had nothing left to say.

Some of the messages were difficult

I won't romanticise all of them.

Some were angry.

Some were painful.

Some were confronting.

Some were written when I was completely overwhelmed.

Some were probably words I would express differently today.

But I don't need to erase those parts of myself to prove that I am worthy of compassion.

I was experiencing something.

I was trying to process something.

I was trying to communicate something.

And the messages captured those moments.

They captured the reality that I wasn't okay.

But they also captured something else:

I was still trying to find a way forward.

And then one day, the messages stopped.

Not because I suddenly stopped caring.

Not because everything was resolved.

Not because I had forgotten.

The messages stopped because I had finally exhausted everything I needed to say.

I had said it.

Over and over.

In every possible way I knew how.

I had explained.

I had pleaded.

I had questioned.

I had challenged.

I had expressed love.

I had expressed anger.

I had expressed grief.

I had expressed disappointment.

I had expressed the impact on our family.

Eventually, there was nothing left to communicate.

And that silence became something different.

It wasn't defeat.

It was release.

I didn't need the messages anymore.

The weapon lost its power

The irony is that something that was once used to make me feel ashamed has become part of the story of how I survived.

Those messages can be used to say:

"Look how unstable she was."

But I can look at the same collection and say:

"Look how hard she tried."

"Look how much she loved."

"Look how much she endured."

"Look at how desperately she wanted her family to heal."

"Look at how many different ways she tried to communicate."

And perhaps most importantly:

Look at how she eventually stopped.

Because there comes a point where you realise that you have said everything you can possibly say.

You cannot explain yourself into being understood.

You cannot love somebody into taking responsibility.

You cannot write enough words to make another person see what they refuse to see.

And you cannot save a relationship by yourself.

I am still standing

That is the part nobody can take away from me.

After all those words, all those tears, all those attempts, all that heartbreak...

I am still here.

I am still standing.

I am still a mother.

I am still a counsellor.

I am still building.

I am still helping other people.

I am still learning.

I am still loving.

I am still becoming.

And now I am taking everything I learned from that experience and passing it on to other people who are sitting in the same place I once sat.

Because perhaps the greatest purpose of our pain is not that we suffered it.

Perhaps it is what we choose to do with what we learned from it.

And here is the irony.

For a long time, I thought I had to win my husband back.

I thought winning meant saving the marriage.

I thought winning meant being believed.

I thought winning meant finally making him understand.

I thought winning meant proving that I was worthy of being loved.

I was wrong.

Because despite everything I have lost...

I did, in fact, win.

Not because I got everything I wanted.

Not because the story ended the way I imagined it would.

Not because the past disappeared.

I won because I found myself.

I won because I found my voice.

I won because I learned that my pain didn't make me weak.

I won because I learned that loving someone does not require abandoning myself.

I won because I learned that forgiveness does not mean accepting continued harm.

I won because I learned that silence is not always peace.

I won because I learned that boundaries are not cruelty.

I won because I learned that I cannot control another person's choices, but I can choose what happens next in my own life.

And I won because the woman who once needed 10,000 messages to try to be heard...

doesn't need to send another one.

She has finally heard herself.

And now she is using her voice for something different.

Not to convince him.

Not to chase him.

Not to make him understand.

But to help the next woman understand that she is not alone.

That there is life after the endless explaining.

There is life after the unanswered messages.

There is life after the person you loved refuses to hear you.

And sometimes, after everything you thought you were fighting to save has been lost...

you discover that you were the thing worth saving all along.