Not the kind where you are texting, calling, begging, or chasing.
Not the kind where you are trying to fix things from a distance.
No.
This is the kind of waiting where you do nothing –
because you already know there is nothing you can do.
Let me say this clearly, because even in places where I should feel safe, I still find myself misunderstood:
I am not chasing my children.
I am not forcing them to talk to me.
I am not sending message after message trying to be accepted again.
I sent two replies.
Two.
Both because my daughter reached out first.
That’s it.
Everything else?
Silence.
And inside that silence, I am:
Crying.
Praying.
Talking to the only place that will listen -- even if that place is inside this room.
Writing, because if I don’t write, I will break.
This is not desperation.
This is endurance.
Because what else is there to do when your own children decide that you no longer exist in their emotional world?
When your son looks at you -- not as a mother, not as someone who carried him, raised him, loved him --
but as someone who has been “dead to him for seven years”?
Seven years.
As if everything in between never counted.
As if all the years after 2018 were just… nothing.
What does a mother do with that?
Where do you place a sentence like that so it doesn’t destroy you?
And then there is the other part.
The quieter, more calculated part.
The part that doesn’t shout, but erases you just the same.
An ex who does not ask when you are sick.
Not once.
Not when you mention a biopsy.
Not when you say you are seeing a doctor.
Not when you go through a procedure that costs thousands of dollars and leaves you physically and emotionally drained.
Nothing.
Not even:
“Are you okay?”
Not even:
“Take care.”
Not even the smallest kindness that any decent human being would give to another.
And I know him.
I know the way he moves.
I know how he can stay quiet and still influence everything.
I cannot prove it.
That is the most frustrating part.
But I feel it.
Like a presence that doesn’t need to be seen to be real.
Like a predator that doesn’t attack loudly -- but waits, watches, and shapes things from the shadows.
And my children are there.
With him.
Seeing his version.
Hearing his silence.
Living in a space where I am no longer present to be understood.
And me?
I am here.
In another country.
In another life that I never planned to be this lonely.
Holding the line.
Holding love that has nowhere to land.
Holding pain that no one inside that house can see.
Holding the truth that I know -- but cannot hand to them, cannot prove, cannot defend without looking like I am trying to turn them against their own father.
So I stay quiet.
Not because I have nothing to say.
But because I have too much to say -- and no one there willing to hear it.
And sometimes… I get tired.
Tired of waiting for a moment that may never come.
Tired of hoping that one day someone -- anyone -- will stand beside my children and say:
“That is your mother.
Do not treat her like this.”
But there is no one.
No voice correcting them.
No voice balancing the story.
Only silence.
And even in my faith… there are moments when I feel like I am speaking into nothing.
Like even God has turned His face away.
Like I am standing in a place where love, prayer, patience -- all of it -- is just being absorbed into emptiness.
And still…
I do not chase.
I do not force.
I do not beg.
I wait.
Not because I am weak.
But because I know that anything forced will not be real.
So I remain here.
A mother without a place to stand in her children’s lives.
A voice that is not heard in the room where her name is being shaped.
A heart that continues to love… even when there is no return.
And maybe one day, that will matter.
Or maybe it won’t.
But this is where I am.
Not chasing.
Not forcing.
Not disappearing.
Just... waiting.
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