by Janet Huderski

Created on: December 23, 2009

How much Pain?

How much heartache can one live through and still survive?

When our third little girl was born dead, black and bloated, I thought that I knew.

When our next baby daughter came into the world with multiple birth defects, my heart mourned.

When I broke down from the grief, and you put me in a mental hospital, I almost succumbed.

When I came out, somehow alive, and you told me you'd wanted me to die there,

Told me that you'd cheated on me with a neighbor while I was dying there,

In our home, in our bed, with our two daughters there to see.

I thought that my pain was complete. 

When you turned on me, and left me alone, with two little ones to provide for,

I was lost, but I fought to hold on for the girls, to find a way to survive, despite my confusion.

When you and your friends prank-called so many dark nights to try to drive me over the edge,

I thought that there was nothing: no pain, no fear, no heartache that could top this.

When I was diagnosed as manic depressive and schizophrenic,

Needed therapy, needed to be medicated, I almost lost it.

But I didn't, I survived despite the pain. 

You took me before a judge and claimed I was an unfit mother,

And I needed to prove to that judge that I was well enough to care for my two little girls

Whose father demanded that I be institutionalized for life and his daughters be returned to him.

As I watched your angry, hate-filled face, I thought that my heart couldn't hold much more.

But I was wrong again; I would soon discover that some perverse god had decided

That my cup of misery still had much more space to fill.

I won the case. For ten years, I cared for my girls,

I lived on disability and welfare, and food stamps and charity;

I took jobs cleaning house and working in the corner store when I was able,

My father took care of the girls when I was unable until he finally succumbed to a broken heart,

And you waited in the shadows trying to lure them away with the money that I didn't have

Because you paid no child support, claimed you had no job, cried poverty.

You got away with it because your business was off the books.

On paper at least, you were a pauper.

I battled with my illness, with poverty, with you, until the girls were teens.

Then came a day when my daughters told me, you'd informed them that they had a choice to make.

You'd done your homework. They were at a legal age to decide, should they live with me or with their father,

Their father who could give them all of the comforts and gadgets that his money could buy.

You bribed them.  It was so easy. They were dazzled by all that you could offer.

After all, they were children. They decided to live with you. My heart broke.

But the universe wasn't finished with me yet.

Little did I suspect what a spectacular finale it had in store.

Years of medications, neglect and stress related smoking caught up with me

When the doctors found my cancer, it was already too late to beat, but I battled anyway.

For two years, the last two years of a broken life, I fought to live: loving, forgiving,

Stubbornly clinging to an existence that had long since stopped rewarding me,

Believing that there is something to fight for even in a life of misery.

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