This is life now. This is my reality, this is what it is. In many ways it is different, in many ways it is the same and in even more ways it has gotten so much better. I'm figuring out the new role, I'm getting comfortable in this new skin. But there are still the moments. The moments that pierce through the defenses I have built. Memories that I can't keep out in the haunting shadows of the lonely nights. Frustration with no one to dump them on, except for the undeserving soldiers who have stood by me through it all. Questions that even God won't answer when I want to demand it. Sometimes it feels like too much, the negativity, the arguing, splitting up a life, trying to show the worst in a person who you were supposed to love through everything. This is it, this is really happening. The moment became real when I sat in a lawyers office and spelled out the names of each of my children and their ages: 5, 3 and 3 mos. The heartbreak that came from saying that out loud was insurmountable and I felt a near panic level as the walls seemed to close in. I had spent so many years shielding them from him and these fights and now rattling it off like it was nothing became more that I could handle and I got out of that office as quickly as I could. The rain smashing the windshield only matched the tears that poured out me. I cried the entire drive home and when I stepped in the house I saw my girls, playing and smiling and happy as could be, for they were where they were supposed to be and they were happy and I realized we are tough and even if life gets tough we have each other and that's what matters. We will survive this, life may be tough but us girls are tougher.