And then it was just the two of us. The Limitless Family now isn’t about a family of three, but a family of two. A single mom and her daughter. I’ve been thinking a lot about how to write about what happened here on my blog. It was clear that I wanted to write about it, but I wasn’t sure from which angle. Obviously the first months the wound was still too fresh and my words would have been peppered with anger and emotions. Although I do want to be entirely open and show that those feelings have also been real, I wanted to express my overall feeling in my words. Because what I truly feel is hope, relief and happiness. Freedom, in a healthy way.
What happened is a bad thing and it hurts my stomach every time I think of the harm that has been done to the life of my daughter, but I know that from now on the way I raise her is completely up to me. I have all the freedom to instill the norms and values I think are important and to educate her according to what I consider the best way.
Life lessons
I hope my story may inspire other parents that go through a similar situation. Don’t ever forget your own value, even when someone leaves you as if you never meant anything, remember that you still mean the world to a very important little person. Your child. You can’t control what happened. But all the power on how you handle the situation lies in your hands. The moment the damage has been done, it is up to you to show your child how to handle the bad moments in life. Focus on the big lesson you and your child may learn from this and it’ll become a contribution to your personal growth and development. In other words, it is possible to become a better person even despite hardship.
With that said, let’s get back to our story. A little summary for everyone who has not followed us before. Luis and I met in France, moved to Mexico, got pregnant and then moved back to the Netherlands. We got faced with visa difficulties, had to move to Belgium in order to be able to stay together for the birth of our daughter. One of the last blogs I wrote about this subject, was about the relief we felt for finally living in the Netherlands and having everything we wanted. Click here to read it. The last step of our ‘visa journey’ and the life as a family from different continents, was obtaining the Dutch nationality. And we were actually very close. The only thing still missing, was Luis passing his Dutch integration exams. Another one of the requisites is being together without separation for at least 3 years. The moment I am writing this, February 2020, was the exact moment we were able to apply for Dutch citizenship. Was, because he left.
What happened?
On Thursday the 21st of November, only three days after my birthday, I found out he had cheated on me. As a reaction to me finding out about his betrayal, he panicked and booked a flight back to Mexico. A flight that would leave only 3 days later. In the days that followed I tried to remind him of what he was putting on the line if he would set foot on that plane. He would lose everything. His visa, his marriage and most important: his child. I asked him to reconsider, to cancel that flight and, if he was entirely sure of what he was about to do, book a flight for a later date.
I set aside all my personal feelings and focused on the consequences it would have on my daughter. Not because I don’t respect myself, not because I was able to forgive him for what he has done. But this was bigger than just me. So during three days, I tried to remind him of what he was doing to his daughter. I did all that I could to try to make him stay. Once again, not to save my marriage and our family of three. Only to try to save his visa and status in the Netherlands. The one thing that would decide if he is able to stay in my daughter’s life, living close to here, or not.
He left anyway
He didn’t care. His decision to leave was a consious one, leaving everything he had behind. And while he boarded the plane with destination Cancun, I pulled the plug. The plug of our marriage and our family.
The further he flew away from Sophia and I, the further he flew away of any possibility of still forming a part of our limitless family. Leaving just the two of us behind.
How do I feel about all this?
You see, my vision about limits doesn’t only consist of external factors. It’s also about what’s going on on the inside. And in this case, someone who takes such careless decisions with huge consequences, doesn’t belong anywhere near the vision I have for my daughter.
A person that can take such a horrible decision and thinks of nothing else but himself, a person that doesn’t waste much time in feeling sorry about what he did, is not worth it to feel bad about. I know both me and Sophia deserve a million times better than that.
Luis was a limit to our unstoppability. If it weren’t for him, we would have gone to many more places. He was an anchor in our life, one that kept us stuck in being miserable and not taking any actions in making every single a day that’s worth it. Luis kept our world small.
From that day forward it is just Sophia and me. And it is so much better than ever. I see Sophia changing every day. She is learning so many different things.
We can finally be really limitless. Just her and me. The two of us are together. And that’s all that matters.
