It is a story of how the divorced couple, Michelle and Anntonia, navigate life as ex-wives co-parenting their daughter, Daniela Harper Porsild-Dee.
DISCLAIMER: I do NOT own any of the characters in this story. This is pure fiction.
Last night, I got up the courage to ask you if you regretted us. "There are things I miss," you said. "But if I didn't have you, I'd miss more."
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Anntonia sat down beside her, both of them thinking of the things they wanted to say after an exhausting day of arguing and not talking to each other. Michelle thought that after Anntonia had interacted with her in front of Heather, even giving her a kiss on the lips, that it would be the start of them being okay.
"What do you want us to talk about?" her voice was calm.
Honesty is all she wanted, no matter how hard it is for them to address things they are uncomfortable with, it is important that they talk about them now or they will fall back into the same patterns.
"About us. About what happened in the last couple of days and the past."
The past. Somehow, that made Anntonia feel a little scared. Michelle reached out to hold her hand, clasping it with hers.
"Honey," Michelle mumbled, waiting for Anntonia to meet her gaze. Her body couldn't stand it anymore, she hasn't had the chance to hold her for two days now except for the quick lip lock that she gave her in front of Heather at the hospital, so she reached for her hand, resting it on her thigh.
"I don't want us to make this argument longer, we're both adults and I don't want Dani to notice that we're not okay."
Michelle swallowed, nodding her head. "I know, me too."
"I know I am being such a hypocrite for having doubts about you and Heather when it was me who first looked for someone else. I'm sorry for leaving you, I knew it was so selfish of me to do that when I opted to escape than to stay and fight all the demons that I was having with myself." She started with a brittle voice, as she's about to cry.
"I was in a very dark place and there you are, being your understanding self, and for some time, I wanted you to stop it. Stop doing that, stop being you. It's terrible that I wanted you to feel what I was feeling inside, I was so angry at the world and to myself and I made the mistake of thinking that you weren't that affected when we lost him. I couldn't find a word or a label on how to describe what I was feeling back then, a term that I can use to explain what I have. Until that word became the reckless person's name." Anntonia took a deep breath to steady herself, feeling Michelle's grip tighten on her hand.
A couple of tears escaped her eyes. "The emptiness seeped in and it slowly consumed me. I made myself believe that there's something lacking in my life and that you didn't deserve that monster that I was becoming. But please believe me when I say that leaving you, walking away from you, was the hardest and the most ruthless thing I've ever done. There's this voice in my head that keeps on telling me I was only making it worse by staying with you."
"And during the years that we were not together, I believed that voice would go away, but it persisted, and I couldn't stop wondering why I couldn't get over it. I was alright for a few months, but then things started to go south once more, and I couldn't stop asking myself, "What do you want from me?" I have nothing left; you have already taken everything. But no matter how hard I tried to push it to the back of my mind, it was still there and did not go away."
