Since the winter of 2015 when our lives cracked wide open, the memories have come at me hard in February and March. I tell myself it’s okay to remember. I also tell myself it’s okay to forget, though it doesn’t seem like I’ll be forgetting anytime soon.

That year my youngest was in preschool, and every day I made the loop past farms and fields, cattle and horses, to the little church preschool where he spent his days learning how to write his letters, follow instructions, and be a kind friend. And every day in the car I examined the puzzle pieces of my life and tried to fit them together. And every day, the puzzle went unfinished; the pieces no longer fit.

I can’t say what ultimately morphed the pieces so they couldn’t be forced back together again, but I think it was probably the realization that I was allowing my kids to suffer, and that our home had become a place they wanted to escape. Maybe I realized that although I could withstand their father’s temper and mood swings and survive, that was asking far too much of them. You don’t have to sacrifice your children on the altar of your marriage. It took me a terribly long time to see that, probably because I thought that in ending my marriage I’d be sacrificing them in a different way. That was the essence of the conundrum that I turned over and over in my head during every drive to preschool and back.  All I wanted was what was best, but neither continuing my marriage nor a divorce seemed like best.

Ultimately I chose divorce, and it was best; I see that now, but at the time it only felt like failure and pain and destruction. I knew our separation would unleash something unpredictable and frightening, and that fear held me back too. I had withstood twenty-five years of everyday storms, but I had no idea whether I could survive the tsunami of his rage that would surely follow my final NO. Indeed I am thankful I didn’t know how scary it would be, how unhinged my husband would become, how my kids would start to sleep with knives and bats beneath their beds.

One of the gifts this experience gave me is the realization that sometimes there is no best; there are only shitty choices because the world is an imperfect place. It is both beautiful and terrifying, and at times, perhaps, the choices available to us reflect both those truths. At the crossroads you may simply be trying to weigh which kind of beauty and terror seems like the kind you can live with.

That may sound depressing or even hopeless, but to me it sounds like freedom. Without the tyranny of “the best,” we are free to choose what feels like life. When Gandalf and Frodo and the fellowship of the ring were in the mines of Moria, Gandalf lost his way. He and Frodo sat down while Gandalf mulled over the dilemma, but ultimately he didn’t figure it out; he simply caught a whiff of fresh air. In February of 2015 I caught my own whiff of fresh air when I finally told myself the truth about my limitations. I stopped trying to force the puzzle pieces together, and I simply let them fall.