Why I Decided To Leave My Ex-Husband + a recording for you to listen

Well - maybe a more appropriate title should be, "One of the MANY reasons I decided to leave my ex-husband" - but you get the point:)

Did I ever tell you one of the reasons I decided to leave my husband was because of a basketball hoop we purchased for my son's Christmas gift?

My six-year-old son wanted to learn how to play basketball. And we had just enough space in our backyard to set up a real basketball hoop so he could safely practice. 

This hoop was not the plastic kind for little kids. This was the heavy, 10-foot, NBA kind.

On Christmas morning, my oldest son opened the big gift. But tears started rolling down his cheeks when he realized it had to be assembled.

I looked at my husband and waited to see if he would grab some tools and get started. Instead of assembling his son's new toy, he made up an excuse to leave the house - something about needing to pick up a laptop at work - got in his car on Christmas day and met his drug dealer.

My teenage brother came to the rescue and put together the basketball hoop in the cold, snowy weather for hours until his hands became numb and the sun went to sleep. 

That's the kind of love my children needed. But it was not the kind of love they had from their parent. 

Their father was sick and kept choosing drugs over his family, but why did I have to choose to live with his decision?