How My Life Felt Nine Months Ago

Leaving the darkness behind to live in the light

Photo by Jackson David on Unsplash

Here is something I wrote in my journal nine months ago. It is amazing to see how much I have changed and grown since then. So much has happened and I have become much stronger. I am grateful for the darkness I have gone through so I can know the beauty of the light.

The weight of her disappointment sat on her shoulders like a flak jacket, holding her down and making her walk with a heavy weariness. There had been so many disappointments. The abusive people in her life were running wild. She could not stop them from hurting her children. The people who were supposed to help her, that she paid to help her did not call or email back to her requests for help. She was very close to taking matters into her own hands and causing an irreversible mess.

She could have run and disappeared. She had been asked if she wanted a new name, a new identity so she and her children would no longer exist in the eyes of the law and would be untraceable by her abusive husband. She didn’t think she could keep the children from giving her position up. She wouldn’t be able to control them until the last was 18. She also didn’t think her husband would hurt her or her children.

How wrong she had been. He was destroying her relationship with them. Her oldest daughter had almost committed suicide and now hated her. Looking at her life from the outside was a contrast between good and evil. She had lost her family and some of her children but she was free.

She saw her life now as what it was and what it would have been if she had gone into hiding. It would have been to trade one kind of stress for another. She knew he would have found her and she would have lost her children to his insanity. He may have killed her. She saw the rage in his eyes when he spoke to her. She saw the hatred in his words when he emailed her.

She was almost wrung out like a dishcloth after a sink full of dishes. She would be put out on the line to dry and the sun would fade her and eat away at her fibers. The holes would appear after a few more washings and then she would be cast aside on the rubbish heap. Useless.