I had gotten away from my abuser. I had. But there was so much residual, messy interaction still covering my life, like a film of grease that won’t let the pan come clean so that you make a healthy meal in it.
Scrub, scrub, scrub…wipe a finger across the surface…sigh…
I couldn’t get away clean. We had a son together. A beautiful little giggling creature…that, God help me, I never fully enjoyed. Because I was always looking over my shoulder. Always lowering myself to ask for some sort of financial help. Help that never came. I was always frustrated. I was always angry at myself. I was always angry at him.
I loved my child. More than anything I had ever known or experienced. He was the most incredible, amazing entity that energy had ever clustered together to create. And he was mine. He was mine to care for and love and raise. And at that time I felt like I was failing. The love I felt for him was in direct proportion to how little I liked myself. It was immeasurable. But I was trying. In every second, I was trying to better.
But when he died…
When I was holding his tiny, cold, blue body in my arms…praying with every cell in my body, trying to warm him up and erase what was happening…refusing to accept he was gone…
When he died, my resolve, my fight, my understanding of how the world works all shattered into a zillion pieces and there was no way to put them back in any order. My shattering was utterly complete.
But, you see, all these shattered, splintered pieces still resided inside a shell of a body. And so no one could see how broken I truly was. People can understand grief. They expect it. But they also expect healing and wisdom and moving on. Insanity isn’t on the radar. And so it is wildly overlooked and rationalized. So I was alone in it. I was lost inside myself, not understanding anything and not knowing how to express that. I was alone.
I’ve never known desperation they way I experienced it at that time. I can’t even tell you exactly what I was desperate for. It was so many things. But one of them was a need for someone, anyone, to feel a sliver of what I was feeling…and to understand how badly I needed help.
It was in this that I went back to my baby’s father. He was the only one who was grieving the loss of our son. In that I mean he was the only one who had lost a son that was specifically my son. People all around me were grieving. But it was not their child. It was his. And when he broke down in front of me, I saw my own pain. And I reached out and held it in my arms the way I wanted so desperately for someone to reach out to me. And for a tiny blip it was a comfort. A real feeling of relief…
But it did not last. Because he hadn’t become a better person. And his pain was not the same as my pain. Not at all. And I got hurt again worse than anytime before.
It was a very long time before I was able to forgive myself for going back to him and to put down the heavy shame I was carrying about it.
This is why I have so much patience for other people who don’t know how to get out of their situations in all the varying degrees of severity. Sometimes it’s obvious why it would be so difficult, but sometimes it is not. And people who see it from the outside tend to get so frustrated and fed up, feeling the answer to the problem is so simple. But it is not. And the reasons victims go back isn’t simple either. It’s been nearly 13 years since my relationship ended for good and I still have revelations about everything. I’m still healing. And that’s okay. I have forgiven myself for much because I can finally understand so much. It took a while. It’s not about weakness or stupidity. It’s not, “you must like it then” or any of the other cruel things people can say.
It’s simply misunderstood. And it’s because of that that I told my story, full disclosure. It’s why I speak about it still and it’s why I have so much patience for those in the midst of their abuse and for those who watch on and can’t understand.
If anything is going to get better there has to be a bridge of understanding between these two entities. And if I can be a part of that, I will do it. I will do everyday.
If I can be for anyone, what I never had, then I know one day soon I will make peace with all that I went through. The tiniest bit of patience and understanding can save a life, can make a difference. And in the end that’s everything.
dededos
prguitarman
origamiaround
discoholicmusic
janainaart
kaledo-art
blakekathryn
jacobvanloon
ellievsbear
