As I begin to tell the story of this part of my life I can feel a naught in the very pit of my being. It is the most difficult part of my journey to share so freely. I am not sure I can even begin to find the words that will explain the horror, and the demoralizing destruction that tore me in two. By sharing I know it will lead me into a better understanding of myself and how far I have come.
There is such a evident truth to the law of attraction. We can only attract that in which we are, we can be that in which we see, and we can only heal if we acknowledge the raw and gabbing wounds that dwell within us. I lived with many voids, and the voice in my head continued to haunt me deeply everyday. I tortured myself with the words my mother had spoken to me as a child. I would never be good enough and I was not worthy of the love that I received. Instead of facing those demons and working through chasing them from the deep corners of my mind, I continued to run.
I was slowly murdering my spirit by feeling the void that it left as it wilted deeper into the safety of my soul. Cramming things from the outside world in the places that my spirit should have been. Through all the chaos I could not hear that deep inner voice pleading with me to come alive, to let be, and to let go. So I did what I had always done, I filled the void with a man.
We often hear the phrase, "from the wrong side of the tracks." That is where I would be drawn too. A place where I felt beautiful and loved, because it was something new and because it was a way to run. The lies that I fed myself became a spark that somehow made me feel alive. This unauthentic power would not last, but the runner in me left no opportunity for pause.
I would leave the husband I should have left anyway, by demoralizing myself with a man who would only add to the ever growing list of shame that I carried with me. I would move into a life within his world, a place I would normally never be caught dead with my children. A place that was vaguely familiar, almost as if I had been there before.
We struggled in poverty both financially and mentally, it became a cycle of survival. And at first I felt comfortable there, almost as if that was easier than trying to live up to the expectations of the world outside. I experienced adventure I had never known as I threw caution to the wind, probably a little to much caution. For the first time I opened up and let my guard down, and it certainly made me feel alive. The child soldier I had become put her weapon down, and took a break from the war she had wagged with the world. This truce, a small glimpse into the middle of my soul, would be very short lived. It would not be the outside world that I would be at war with yet again, this would be a new war right inside the walls of my home.
I can not recall when it was that I had begun to fall into a fog that was thicker than anything I had ever lived in before. My daughter's grades were dropping, and there had become some sort of stale stench in our lives. I would like to say it was an association with that part of my life, but I assure you it really was a smell. It was dwelling in the house somehow, creeping in the darkest places and behind the walls threatening to suffocate us at any moment. Once my son's aunt commented on it radiating from my son's skin when she picked him up for a visit. I had not fallen short of my cleaning duties, being a clean freak was another disorder I developed to be in absolute control of my life. It was almost like a mist or a vapor that began slowly stealing the breath of our life.
I can not remember the first time he struck me or how he struck me. I am almost certain it was a slap, because in the years ahead he proved to be to smart to use a closed fist. A punch ran the risk of leaving a mark, and the kind of life we lived you lived in the dark.
(More to come....)
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