Reflection

At the end of yoga practice you meditate. 10 minutes of peaceful reflection.
I cry every time.

No matter how good my week has gone or what I've accomplished my mind wanders to him. It is like a shadow you don't notice until you are alone, until you are vulnerable.  When it doesn't matter how reasonable or rational or tough you are. It is the shadow that always manages to get inside your head and terrify you.

Today my mind wandered, I thought about how my husband felt the day I left. What happened the moments after the door to my condo shut. What happened to him as Kay and my mother loaded me into the Pontiac. Did he cry? Did he get up and clean the broken glass from the floor. Wash the spit and blood from the 800 thread count cotton sheets. Did he have a cigarette and absorb what has unfolded.

My head ran through a thousand different scenarios each one of them amplified my silent tears as I lay there on my mat. Each taking me back to last Tuesday.

Last week I spoke to him on the telephone, for the first time since Christmas. If you read the post from that morning you are already aware that it was not a conversation I would chose to have again.

When I hung up after 43 minutes and 28 seconds I was alternating between sobs and gasps, by chest hurt my head pounded. It was 4am and I couldn't call anyone, my texts went unanswered as I sat alone grasping at the teddy bear he had gotten me for my 17th birthday.

I was scared, the first time in five months I remembered what it was like to not have anything to hide myself in, no one to talk to. Suddenly, I was back in the world I lived for six years, alone.

I feel for him, I really do. He has lost more than I have. He has lost someone who took care of him, who loved him despite flaws, who tried to fix him, tried to help him. I understand what it feels like to be alone, I was there- a lot.

As the clock hit 5am I wished I could just slide my rings back on and go back to how it was, so all the hurt I was feeling would end. I can't, those rings should have never been on at all.

At 6am I wrote that post, I was hurting.

It took me a couple days of fighting to get back to where I am, it took some hard truths from my best friends and some good ol' fashioned hugs but I am back. I am back on my way to my new life. I know I will have lots of moments where I am flat on my back quietly crying during meditation-

I will be okay.

Crazy Love+ Breaking the Silence.

When people know you have been through something they try to understand, they absorb information and share it with you, hoping it will help. In the time since I have shared my story I have received emails, texts and had laptops and tablets with content about domestic violence shoved in my face. I haven't really appreciated it until Best Friend P shared something with me yesterday.

This is Leslie Morgan Steiner. During her Ted Talk on domestic violence.

I will let you watch the video, but this is the most comprehensive and deeply truthful view of the domestic violence I have seen. A story that mirrored mine in ways that I have been thinking about over that last 24 hours. I have repeated this Ted Talk over and over again, studying her words, hearing my own thoughts echoing. It plays on the background of my laptop as I write you this letter.

I have bought Crazy Love and as I flip through the pages I am sure I will share what I find in those words.  On that note, Leslie brings up something in the closing remarks of her video. Abuse affects anyone, everyone, there are likely people within our circles who are battling this fight silently, Leslie states "abuse thrives only in science." this sentiment is wholly and completely true.

It was not until the words "he hits me" left my lips that I was able to leave, without sharing that with my friends, my mother only days before the last attack I am certain I would have soon after November 25th been applying another layer of cover up to new bruises, likely over top the ones that had yet to heal.

Telling them is what saved my life.

This sentiment also struck me for another reason, 1/3 American women or men have or are dealing with violence in a relationship. Somewhere in my circle of friends, someone is going through this hell.

Thus far I have been quiet silent about my ordeal, about what I went through. Select friends know, I write this blog under a pseudonym.

My own silence, even after surviving. My Voice and my story could be helping someone. Someone I love.

So my promise to myself, I will talk about it. I am not weak for experiencing it, I am strong for surviving it. I will share what I went through, with my family, my friends and this blog. Maybe one day someone will use what people like Leslie and myself went through to rewrite the next chapter in their lives and stop their domestic violence story.