People enter your life for a reason, a season, or a lifetime. At the time you never know why, and its only at the end that you are able to reflect on the impact they have had.
The Boy has gone. I would like to say long gone, however he is not. Yet. He is still in the shadows, working away at spreading pain and derision my way. Nothing has changed – not even my reactions to his bile. Although my skin is tougher now and I grow stronger each time he shows his true nature, he still hurts. The Boy is the only person that causes my blood to boil, I see red, feel like I am nothing, I don’t belong and, worse still, completely helpless.
The settlement has taken nine long months. Culminating in him finally admitting that he has screwed me, telling me to “grow some balls at the negotiating table”. Funnily enough it didn’t hurt me as much as I thought it would. I’m relieved. It’s an old saying, but karma will be a bitch. I hope.
I do however long for my home. It’s spring and the smell of the ocean, the leaves on the trees rustling and the hope that is in the air still lingers in memories of my home lost. My animals, my dreams and my sense of who I was in the world. All lost. For good reason. I hated who I was. I didn’t fit in, I was living a lie, telling lies and my soul was dying.
I look back and remember how each day was started with an argument, or a look of disdain – worse – nothing at all. No acknowledgement or simple act of kindness or love. Regardless if I had been a good girl or nothing at all.
Mostly I was the girl crying in the bathroom, trying to keep the tears at bay, scared of being told off by The Boy. Which happened a number of times. My silence was required, if I showed my emotions or hid away to weep, he would barge in, throwing open the door and scream at me. No comfort or emotion. Just rage.
So I took to having showers frequently – that way he couldn’t hear my tears. I would weep, rage and bang my head on the wall to stop the pain, grow some balls and change my life.
Yet. Still I stayed.
Until I couldn’t take it anymore. I was done. Done. DONE.
So I annihilated my life as I keep knew it. Blew it up.
I knew when I was begging for a last chance that I didn’t want it. Couldn’t and shouldn’t have it. I had already had another man. The complete no- no. Yet I wanted to still win, have the last say, leave on my terms, at my time and in my way.
Of course I couldn’t do that. I had to leave as the victim, scared that I couldn’t manage my own life, make my own decisions and look after myself. Be the child that I had been up until then.
Now I had done it. Forced my way into adulthood, forced myself to look after myself.
I was scared, but liberated and free! Free!
I did it, I made adult decisions, committed to a high end apartment, without an income. Set myself up with furniture and household goods, made a home and started living as an adult.
Now, nearly nine months later I look back, and recognise what a train wreck of a year it has been. How strong I have become, how good and bad decisions don’t matter – it’s the actual choices that you make and the act of making them. Rather than sitting and waiting to be told what to do, how to feel and when to feel it.
2013 has had a lot of pain, growth, strength and commitment already. Out of this dark, torrid year a lot of light and movement has occurred. I just need to now focus on the positive, releasing my need to control, to live up to other people’s standards. I need to work out my own.
And all through this I need to keep the darkness at bay and the let the light shine through.
With light there is love.