Abuse Hides in the Dark. Turn on Your Light.

Today Is Better Than Dreadful Thanks to Intuition

Sometimes, dreadful things happen to mostly-good people; and sometimes, pleasant things happen to mostly-rotten people. Always, the situation changes and sometimes it changes for the worst. However, if you’re connecting to helpful people then tomorrow changes for the better. Your intuition turns the key to knowing who will help and who will hurt.

My intuition fell silent for many of the years I spent in my abusive marriage. I felt the one who would hurt was actually the only one who would help. My feelings were backward and twisted up in his abusive nonsense. I didn’t trust today. I didn’t trust tomorrow. And I certainly did not trust myself.

Around 1999, my intuition made a comeback, but I didn’t completely trust its voice. The intuitive dreams of my children dying and finding myself imprisoned and awaiting death scared me, but I mistook the dreams’ meanings because I could not accept that my marriage would lead to the figurative death of my family.

I remembered how to use my intuition when designing my support system both when I left my ex-abuser and while forming my latest one too. Intuition is key.

My intuition silenced, I needed someone else to protect me. My then-husband said he would always protect me – loudly and coldly – although I didn’t deserve his services. I came to believe I was as useless to the world as he proclaimed. I told myself to trust him because of all people he knew me the best. Of all people, he knew what was best for me.

I told myself that letting go of the marriage (of him) would be certain death for me. I am now positive that those dreams of death and imprisonment were my intuition’s protest to these untrue thoughts. Unfortunately, I believed the dreams exposed my inadequacies instead of my relationship’s problems.

That was years ago, but my ex-husband’s words haunted me over the past months. Through a series of events, I found myself homeless and broke. Was it because I am incapable of surviving on my own as he said? The thought “At least when I was with Will I didn’t have to worry about the roof over my head” passed through my mind. I remember thinking it on a day or two when the roof over my head was the covered porch of an abandoned house or the tent my son gave to me.

The thought spiraled me back into the time when my intuition fell silent to my ex-husband’s words. I vowed to never hide my voice again, so I reminded myself that his words were never true. Not one bit. He lied to me to keep me. I broke free of his control, and it was imperative that I break free of his legacy.

Intuition And Support Networks

I thought of how I created a support network of family and strangers that enabled me to break free of him years ago. Readers of my blog, domestic violence group members, non-profit organizations and government services made up the strangers. The strangers supported me with understanding, advice, and shoves toward services my pride hadn’t allowed me to accept.

During the Homeless Chapter, family and strangers supported me again. This time, different people comprised my support network. My family group lost a couple of people, but I gained a loving fiancé. A new friend of ours gives us rides almost every time we ask and helped us gather cooking pots, silverware, clothes, and many other necessities. An old friend of mine rounded up a mattress set, television, and multiple pieces of furniture, and other goodies. A couple of the Verbal Abuse Journals mentors helped me financially to keep the website going. I met many helpful strangers who pointed me in the right direction. Unlike last time, I didn’t turn to my readers for several reasons:

  • The Internet is not as available as usual when you’re homeless and broke.
  • Homelessness turns on the survival instinct, and the energy used to power survival leaves little left for other pursuits.
  • I didn’t want to speak of it because I didn’t want you to think I wanted your money.
  • I felt ashamed to be homeless.

Several organizations offered support, but as it was when I left my ex-husband, the helping organizations couldn’t have helped me if I didn’t tell them I needed help. It took weeks to sort through the wrong ones before finding the right ones. Once again, the right organizations for me led me to helpful people. Some of those people gave me amazing blessings.

Fortunately, today is a better day thanks to the helpful people I found while following my intuition. I know, beyond a doubt, that I am capable of surviving without a car, without a home, without a job, and without a shower. The intuition I used to build the support network I needed to leave my ex-husband proved its flexibility to get me off the street and into an apartment. Into a job.

I survived. I exercised my intuition to exorcise a ghostly voice from the past and to find helpful people. Intuition pointed me in the direction I needed to go and now, here I am living in a much more comfortable tomorrow.