Abuse Hides in the Dark. Turn on Your Light.

Verbal Abuse Journals

Sarah’s Story of Abuse

I hesitated telling anyone because I knew that once I did then it would really be over. Until then I could keep denying it, hiding it, as if there were hope.

Sarah’s Signs of Being Abused

I think I knew all along that what was happening to me was not right. But I’m hard-headed. I kept thinking that someday I was going to do or say the right thing and then everything would be ok. But that day never came.

Sarah’s Signs of Abuse

Betrayed, Sorrow, Broken

Sarah’s Story of Abuse

I hesitated telling anyone because I knew that once I did then it would really be over. Until then I could keep denying it, hiding it, as if there were hope.I endured two 10 year back-to-back relationships with my daughters’ fathers without ever telling anyone anything until after being well removed from the second marriage for almost a year, in the spring of 2009.

I had begun the process of detaching myself from him long before that, writing poems in December of 2007. I hesitated telling anyone because I knew that once I did then it would really be over. Until then I could keep denying it, hiding it, as if there were still hope.

I also felt a tremendous amount of fear and guilt and shame as I’ve since learned many women in abusive relationships do. I could write more, and I have done so on my own blog, but my story is so similar to the others I read. Anyone of you who has been there knows my pain.

I’m nearly three years into the healing process and yet some days I wonder where I am. That dazed fogginess appears out of nowhere. I know it all too well.

Even having moved with my youngest 800 some miles away, I still check the lock on the front door every night. I take note of cars in our lot and people’s faces in and around our building. I don’t think he’d come this far trying to find me, but I never in a million years could have imagined that any human would be capable of what my abusers put me through.

And so even with lots of time and tons of distance, I am still vigilant. Sometimes I feel weary, just so tired of having to keep thinking about it, of having it at the front of my thoughts every night when I wake at 2 or 3 o’clock in the morning. “Did I hear something? Let me check the door, look out the windows, be extra still to see if I hear anything. But he’s 800 miles from here, right? I confirm, oh right. Calm down.”

The conversations with myself. I think that’s my next blog post! Stay tuned.