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 Story
Betrayed, Sorrow, Broken
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.