Year in Review

This very night last year, Brenda and I came to an agreement that 2006 was going to be our year. We were going to make things happen. 2006 was going to be all about Stacey and Brenda finally getting the lives we thought we were entitled to. No more would either one of us have to feel like we were on the outside looking in.

We sat on opposite couches having this conversation while the men in our lives fell asleep watching football on the floor. And when the clock struck midnight, instead of either one of them being awake to kiss us and the New Year into being, all we had were the words between us and a conversation that was more a silent promise of the changes we wanted and in my case needed to make.

I'm not proud of myself when I think about the decision I made in the summer of 2005 to move in with Ed. When I made that decision, I knew I was making a mistake. I knew without a shadow of a doubt that I was going to get myself in over my head, but I jumped in with both feet anyway. I did it because I wanted. I rationalized it by believing that everything about life, my life to be exact, centered around my ability to take a chance.

Summer of 2005 gave way to the fall and then fall to winter. I spent most of it crying, calling Brenda on the phone each night just to get me through. I didn't want to tell my parents just how bad things were, didn't want to admit to it at all, but if my silence was any indication, I know they all knew.

Not even the worst moment of my life could compare to the months that I spent in that house feeling hopeless and alone. And it still haunts me to be confronted by my own weakness, my inability to stand up for myself in a situation I knew wasn't right. Instead I didn't feel as if there were any way out of living with the monster beneath my bed, the monster in the next room, the monster who inhabited the home we shared treating both myself and my daughter as unwelcome visitors, stepping stones to his own gain.

The blessing came in September, as I knew it would of its own accord when the final die was cast and the choice to change my life was taken out of my hands. Regardless of my unfounded fear to venture back out into the world once more on my own, I was moving back into the realm of independence at an alarming speed.

If I have anything to be thankful for, I will always consider the conversation that ended our charade to be the true blessing in disguise.

Through my tears I prayed to God that night. Prayed like I had never prayed before. Spilling out every fear as I knelt on the floor beside my bed, begging desperately for his help and guidance. Please, I remember praying, please help me, please tell me what I'm supposed to do. Please tell me where I'm supposed to go.

I fell asleep feeling hopeless and woke up the next morning to hope.

By the end of the next day, a Tuesday to be exact, my once lost faith in God became restored. I had a new home. A place to belong to. A place to belong to me. A place for KC and I both to feel secure and safe.

And I had friends.

Wonderful friends that came through when I asked for help. Friends like Brenda who helped me begin the process of secretly packing and moving just a little bit at a time.

Friends who loaned me money to put down a deposit on my new place. Friends who simply listened and let me air out my fears while encouraging me to be strong. To all of them, I owe my biggest and heartfelt thanks.

Though they could have, they didn't bother to tell me that I'd made a mistake. They didn't tell me that I should have known better. They didn't say how could I have let things happen the way they did or how they had. They simply held out their hands and asked me how they could help.

I could tell you that the last few weeks of sharing that house passed by quickly and easily, but by now I know you would know that not to be anything but the truth.

The truth was those weeks didn't get any easier knowing as I did that I finally had my out. Sadness, hopelessness and fear continued to haunt my steps, following me down the hall, following me to work every morning, and clinging to me when I tried to sleep each night. But in my head I was counting down. Only this many more days before this will be over forever...

I remember the last night I spent in that house, breathlessly waiting for him to leave, waiting for midnight to roll 'round like the magic hour Cinderella knew it to be. I waited like a prisoner hours before her parole, my stomach a bundle of knots, my daughter sleeping by my side behind a door we kept locked.

And I know he knew it too. Trying to hide it as I did, little things I could move without alerting him to the actual day of my departure, my things began to disappear left and right, leaving it only a simple matter of fact of when rather than where my time would come to its end.

He was loathe however to let us go without some fight. I was talking on my cellphone to Glenn, a man I'd met through work, trying to give my voice a sense of lightness and ease when the drilling started. Instantly I knew that whatever that sound was, it was one that didn't bode well for me. I told Glenn I would have to call him back, and then I waited, glad KC was already asleep and could not hear the whining of the drum.

After he'd gone to bed, I crawled out of mine, creeping slowly and silently down the hall, not that I thought he might hear me over the deafening volume of his TV which he slept with on each and every night.

The double door entry in the living room was locked as usual, nothing unusual there. But the next door, the one that led outside, proved the validity of my concerns. On that door was a newly installed dead bolt. One that I realized upon further inspection required the use of a key on either side of the door to gain entry in or access to the outside. I felt my heart drop into my chest, closed the door I was still allowed to close and took myself quickly back to bed where I once again waited for the sound of his alarm, and confirmation from his car lights fading in the distance that he was truly gone before bracing myself for more.

More was the padlock affixed to the door of our garage. The door that I would need to be able to open just to get the bulk of my things outside and into the U-Haul I had made arrangements to rent. Ed however was mistaken by thinking locks of any sort would keep me from leaving. Bolt cutters and the ability to unscrew screws had both doors swinging open mere hours after he had gone. Had I not been so freaked out by his behavior, I might have laughed but it was still too soon to find anything about his behavior anything other than over the top psychotic and scary.

I left that very morning while KC was at school with both my father, stepmother and older sister Amy by my side to lend a hand and help me out and then when it was deemed necessary two officers of the local law enforcement team as well. It was the first time in my entire life I've ever had to call 911 and be thankful for their swift response.

I didn't get out cleanly. I wanted no drama at all. I wanted the clean and swift break I didn't get. And I wanted all my things. But there were things that did get left behind. Small things, and big things. Things made impossible for me to get as I'd no room left in my truck and no intention of returning for them once I'd gone. Things that I now consider payment of any debt anyone thinks I should owe. Though truth be told, neither my washer nor dryer was worth having to see him or any of his family ever again. The whole lot of them certifiable and incapable of knowing what normal is.

But he can never pay me back for his behavior. He will never own the words that hurt me and made me doubt myself. He will never be able to apologize enough for the lies he told, and the promises he made early on and did not keep. And for this, I feel sorry.

Sorry that I stayed as long as I did. Sorry that I didn't believe in myself enough to know that neither KC or I deserved to live like that for one minute let alone just a few days shy of a year. Sorry that I have to live with this story for the rest of my life and call it part of my own, part of my past.

But what I've learned is now what I must share. If simply retelling all of this here can help to reach and pull someone else out from the darkness that has become their life, I will consider it a good start, but by no means an end...

2006 was not the year that all my wishes came true. I did not live happily ever after. I did not ride off into the sunset. Instead I rode off into a new dawn, a new day, into a life returned to me.

Most importantly I came home to God. And there is a story of how I came to be at the church that I now attend, but that story is only one half of the whole. It only tells of how I found of a church to go to, it has never told the true reason for why I'm there. Until now...