She loved him. She loved everything about him. He was like a drug that kept calling her back. Looking into his eyes was like falling backwards into an endless ocean.
He took her breath away and filled her with fear at the same time. He was fire and ice, a flood and a drought… A thunderstorm on a sunny day.
He looked at her with such admiration and awe. She knew loving him would be like being caught in a rip tide.
His genuine love seemed unquestionable, but she knew… She knew she wouldn’t have to fight another woman for his heart. She would never lose him to anything but himself.
She knew she had no chance at winning that war. At times she got glimpses in his eyes of the demons he wrestled; In unexpected flashes she’d witness the hell he fought so silently.
No amount of love would pull him from those depths. No positive words could drown out the incessant abuse playing like a broken record in his head no one but him could hear.
All of these things pierced her heart like an arrow every single time. But still, she loved him for all he was, in spite of everything he could become.
Bliss ended quietly and suddenly. One day she looked into those deep ocean eyes… And saw nothing.
He was gone. He had left her without a word and yet he stood there in front of her.
The cut was so precise, so sharp, she didn’t realize the ribbons caught on the wind were fine slices of her still beating heart.
She beat on walls of granite to no avail. He had become a tomb. A cruel shell of the man she loved so desperately.
On her knees, through her tears, she watched him walk out of her life forever.
There really is no putting into words the sensation that washes over me…
Even now, attempting to select descriptive terms from my limited human vocabulary seems moot: fully formed feelings slip away like water in my hands.
The only suitable representation is…a river. The sensation is fluid, elusive, yet tangible. Though, reflecting on it now I feel as confident in it as I might be in the existence of water, but doubt in my conviction creeps in.
It’s so foreign and yet so familiar. A part of me is mortified by the very idea and a deeper part feels it’s as common as walking.
It’s like waking up, when in reality, you’ve only just fallen asleep. The sound rushes in your ears like wind through a car’s windows going 80mph.
Your head swims, your body feels light: your consciousness shifts to the center of your forehead. And then… Nothing.
Then like floating to the surface of a black lake, you hold your breath until finally exploding through the thin surface, gaping for air.
From there, it could be anything, anywhere at any time. Time is figurative here, as all logic and matter observes it as irrelevant.
It can be now and five years ago within the blink of an eye. This is how it works here. If time ran in parallel lines forever, then you are the vertical line cutting through. You may stop and start where or when you like.
In the waking, your movement is determined by will and choices. In this fluid state, movement may bring you to a new time line, location or situation.
In this realm, I fluidly observe rather than interact. The feel of these two forms of existence are different, but exist seamlessly on top of, inside and around one another
They were a beautiful natural disaster, like a tale older than time itself.
He was explosive, like the fires of hell trapped in the setting sun. Every part of him was radiant, lovely and dangerous. You could feel the heat for miles away.
He sent tremors through her soul, but she couldn’t look away. She was slowly turning to ash in the glory of his destruction.
She was implosive, like a cosmic black hole. She drew him in and swallowed the brightest light in his soul. Her silent implosion drained the color from his face and brought him to his knees at her feet.
She was beauty, she was darkness and she filleted his soul with skillful precision.
Like all imbalanced perfections, they were magnetic and toxic; addicted and repulsed.
Each one’s lips held the kiss of death for the other…
When someone tells you “I don’t need you… But I want you.” Never take it as an insult. Never feel like they’re suggesting a lower importance of your role in their life.
We need oxygen, we need food and water, we need sleep and calm. To need is a primal instinct for basic survival; an automatic, involuntary action, like a beating heart.
But to want something… That is a conscious choice. To wake up early to watch the sunrise because you want to witness its beauty. To look into a person’s eyes and attempt to see who they are because you want to know them better.
Wanting is a daily, conscious decision. If they wake up every morning and smile at you, it’s not because they need to…
It’s because they want to.
Your existence in their life does not keep them alive…
I am standing in the universal ether. Stars, universes and galaxies shine brilliantly like crystal sands stretching for eternity. You have chosen to leave. You turn your face from me & you’re gone. I cannot feel you. I cannot see you. Your withdrawal stings deeper than death. I have lost a half of my soul I never knew existed. I grope into the vast beyond and find nothing. Nothing but the void that you filled when you reappeared a life time ago. The void that had entangled me, consumed me & emptied me of all hope. Before you, I was floating, untethered from the cosmos. When you called my name, I stumbled forward numbly, faltering, unsure of my own existence. You took my hand. You lifted my eyes to yours and I cried out in blissful agony. I had begged the One who always has been to show mercy: and here you were. The light of life, existence and meaning burned from your eyes into mine, wrenching & peeling the darkness from my soul.
You are not the sunshine pouring through the trees. You are the window pane on a rainy day keeping me dry through the storm. You are not the color in my eyes. You are the prism through which the light shines so I may perceive its beauty. You are not life, death or the power that brings them; You are the flesh & bone embodiment of their power incarnate. You are not my everything. But with you standing beside me, I am empowered to be all things.
Now I fall to my knees. My breath fails me; sobbing, wailing, scraping and begging the One to make you stay. I am undone. I lay prostrate as galaxies dim and stars fade… Still gasping. My soul screams a languishing, mournful cry in a language my earthly tongue can never know. Outside of time, on the other side of the veil, I kneel alone.
“Not like this… just… Please, not like this.”
I now have the answers to the questions that fear planted in me.
My family were in ministry and adopted me whilst living in a parsonage next to the church my dad preached at. We lived there for the first 2 years of my life and I clearly have memories from that home. Once my siblings convinced me our cat was in the closet under the stairs, and after crawling inside, as a joke they shut the door behind me. In the darkness, I remember thinking I saw him (the cat) but the eyes were glowing yellow and I remember screaming in terror. My mom came got me and I just remember being inconsolable. I was maybe 1 1/2 at this time.
Context: This house was built maybe in the 50’s out in the middle of the country on a rock foundation. It sits next to an old country church that serves the local farming community. The ministers families move in and out as they come and go. Nothing nefarious (that I’m aware of) has ever happened inside the house, it’s just old and a bit remote. It has 3 bedrooms on the first floor an 2 on the 2nd with a few attic storage closets off each room and the upstairs hall.
Fast forward 5 years & the new family living in the parsonage were friends of ours. Their kids were the same ages as my siblings and I. Our brothers would dare my friend and I to sit in the attic storage space as long as we could because “something was in there” & they would say how the doors would open at night and things would be moved. It always creeped us all out, but I chalked it up to brothers being jerks as the memories from being a toddler hadn’t resurfaced yet.
Fast forward 4 years and my dad gets rehired to preach at the church, so we move back into that same house. I turn 11 in that house and my brother and I have the two rooms upstairs. The attic storage door in my bedroom would randomly open in the night, even with the latch slid shut. The floors would creak and my brother and I hated walking past the attic storage in the upstairs hall as we always felt like something was going to reach out and grab you.
I asked my dad about it and he gave all the usual “drafty old house” or “settling floors” answers and shoo-shoo’d me away. Around 12, I started having intense, hyper-reaistic dreams about events or people. I would tell my dad about them and weeks or months later, those things would happen. After we both realized the correlation, he encouraged me to start writing them down. Around 13, my brother left home for college and I was upstairs alone (as the only child) and the dreams & feelings of fear intensified.
The relationship with my mom was not good at this time, as she had some mental health issues, so I kept most of the events to myself, save for the biggest ones that i told my dad about. Until one night, I had a hyper realistic dream that led to me not sleeping at night for 2 weeks straight.
In the dream I was staying the night at my friend’s house when I woke up to see a creature sitting on her floor watching me. It’s skin was gaunt and stone gray, stretched over its bones like it was emaciated. It turned its head from side to side like a dog would, but skin was stretched over its eye sockets and it’s mouth was just a slit. It sat on the ground with its spindly knees pulled up and it’s hands resting on the knees like a gargoyle. When it saw me wake up, it fluttered its tattered, bony wings and hopped (kinda like the flying monkeys on the Wizard of Oz) out of the room. I woke up in terror and as I said, didn’t sleep at night for 2 weeks. My dad suggested I pray for protection every night before bed, and being a devout baptized believer in Jesus, I did. But the upstairs felt even more foreboding than before; like I was always being watched.
A month later, I woke up inside the same dream. Same friends room, same creature, same hyper-realistic feeling. Except this time, I calmly got out of my friends bed in the dream and followed the creature out the door. I remember everything was a dull gray color & nothing in the house had color to it. Just dark contrast. I followed this hopping creature down the hall to my friends brothers room, where he lie sleeping. When I turned into the doorway, I saw a dozen of them all over his room. Sitting on his chest, on his bed, around the floor… I tried to enter the room, but I couldn’t, I was stuck in the doorway. When they noticed me, they fluttered their tattered wings and flinched.
I yelled for them to leave him alone and to get out: “in the name of Jesus Christ!! Leave. This. House!!” They all fluttered and stretched their wings like I had thrown a rock into a flock of buzzards. With one raspy chorus of voices in unison they said “you may have the blood… but he doesn’t.” And as I looked down at my night shirt, it was covered in the brightest crimson blood I have ever seen. It was the only thing with color in the whole dream, and it almost glowed against all the gray. As I looked up, I saw them grab him under his arms and flew up through the corner of his room. With that, I woke up.
When I told my dad about it, after the shock wore off a bit, he sat eyes wide and silent. He suggested I tell the boy about my dream, even though he couldn’t explain why I kept having them. He still believes to this day that I witnessed and was protected from real demons.
The dream in itself is its own story, but I really believe it’s connected to whatever was in that house. We finally moved when I was 14 and I never had a dream of that nature, but still have plenty of odd, prophetic ones to this day.
Fast forward to a couple years ago when I was 32 and my mom and I had repaired our relationship. We were talking about my strange premonitions as a kid and I brought up the attic doors in that house. She legit went white and asked me what I meant. I explained that I had to keep furniture in front of all the doors because they would come open, even when latched. She told me that when they first moved into that house before they adopted me, the doors upstairs did the same thing and it scared her so bad, she made my dad nail them all closed. But when the next family moved in, they had pulled all of the nails out.
Appearantly my dad never told her I was having the same issues while we lived there because he didn’t want to scare her. This all may seem crazy, but its just what happened and honestly, I wouldn’t wish those dreams on my worse enemy.
“It was beautiful while it lasted…” She thought to herself. “But not like a sunrise, or flowers on your shelf.”
The beauty was chaos with times of calm in between.
A kind of destructive beauty, that rarely is seen.
Like a storm that rolls in on a hot summers night, it thunders and thrashes with all of its might. It uproots solid trees where they stood through the years. It flashes, crashes and rains violent tears.
It yells at the house with deep gusts of wind. It shakes and shutters whatever’s within.
This beautiful chaos that destroys solid homes, keeps howling and thrashing and breaking its bones.
But then, all at once, as if slamming a door. The storm front is gone; the chaos no more.
You step from your safety and survey your loss. The wreck left behind from rampaging chaos.
Deep rooted cedars lie tossed to the side, long loved traditions left gasping to die.
Tear drops fall down in the deafening silence. You numbly observe your life in the past tense.
But through all the sorrow, confusion and anger, you consider what’s gained now you’re past all the danger.
You lived through the tempest and witnessed its glory. You still have a voice so you may share your story.
Chaos holds beauty, wonder and awe. It forces a reckoning between nature and God.
And as she stands alone gasping for breath.
“It was beautiful, while it lasted” she says to herself.
I’m reflecting on the monumental shift my kids and I just experienced & are still trying to find our footing from.
In trying to wrap my head around it, I’ve been searching for words, terms…language in which might communicate the breadth of it all.
Closest thing I’ve come to is…we fled a house fire.
(Except it wasn’t a house fire, not exactly)
So, in saying this what I mean is more like… A slow moving fire that threatened the safety of myself, kids and proverbial “home”
I saw smoke miles away, but when verbalizing my concern, was called crazy. “You keep yelling ‘fire’ when no one else can see flames. You’re probably some sick arsonist looking for attention“
And yet things slowly started crumbling around me. The fire had spread deep into the foundation, it was smoldering in the walls. Faint wisps of smoke could be smelt. But I was told there was no fire so often, by so many people, I doubted what I saw and went on like I was the crazy one.
And then, one day, the fire erupted “without warning.”
What do you grab? (Your kids lives are the most important, obviously.) But if you could take only what fit in a pickup truck before you hightailed it to safety…really, what do you choose?
Once you make the heart wrenching decision of ” do I pack the kids memorabilia, or those items I’ve had since childhood” then the question is, where do you go?
{{Keep in mind, everyone’s confused as to why you’re fleeing a house fire that they don’t think ever ignited. Remember? You’re the crazy one who kept yelling wolf then all of the sudden came running out of the woods with no wolf in pursuit.}}
What do you do for money? All you have is enough to survive for 2 weeks. You can’t run to a shelter & claim sanctuary over an “imagined house fire.” Half your family thinks you burnt you’re own house down out of spite. You can’t get a job that allows two babies on your hip 24/7 & can’t afford child care.
There are walls everywhere you turn.
You’re still smoldering from barely escaping the flames that would have taken your very life.
But you can’t yell “FOR GOD’S SAKE SOMEONE HELP US!! WE JUST FLED A HOUSE FIRE!!”
A lot of people talk about seeing signs of abuse, recognizing signs of abuse and ways to report abuse.
But not a lot of people talk about what it feels like to love an abuser.
We as a society have a hard time identifying abusers at times, because Hollywood has made it seem so cut and dry…
Jack Nicholson – “The Shining”
This guy? Yeah, definitely crazy and dangerous. No one particularly enjoyed Shelly Duvalls’ crying scene, but no one blamed her for being scared 🤷
Delores Umbridge – Harry Potter
Delores Umbridge: at first glance you may think “Ok, wears pink, loves kittens, kinda reminds me of my great auntie.”
Nay, nay my friend. Umbridge was an especially cruel force that haunts my dreams to this very day 😬
In real life, most abusers or “villains” are a little more complex. Take this guy for example:
Bowler Hat Guy / Goob – Meet the Robinson’s
Come to find out, Bowler Hat Guy was originally a kid lacking guidance, who was later manipulated & used by an evil bowler hat named “Doris” (it’s a great movie, don’t let that description put you off it)
This was one of the most relatable cartoon villains I’ve seen in a while. You can sympathize with him. You can see where things went off track & his life went askew. You could even dare to love him.
Generally speaking, one doesn’t simply walk into a relationship/friendship with an abuser like “Whoopsie doo, didn’t mean to end up here…”
It’s a process of learning what they’ve been through, seeing them mourn the abuse they may have been subjected to or handle mental illness in all the wrong ways but still LOVING them through it all.
In my personal experience, these are some ways loving my abuser felt or looked like:
It feels like cowering behind your bedroom door with them pounding and yelling while you cry. And then just an hour later, holding them while they shake, cry and apologize. Knowing that they sincerely wish it hadn’t happened just as much as you do.
Sometimes it feels like the most important person in the world to you thinks the least of you and you’re not sure why. Knowing if you work a little harder to make her happy, surely she’ll love you the way you love her.
It feels like loving the worst in someone knowing that as much as it hurts you, it hurts them even worse.
Other times it’s seeing the best in someone, knowing the best exists in that person, but them only being able to access that version of themselves at such odd times that it’s a rarity. You feel vindicated knowing that that version exists, but all the rest of the time they’re something scary to themselves, to others and to you.
Basically, sometimes being abused is just loving someone for everything they could be… If their pain didn’t control so many aspects of their behavior.
I’m writing this from my own subjective experiences & I recognize not everyone has the same experiences. But some may be able to relate & maybe need to hear they’re not alone.
Exactly 4 years ago today, I sustained one of the most traumatic injuries of my life.
This scar is a representation of it, sure, but the real damage was much more abstract.
Let’s back up a bit…
9 years of operating & fixing diesel/gasoline equipment with the military. 4 years prior experience as a full time diesel mechanic and I’m looking for a new job in a new state. Easy peasy!
I had forgot that I was a woman…in a male dominated field. So, no easy peasy’s.
Fast forward a few months & I’ve landed a job for the city! Working in a water plant, maintaining the equipment. Right up my ally of expertise & it’s enjoyable.
Unfortunately I am the ONLY female on a 4 man crew.
The crew seemed to notice & I’m left to increase my performance in an attempt to prove my worth on the team.
Yeah…’bout that
Regardless of me being a better equipment operator, handling every task given me professionally, learning plant specifics quickly, I was still considered “the girl“.
Understandably dissatisfied and frustrated, I take on a fabricating task, solo. Welding, cutting, reshaping, grinding metal and customizing pieces needed for a big project.
🚫 WARNING: graphic photo follows. Queasy stomachs be warned 🚫
I’m grinding the LAST custom plate with a grinder by myself in the welding room when I hear a “reeeee” and smell burning bacon.
The grinder wheel had broken and the motored tool was cutting into my inner thigh at an impressive speed.
“Huh…” I thought.. “That’s not good.” And in came my coworker who quickly unplugged it and assessed the situation.
Him: Are you okay!? What just happened!?
Me: *very calmly* Probably not… The wheel broke and jumped off the metal plate into my leg.
Him: *Turning green* let me… Let me go get [managers name] before…yeah, don’t move.
Holy moly, batman!
I had always told God, if He wanted my attention in learning a lesson, He’d have to go big.
This was the slap in the face that made my realize I CANNOT kill myself trying to prove my worth to ANYONE who is incapable of recognizing reality past thier own bias.
▶Who I was as a worker was never going to be legitimized by thier opinions of me.
▶ Who I was as a woman didn’t need thier approval or praises.
▶ My professional accomplishes were not negated simply because they were unable to recognize them.
Basically, I realized I didn’t need thier recognition for my own validation.
A hard lesson to learn… but long needed realization. I have a gnarly scar to remind me, thus the impossibility of me forgetting.😒
60 somethin’ stitches later & viola!
▶Stand in your power.
▶Be your own advocate
▶NEVER allow the world to hold you back, put you in your place or make you doubt WHO you are.
Clarity Through Fog 