The Tender Fender-Bender

I spent some time the other day rereading some of the journal entries that I wrote during my relationship with Edward. I won’t lie: I felt pretty sick to my stomach afterwards. I feel sorry for that girl that I was. I wish I could go back and give her some sound advice…not that I would expect her to listen to me.

The following is a paraphrased and edited version of one such journal entry:

 

 

Edward and I had been out running errands together all afternoon. It was a warm summer day, so on our way back to my place, we made one last stop to grab smoothies. We left the smoothie place and were pulling into the shopping center in front of my apartment complex when we found that there had been a fender-bender in the lane we needed to take.

Edward was always his worst self when he was driving in traffic. All control of his tongue and temper would go completely by the wayside. And I hated driving with him when he was upset. It was always disconcerting, and sometimes it was just downright scary. My only hope of preventing the anger he was directing at the “stupid” drivers around him from being redirected at me was to keep as quiet as possible and pray that he didn’t find any reason to take notice of me. But the A/C was blowing hard on my bare arms and legs, and with my smoothie cooling down my insides too, I was getting very chilly. So I adopted a nonchalant, soothing tone that didn’t match my actual inner trepidation and spoke up.

“Would you like to roll down the windows and turn off the A/C?” I asked.

He responded with only a scoff.

“It’s just–I’m getting chilly. But you don’t have to roll down the windows if you don’t want to.”

He rolled them down and said with disdain, “You’ll be hot again in two minutes.”

Okay. Whatever. I let it roll off my back. Traffic was pissing him off and making him get short-tempered. I could be understanding.

Several long, traffic-laden minutes later, we were finally approaching our turn. I said, “We should stop by Blockbuster and get those movies we were wanting. I can get them.”

He had the music blaring loudly and was facing forward, so when he said something back, I couldn’t understand him.

Anytime Edward said something that I couldn’t understand, prompting me to ask him to repeat himself, he inevitably would respond harshly. It always made me regret asking him to clarify in the first place. Over time, though, I got pretty good at knowing what to expect.

 

The Three Hazardous Steps of Asking Edward to Repeat Himself:

Step 1: I adopted the practice of first asking myself whether or not it seemed like what he had said was important or might come up later. And if I decided I could probably live without knowing, I just wouldn’t ask. (Truthfully, it was a gamble either way.)

Step 2*: If I did decide to ask him to repeat it, he would always repeat it at exactly the same volume, though with clear frustration running through his voice this time. The background noise would generally still be the same, too, which meant that I was often still unable to understand what he was saying.

Step 3: If I went so far as to ask him to repeat himself a third time, I would already be cringing internally. Because knowing the hurtful thing that’s coming doesn’t make it any less hurtful when it comes. He would then repeat it a third time at a drastically increased volume just a few notches below yelling, using his “how-could-you-not-understand-me-the-first-time-you-moron” tone of voice.

*Alternative Step 2: Sometimes, when he was already irritated, he would completely skip the regular second step of slightly annoyed indifference and jump right to the third step of full on frustration.

 

I sensed that this was an Alternative Step 2 sort of situation, so I decided to not even try to discover what he had said.

We got to where we would have needed to turn to go to Blockbuster, and he went right past it. Confused, I asked, “Are we not going to Blockbuster?”

“NO! You just said!”

There it was. That tone of voice. That tone that so clearly pegged me for an obvious idiot. I was wounded, but I did not respond angrily. I was resigned to be meek and not be an instigator. Oooooh! I thought. That must be what he mumbled—that we could do it later or something.

Out loud I said, “Oh. I’m sorry. I didn’t hear you. I couldn’t understand.”

“You just said that you would go get it, not two seconds ago.” He retorted.

Oooooh! I thought again. When I said, “I’ll get it” he thought I was saying that I would go get it. I had just meant that I would pick up the tab for it if we went right then. What a misunderstanding! It was important to me that he knew I hadn’t lamely forgotten my own words spoken not a minute earlier and that we’d just had a miscommunication. So I spoke up.

“No no, I meant that I would pay for it, not that I would go get. I mean, I don’t mind doing that. I just thought we could go ahead and do it while we’re out now since it’s not far from here.”

“I have to be to work in an hour and a half! Can’t you just do it while I’m at work? I mean, what else do you have to do?”

I allowed the implication that I had nothing productive to do with my time while he was away to pass without comment. “Well, I have plans to go hang out with your sisters…But I can pick up the movies on my way out.” I said, still trying to appease his already flared temper. “…But I thought that maybe we would want to watch part of one of the movies before you left for work. I mean, we don’t have any other plans for the next hour and a half, so it just seemed like a good option.”

He immediately began to clearly lay out for me why it was such a dumb idea for us to start a movie when we knew we wouldn’t have time to finish it—even though we’d done that very thing a few times before…when it had been his idea. Then, he started detailing all the reasons why it was a much better idea for me to pick up the movies while he was at work than for us to go get them now.

While he was talking, all I could think was, How did we get here? All I had tried to do was explain that we’d had a miscommunication. I wasn’t trying to argue the wisdom of me getting them on my own later. I wasn’t trying to peg him as a loser for misunderstanding me. I didn’t even mind going out to get them myself later. But I did mind when he turned it into a tear down match by saying sarcastic things like, “I’m sorry I didn’t interpret your meaning correctly.”

He kept insisting that I had said I would “go get them.” When I corrected him that I’d only said I would “get them,” he scoffed at how insignificant the lack of the word “go” was. He used this opportunity to point out to me—as he often did—all the ways in which I was a bad communicator. I just wanted us to agree that we’d misunderstood each other and to be given the chance to explain what I had been trying to say. That’s it.

But what actually happened was much more complicated and painful than that.

As he was carefully detailing for me the myriad reasons why it was better for me to go get the movies on my own later, after about Reason #4 I threw my hands up and said, “Fine! It’s fine! I don’t care, let’s drop it.” My patience had finally been exhausted.

“I’m just trying to explain why I think that’s a better idea! Why don’t you just listen to my reasons instead of interrupting me and telling me that you don’t care?!”

I retreated into silence the rest of the way home. Back at the apartment, I grabbed my book and went immediately to the bedroom to read. I was so hurt. How could he have treated me like that and talked to me like that? But I was done fighting. I just wanted to withdraw into peace and quiet where I could lick my wounds and regain some of my equilibrium.

Oh but Eddie had other plans.

As I was in the bedroom stewing over what had just transpired, he came in and demanded, “Why do you always do this?”

Truly bewildered, I said, “Do what? Be hurt?”

Then he started talking about how I treat him so “disrespectfully” and never consider his feelings. I was taken aback. Those were precisely the things I was so hurt about!

As we argued, my voice grew louder and louder in volume and higher and higher in pitch, while his became stiller and quieter. I was officially the hysterical half of our pair. Every point I tried to make and every opinion I attempted to offer got shot down, twisted, thrown back in my face, and invalidated. I finally saw that we were both just determined to “win.” Except that for me, “winning” meant feeling sure that we both felt understood and valued and had agreed upon a fair solution. I don’t know what it meant for Edward, but I would bet money that in the heat of that argument, his idea of winning was vastly different from mine.

At the edge of pure hysteria, I begged him to stop, to please drop it right now, and we would talk about it later when we were both calmer. I could see that every little thing we said only made things worse and escalated the situation.

His response?

Silence.

Then, with ice in his voice, he quietly said, “I’m gonna go to work, and I’m not coming back.”

“Why?!” I wailed. “Why would you do that?!”

“Because that’s exactly what you’re doing. Running away from the situation.”

I insisted through my tears and sobs that I wasn’t running away! I just wanted us to wait to talk about it until we were both calmer so that we might actually have a productive conversation. Finally, seeing that my pleas were getting me nowhere, I retreated out onto the patio to sob to my heart’s content.

Out there, I cried out to God. “I don’t understand! How was I disrespectful? I was trying so hard, and it still turned into this! How, God? How?” I decided that, without being in my head to understand my build up of feelings, Edward could have felt disrespected when I interrupted him in the car and told him to just drop it. But before that? I’d been so careful! I couldn’t think of anything. But that doesn’t mean I hadn’t said something unintentionally that may have hurt him without my even realizing it. So I went back inside. He was lying on his back on the bed, staring at the ceiling.

Like a child apologizing to a parent with the hope of not receiving further punishment, I recited, “I’m sorry if I treated you disrespectfully at any point. It was not my intention. And I’m sorry for the miscommunication.” I retreated once more to the patio.

It was some time after that when he opened the patio door and stood there for a good 30 seconds without speaking a word. Finally, with no expression on his face and in a flat tone, he said, “I’m sorry for getting upset with you.”

When I finally lifted my eyes to meet his, I just nodded and said, “Okay.”

He leaned down and kissed me on the forehead. “I love you,” he said. I just nodded again in response. Then, he shut the patio door and left for work.

While he was at work that evening, he texted me to say that he wanted to have some friends over to hang out at the apartment that night. I struggled with not wanting to anger him by saying no and with not wanting to have to pretend like things were ok around his friends when they certainly were not. I considered just packing up as many of my belongings as I could and going to my parents’ house five hours away for a while. But I knew that such a sudden, unplanned trip would cause me to lose my job, my only source of income, and then I really would be running away, just as he had already accused me of doing.

 

 

The last thing I wrote in this journal entry was: “I don’t want to choose to keep walking down this path of hate-filled words and hot tempers. But I feel powerless to stop it. I can only control myself, and even then, only for so long.”

 

 

I would like to be able to say that this story took place after Edward and I had already gotten married. I would like to be able to say that I would never have knowingly gone on to marry a man who could have treated me this way. The unfortunate truth, however, is that this happened just one month before we got married. And it is merely one example of many such conflicts that we had both while we dated and after we got married.

It’s true when they say that we accept the love that we think we deserve. When you already feel pretty bad about yourself, as I did in my early twenties, and then you find yourself isolated in a relationship with someone who also tells you why you should feel bad about yourself…well, it’s hard not to buy into a perspective that’s coming at you from within and without.

As painful as they are to read, I’m grateful that I have some of these specific events recorded in my journal entries. As the years have passed since my divorce, I’ve begun to notice some gaps in my memory. There are whole periods of time, and one 3 week period in particular, which I distinctly remember as being horribly painful. Yet I can specifically recall mostly just the things that I recorded in my journal during those periods. Everything else is like a muddled Pain Fog in my brain. I find myself wondering if, in the aftermath of living in what was essentially an emotional war zone, this Pain Fog that developed over some of the worst parts was my psyche’s way of protecting itself from what happened back there when I had no other protection. Perhaps the Pain Fog clouding those periods of time will clear up someday, and I’ll be able to tell those stories with the same clarity of detail that I was able to tell this one. Or perhaps I’ll never fully remember them.

Honestly, I’m not really sure which is better.

I’d like to leave you with a few words on a topic I’ve been mulling over a great deal lately: hope. Hope is an odd thing. It can be like an elusive wisp of smoke, teasing you with its possibilities, or it can be like a brick wall, demanding your full attention. It can seem like a bitter enemy who never gives you what you think you need, or it can seem like a sweet friend sustaining you in the darkest times. Sometimes it feels like hope is for the foolish because who would remain hopeful when life has proven to be so bitter and harsh?

When hope dies in someone, a cynic is born. But I stand before you as one who has experienced much, much worse than the scenario I described to you in this blog and who still finds cause to hope. Somehow, I was able to find a way to take all those bad experiences I had, and instead of curling up into myself and growing meeker, I used them to build the hard-won strength I was painfully lacking back then. And somehow, as the result of much hard work and many beautiful friendships, I didn’t become a person defined by bitterness or cynicism. I might have my moments (Don’t we all?), but on all but my grumpiest of days, I’m still the same hopeful, cheerful romantic, who prefers to see the good in people, that I’ve been since I was a child. Except that now I’m also stronger. And wiser. And braver.

And I honestly believe that if there’s hope enough for me still, there’s hope enough for you, too, whatever your circumstances are or have been. Maybe you think me naïve, but I’d rather be accused of naivety than let any spoiled relationship steal all the hope from me.

Yes. I think I’ll keep my hope. It makes for such nicer company than bitterness.

The Consequence of Sounds

I’ve heard it said so many times that the sense of smell is the sense most strongly connected to memories.That may be true for most people…but my sense of smell is total crap.All of my close friends and family can attest to this fact. Subtle candle scents, barely spoiled milk, the faint difference between a dish with oregano and a dish with thyme…these are all things that tend to escape me. Don’t get me wrong though. I can smell fresh pizza, a ripe fart, and overly applied cologne with great ease. It’s the slighter scents that my olfactory receptors tend to miss out on.

For me, it’s my sense of hearing that transports me most quickly and vividly to the memories stored in my brain. It can be random, seemingly inconsequential sounds that do this for me. For instance, the sound that the hydraulics on a certain door at work makes when I’m pushing it outward always reminds me of this random moment in a Foster the People song. Or there’s the way the sound of a copy machine spitting out images often reminds me of how I used to hum along to the pitches that the machine at my old job would make. I would pass the time as I waited for my copies by singing the same notes as the machine and then take it a step further by harmonizing or creating dissonances with them. (Don’t worry. I already know of and embrace my innate weirdness.) Or when I listen to the little known song The Background by Third Eye Blind, it transports me to being in seventh grade and playing Tetris on our old desktop, while listening to a borrowed CD and pining after the first boy I ever thought I loved.

Sounds. Sounds transport me.

Edward and I got married on July 31, 2009. For our honeymoon, we were given the use of his family’s timeshare in Maui, Hawaii. Once there, we rented a convertible. We spent a large portion of our honeymoon driving from place to place in that convertible: top down, sun shining, my hand in his. And while we drove, we listened to Owl City. Over and over and over again we listened to that music.

It’s hard for me to remember that I wasn’t always miserable with Edward. There were times, even midst red flags and brief hurtful moments, when I was happy. Truly happy. And I thought I would always be happy. Driving in that car in Hawaii on our honeymoon while listening to Owl City was one of those times for me.

After leaving Edward in 2010, I went through a conscious process of attempting to disassociate things from him. Edward and I used to watch the Office together. So I binge-watched episode after episode of that show with one of my friends shortly after leaving him until I was certain that watching it in the future would bring back memories of watching it with her instead of watching it with him. Our favorite shared movie was Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. So I introduced my new roommate to it shortly after we moved in together. I discovered that even seeing the name “Edward” on something as nonthreatening as a business sign (e.g. Edward’s Video), made my heart jump into my throat. So I began using his name all the time, in writing and in speech, not allowing myself to substitute it with “my husband” or “my ex.” My mom jokingly told me once when I used his name, “You know, we don’t say that name around here.” I firmly replied that I hoped they would begin to say it because I would not allow a name to hold any power over me and neither should they.

I was determined that I not allow him to take any more from me than he already had: small stuff included. So I waged my own guerrilla warfare, fighting to remove the pain these things brought me and make them mine again.

Owl City was the only thing I couldn’t get back.

When I started my new office job in 2011, I would listen to Owl City on my work computer for hours on end. My roommate and I would also play it while driving around town together. I would play it while I showered or did housework. I listened. And I listened. And I listened. And always it made me so melancholy. No matter how much or in what setting I listened to it, I would be transported to driving in that convertible with the top down, holding my husband’s hand, and believing without a doubt that I would always be cherished, always be cared for, and always be loved.

April 4, 2014, was the 4 year anniversary of the day that I left Edward. It is a day that I celebrate every year. The first year, my roommate got me a cake that said “You Escaped!” The second year’s celebration included another cake that said “Star Runner.” The third year, I took myself out for a nice dinner, and this past April, I spent my fourth anniversary singing an original song of mine live, for the first time, as my friend walked down the aisle at her wedding. (A love song no less.) The day you run away from your abusive spouse may seem like an odd event to celebrate, but when you’ve been where I’ve been and you’ve fought as hard as I have for a second chance at truly living, then you start to understand why something like that can so easily come to represent my own personal VJ Day.

I listened to Owl City just last week, in preparation for this blog. And yes, it still makes me sad. But not as acutely as it did 3 years or even 1 year ago. And then today I watched the video of my wedding reception for the first time ever. There was one moment, when I saw such tremendous sadness filling my mother’s eyes when she thought no one was looking, that I wept. No mother should be so afraid for her daughter that she feels that much sadness and anxiety on the day of her wedding. It made me grieve afresh for what my choices put her and the rest of my family through. But then the grief subsided. And I watched Edward and I cut our cake and take our wedding photos and kiss and laugh together…and it didn’t cut me nearly as deeply as I thought it would. As I know it would have at any other point since I left.

Maybe four years really is enough time to get it all back. Well…almost. I’m still working on Owl City.

A Story Worth Telling

I’ve long debated with myself about whether or not to write about my experiences in my marriage and subsequent divorce. For some reason, I’ve always felt that eventually I should. It’s been a difficult process to figure out why though because even now, nearly 4 years later, the task seems so huge and scary. Some of the most painful, intimate details could really only be told one on one to very specially chosen people. But the vast majority of the stories I have to tell about that chapter of my life are much more universal than that.

Then what am I so afraid of?

I never want to be seen as someone who sensationalizes my life experiences, airing all the smutty details, in order to get attention or to defame another person. Yes, in my opinion, my ex-husband and his family did some really terrible things to me. But I have no desire to trash their reputations or air their dirty laundry for all their friends and colleagues to read. This is why I will be using only fake names when I write, and why I’ve already removed my full name from my first blog. Thankfully, I already cut off contact with him and his family years ago.

I don’t want to hurt anyone by writing about this topic. That being said, I realize that I may not get to make that choice for myself. This may very well escape my control at some point. Some friend of my ex’s that is still friends with both of us could read this and decide to share it with him or his family. Or in some way that is unforeseeable to me, he or his family could find or come across this blog. And I have to ask myself: am I strong enough to handle it if and quite possibly when that happens? Is it worth it?

This brings me right to the other thing that has held me back: plain ol’ fear. Fear of what people will think of me after they hear this unattractive part of my story. Fear of what people will think of me for sharing it at all. And fear of my ex and his family. Of what they would do to me if they found out I was writing about my experiences in a public forum. Truth be told, they would probably only level loaded words at me. But they have incapacitated me with such ammunition before. I know I’ve grown much stronger since they last had opportunity to do that, but will I ever be strong enough to take that kind of attack without crumbling emotionally? Maybe not. And there is always the possibility of legal action being taken against me, too. I would think that writing about people without ever advertising their real names would certainly fall under the protective shade of freedom of speech. But these people are powerful and wealthy enough that should they decide to attempt such a legal attack, I would never have the financial means to combat them.

So why even contemplate doing it?

When I ended my marriage by leaving my emotionally abusive ex-husband, I was starving. Starving for some way to make sense of it all. I looked and looked for books and articles and websites and blogs that could give me something, anything to relate to and help me not to feel like such a lonely freak. I didn’t need information about the “falling out of love, who cheated on whom” kind of divorce–for which information seems to be a bit more plentiful. I needed information about the “brain and heart turned to mush after months and months of psychological beatings” kind of divorce. And I found my reading options to be shockingly limited. Many of the books I did find missed the mark in one way or another. Some focused on the psychology so much that they missed the heart of my pain. Others focused on the heart so much that they missed the areas that were outside of my control. And still others talked about my experiences with an air of knowledge when in reality, they clearly just didn’t get it.

So maybe being a woman in relationship with an emotionally abusive man just isn’t a common experience? Maybe that’s why there’s so little written about it from a first person point of view?

Definitely. Not.

In contrast to the limited amount of reading material I was able to find, I did, however, find that there were SO MANY real, live women who knew exactly what I was going through–because they themselves had also experienced it. I found that any time I shared my experience with another woman, even just briefly, more often than not that woman would then share about her experience in a similarly toxic relationship. I was shocked to find out how many women had been in my shoes! How could that be possible? And why did I only find this out after I had first shared my own experience? I know that in the vast majority of those instances, if I had not first shared my experience with them, I never would have known about theirs.

So why don’t we want to talk about it? What is it about emotional abuse that makes us feel so uncomfortable? Why do we prefer to ignore its existence or talk about it in hushed tones in smaller groups instead of talking about it as openly and boldly as we’ve come to talk about other forms of abuse?

I can testify that there are definite feelings of shame connected to being a recipient of emotional abuse. I used to find myself wishing that my ex-husband would just hit me already. (Doesn’t that just make you feel sick?!) Then I could have a bruise to show the world, some physical proof of the things that were happening to me behind closed doors. I don’t at all say that to make it sound like those facing physical abuse have it so much better. Often times, physical abuse is paired with emotional abuse and even sexual abuse, but even when it’s not, it is a horrible thing that no one should have to endure. But when you’re caught in the maelstrom of an emotionally abusive environment, it feels like it’s your fault, like you should have known better. And it’s very easy to tell yourself–as your partner is probably also telling you–that it’s all in your head, that you’re blowing everything out of proportion, that this is a normal way for relationships to function. I mean, why would anyone stay in a relationship where he or she is not being treated well? Yet men and women alike do this very thing all the time. I used to cast judgment on these people for making what I saw as such weak, simpleminded life choices. And then I made those same choices for myself. And when I came out on the other side, I had the hardest time making sense of why I would have done that because I didn’t know where to go to get answers.

Immediately following my “Great Escape,” and even shortly preceding it, I started reaching out to all sorts of people that I hadn’t seen or talked to in years, telling them all sorts of intimate things about my bad situation. I look back now, and I feel embarrassed at my behavior. I think those people must have been thinking, “Why is she telling me all of this? I haven’t talked to her in years.” In fact, some of them said as much. Some just didn’t respond at all. Others gave me the support I so desperately craved, helping me to overcome the single greatest trial of my young life. I see now, though, that after effectively ending all relationships in my life with everyone except for my ex-husband and his family, I found that I had nowhere to go for support and comfort when the proverbial shit hit the fan. So I made a few new friends, and I started grasping desperately to renew old friendships. I sought out all the relationships where I’d felt any safety in my lifetime and begged them with my TMI stories to give me that safety again. I needed relationships that would give me the courage and strength I lacked at that point in my life, and since I didn’t have any relationships like that left, I exhausted all my memory banks looking for them in old places.

I can’t really fault those who didn’t respond to my blubbering attempts at salvaging old, forgotten relationships. I can’t really fault those who responded with confusion instead of reciprocation either. I understand why they must have felt the way they did in light of my emotional mess spilling all over them. But it made me wonder, what it is about this topic that makes people so uncomfortable? Was it just discomfort with my awkward relational grasping or was it also, in part, discomfort with my plight? Why do we feel embarrassed for the woman who makes a bad relationship choice and then has to deal with the aftermath? It’s so much easier to ignore her and let her be someone else’s problem than it is to comfort and seek to understand her. That too is something I can understand.

So I learned not to talk about it unless I was asked. And most people…they don’t ask. Sometimes it’s because they don’t want to overstep or make you feel uncomfortable or sad all over again. Sometimes though, I think it’s because people don’t know how to talk about or even listen to this topic yet. Or worse. Some just don’t want to try. They believe it’s a weak problem for weak people, and they’d rather not give this issue a minute of their time. (Thankfully, I have found that these people are not the norm.)

We are doing the human race an immense disservice by not talking about the prevalence and destructive power of emotional abuse. Whether our reason for doing so is embarrassment, judgement, social propriety, or any of the other myriad possibilities, no one is benefiting from this silence. Except for maybe the abusers.

No matter how scared I am, I cannot in good conscience perpetuate anything that encourages insidious things that should be brought into the light to remain in the dark. I want to look back at the end of my life and be able to say, “Yeah I had hard times. But I survived them and thrived in their aftermath. And even better, I used them to help others.” I think that’s a much better legacy than, “I was too scared of what people would think and what would happen if I talked about my experiences. So I didn’t.”

I could have really benefited from someone like me talking frankly about what she experienced. So. Maybe I can give that to someone else who really needs it. That somehow makes all of the scary possible repercussions seem very, very worth it.

So allow me to give you a little background information as a start to this story-telling process.

Before the man I will call Edward Hyde (a name I definitely chose for its appropriate allusions to a certain Robert Louis Stevenson character) came into my life, I was prepared for him, so to speak. I don’t mean that I was prepared to stand strong against him. Rather, I mean that I was weakened over a course of several years so that when he came into my life I was more susceptible to him than I ever thought I could be.

College was a really weird, hard time for me. It wasn’t any one factor that made it so, just a lot of little things that when combined made me come out of college much more of a mess than I’d been when I started. I moved from small town Indiana to a warm Texas city after I graduated hoping to escape my loneliness and self-loathing. Instead, I ended up feeling lonelier than ever and managed to reach an all-time low on the self-hatred scale. Somehow, my great self-actualizing, coming-of-age, cross-country adventure had failed miserably.

It was at this point in my life that Edward popped up. Quite literally: In the form of an AOL messaging window.

But that is a part of the story I will save for another time.

My stories here won’t necessarily form a linear trip down memory lane.  I may tell a story from the end of my relationship one day, a story from the beginning of it another, and a series of stories all relating to a common topic on an entirely different day. In fact, it may help to think of these stories more as vignettes. Though cathartic at times, it’s not an easy thing for me to share these memories that have made so deep and private a home in me these past 4 years. So I will allow myself a bit a pass here, as I hope you will too, and tell each tale however and whenever the time feels right.

Thank you so much for reading. I hope you’ll keep on reading as I continue this scary but hopeful journey. And I hope you’ll share this blog with others, especially those who may need to hear just such a story as this.