Sometimes I think about how much my life has changed over the years.
Ten years ago, in 2012, I was married to an abusive man, with a one year old child and a mother in law that made my life hell. I was trapped in a state where I didn’t know anyone, I had no local friends, no ability to leave, no way to escape, and no hope for a future where I wouldn’t experience violence. I spent so many of my nights watching my daughter sleep and worrying about what kind of life I had brought her into. I worried that she would grow up seeing the kind of relationship I had with her biological father, with her grandmother, and learning that this was what love was. That she would continue the pattern, and that she would find nothing but abuse and cruelty in her future, and feeling like I had failed her.
When I became pregnant with my son, and my husband ended up losing his job for not bothering to show up, and I was staring homelessness with two children in my future, I didn’t know what to do.
It took almost two years from that point for me to leave.
I remember that fear. And I remember the years after, and how I didn’t know how I was going to make anything work, only that I didn’t have a choice but to make it work. I don’t know how to describe that period really. I was relieved to be free, and I was exhausted and determined and resigned. I knew I wouldn’t have the future I had been building before I married him. My career was done and gone, but I didn’t really have time to worry about it. The past was done, and I only had the future to focus on. I needed to care for my children. I needed to give them a future, and I was determined to do so, and I was free. I would never again make the same mistakes. I would never again make excuses for a man laying hands on me.
Years after I left him I met my current partner. I made it clear to him I had no space for anyone that got in the way of the future I was building for my children. I wanted them to have an education, to have stability, to have a childhood that involved playdates and friends and spending days at the lake. They would eat cookies and run barefoot through the woods and we would raise kittens and collect eggs from the hens behind our friend’s home. We would catch fireflies and count the stars at night. We’d play board games and spend rainy days at the library reading every book we could get our hands on.
We would know peace, and I would never let anyone get in the way of that. I could not give my kids riches, but I could give them childhood memories. I could give them laughter, and I was doing that.
Our relationship grew slowly. I was so cautious. Over time he showed me that his goals aligned with mine. Over the years we’ve known each other, he’s shown me the ways he wants to give my children those childhood experiences, and those memories too.
This is the third summer we’ve spent at his mother’s lakehouse. The kids spend their days jumping off the dock into the lake, and playing board games. His stepdad gave my car obsessed son a ride in his jeep and in a sports car. My daughter has been reading his mother’s old nancy drew books.
I don’t know how it happened. I don’t know how we all ended up here, but when I think back to how it was, and how it is now, it is hard to imagine how much has changed, and how much things have improved. People tried to tell me things could be good like this back then, but I never believed them. How could I?
You won’t believe me now, when I say it could be like this for you, too, but it can. You just need to take that first step, and leave.
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