Remembering...

Lately, I have been remembering more and more. I am not sure if it is because of the fact that my abuser is getting released from prison at the end of the month, or if it just the fact that I have become more accepting of myself and what I went through finally. I find myself having nightmares, but then remembering that even though they are definitely nightmares, they are memories and ones that I suppressed.

I remember this one time that we were at our house in Jackson, Michigan and he had come after me and I ran to the bathroom because it was one of the few doors with a lock. I had locked it but he just kept hitting on it, so I finally unlocked it and ran back to the bathtub. I pushed me up by the shower curtain by the throat and I fell in the tub. I remember hitting my head so hard but that didn't stop him. I remember that his eyes just looked so full of hate and he said to me, "I wish I could just kill you." In that moment, all I wanted to do was die even more than I normally did. All I ever wanted to do was make that relationship work but I was never good enough, our life was never good enough. He was always too focused on the next best thing and couldn't recognize a girl in front of him trying to build a life and have a family and give him every single last bit of myself.

I remember right before I left for Tennessee again with him and I met up with him at a hotel and he had the boys. My grandpa had just had a stroke and he was in the hospital and we thought he was going to die. I had left my laptop at the hotel with him without even thinking, and I had been in communication with either one of the detectives or the courthouse, I cannot remember who. They had told me that they were putting a warrant out for him and they had sent it to me. I remember that I was emailing them back and correcting things because somehow they had either him middle name, or it was his birthday wrong, I just remember it was something significant of his information. When I got back, he had gone through my laptop and found my emails with whoever it was, and sure enough, I was punished. I am pretty sure that it was always in the back of his head from then on, just in my opinion, that he always remembered that so I was punished even more. I was trying one last attempt to fully break free from him before he forced us back to Tennessee. I remember just always playing by his rules and just always messaging him back things to make him happy, but I wasn't happy. I wanted to be free. I wanted the boys to be free.

I remember why I put these back so far in my mind and never wanted them to come to light again. Unfortunately, if I want to continue shadow work, I have to acknowledge everything that I have gone through and every aspect of myself.