mosaic

“I had to pick up my pieces and glue myself back together to create something semi functional. But no matter how much time goes by, the cracks never leave. They just don’t hurt as bad when you remember they are there.” –From the novel “Secret World- The beginning.”

                When I was in the 4 year abusive relationship, I had some very traumatic things happen to me. I didn’t realize how messed up I really had become until a month after I had moved away, I woke up from a dream/memory with my heart pounding and tears running down my face. I was shaking from head to toe and it took me several minutes just to calm down.  All I could do was lay there and hold myself while whispering, “It’s gonna be ok.”

 I was falling apart. I didn’t know who I was anymore and on top of that I was trying to create the illusion that I had my life together.

People always talk about being in an abusive relationship, but you rarely hear people talk about how hard it is when you get out.

You see when I was in an abusive relationship, my feelings were suppressed by fear. I was afraid to go home and I was afraid to make this person angry if I didn’t come home in the time that they expected me. I was afraid to say the wrong thing or do the wrong thing. I was afraid to not do a good enough job in bed. I was afraid to be physically hurt. I was afraid that they were going to kill me and yes, at one point, this person did try. I felt like this individual had taken every single part of who I was and shattered it through verbal words and physical action.

After I broke up with this person, they told me, “I will find where you live and I will do whatever it takes to get you back. I’ll even be your neighbor.” This scared me so much that I went out and found the toughest military soldier that I could find and dated them just for protection. The relationship with that person only lasted a few months but it was enough time to get me away from my ex and start new. I switched salons, moved from Antioch Tennessee to Nashville, started growing out my hair, and tried my hardest to disappear. But I was still afraid that my ex would find me.

                Finally, I moved out of state. I moved from Tennessee to Pennsylvania. Even a year after I left this person, I still wasn’t sure who I was. I became a very bitter person but tried hiding it inside of me. Like poison seeping through my soul, I hated everything and everyone. Everything I used to stand for, I left behind and became someone that I was not.

                I learned so much from my anger. I learned that emotions are onions. See I was angry because it’s easier to be angry than to feel the pain that I did. I was bitter because I was ashamed that I would be “so weak” as to even allow myself to get with someone like that. I was lonely because everyone that I got with after this person, I couldn’t seem to love. My core consisted of shattered pieces which I hid so well that I felt like I was rotting on the inside.

A year and a half after the relationship ended, I finally picked up my first self-help book. I didn’t want to feel the way that I did. I wanted to crawl out of my hole that I had fallen so deep inside. One piece at a time I picked myself back up and glued myself back together, creating a mosaic.

I will never be who I was before the abuse, but I don’t want to be that person. Because who I am now is far better than who I ever was. Yes it was hard. Yes I went through hell. But I am so thankful that I went through what I did, because it made me the woman that I am now.

Every dark situation that I go through is light in disguise, but only because I allow it to be.