It was about 9:30 in the morning, Eastern time, on a cool September day. I was sitting at the auto shop getting my car worked on. It was strange that after seventeen years, I was doing this for myself once again.
It felt good to make simple decisions and take simple actions without the fear of retribution. For so many years, the simplest decisions and actions had carried so much weight, and the smallest thing could take my marriage from relative peacefulness to war in a moment.
I had received a piece of paper in the mail that past week. It was a Judgment for Absolute Divorce from the State of North Carolina. It ended with the following words:
“Therefore, it is ordered that the bonds of matrimony which have existed between the parties are dissolved and the plaintiff is granted an Absolute Divorce from the defendant.”
It was signed and dated.
It was all over with those words, like it had never happened.
The introductions, the emails, the first, second, and third dates, my falling in love, the confusion, the despair, the sadness, the fear—did I say confusion?—the ghastly words said to me and about me, the mistreatment, the rage, the…
The cycle.
The cycle of an abusive marriage.
It had been crazy-making, and I had spent countless hours that slipped into years trying to make sense of two things: my relationship with him and my relationship with myself.
What had happened?
I thought I knew myself well and had enough self-respect not to allow myself to be treated the way I had been by my husband. But by the time I walked away from nearly two decades of marriage, I didn’t recognize myself any longer.
I was a professional who managed people and complex deliverables. I was someone who solved problems. I used to push through barriers and find solutions. I negotiated difficult personalities.
But this marriage was something I could not solve, negotiate, or unravel.
That was, until I started educating myself about abuse and the dynamics of it.
A close family member called it out first.
I immediately denied it because I had never actually been hit. But somewhere deep inside, I knew something was really wrong, and I also knew that if it were true, I would have to take action.
I had defined abuse as being hit, punched, or kicked, and that wasn’t what had been happening—although sometimes there had been the unspoken threat of it.
My family member explained emotional and verbal abuse to me, and I had to catch my breath.
I knew that abused women shouldn’t stay in abusive relationships, so if I was being abused, this had serious implications.
Implications that, in my opinion at the time, felt insurmountable.
I remembered that phone call and the moment I stopped denying it and began acknowledging that it might be true.
It was like the weight of the world had come crashing in on me.
Then she hit me with words that stayed with me:
There was “nothing motherly about teaching my kids to live in abuse and deny the reality of it.”
That was the start of my journey to validate what had been happening in my relationship with him—and what had been happening in my relationship with myself.
And it started with a link given to me by my family member.
This was the link:
Shine Sweet Freedom 
Leave a comment