Have you ever

Have you ever woken up one day, and felt that the world is off kilter? That you are broken in so many ways, that you may never be whole again?

 

I’ve been drifting through my life, resting on the high points, and pretending the valleys and gorges are not there. I’ve found myself forced to relive some of those low points, in the form of reports and nightmares, and I look back and wonder if I had a choice.

 

If things had been different, I wouldn’t have two of my three children, never met the man that I am with now, but would I be whole? Would my fractured soul be in one piece, instead of shattered on the floor? I don’t know.

 

I don’t know if things would be different today if I had missed some of my yesterdays. I try to accept that God has a plan, and never gives more than He knows I can handle, but how much more broken can I become and still survive?  I think about people that have it so much worse, because I know my story isn’t unique. There are battered women all over the world, all over my country, all over my town. There are victims and survivors of rape, and there are people that have been touched by murders and any number of other awful things that humanity places on itself.

 

I was forced by circumstance to make a report I never had any intention of making, when my ex, who threatens to kill me on a regular basis, so much so that I had become numb to it, and ignored it, passed that threat on to me through my 4 year old little boy.  My little boy, sweet and innocent and happy, informed me one morning that his daddy has a gun, and is going to shoot me with it.  Then he told me that he didn’t want his daddy to shoot me, he didn’t want to go live with daddy all the time.

 

I don’t know what to do anymore. Its the calm before the storm, in my house, as my phone has been silent, and I have heard nothing from anyone.  The longer it stays quiet, the more terrified I become.  The more terrified I become, the harder it gets for my relationship to survive this struggle. My pain levels intensify to the point that I am unable to function without medication, and my sleep cycle is disturbed to the point that I am no longer sleeping.

 

I am trying, so hard, to remain calm, to be my children’s port in this particular storm, and not show my fear to them. Regardless of what their father has done to me, he is their father, and they love him. I don’t want them to know all of the things that have been done.

 

My man is going to leave me, eventually. He swears he isn’t, that he loves me, and will stand by me, but I am not able to be touched, whereas in the past I have always been very affectionate, I find myself closing myself off. I am preparing for the eventual loss of his steadiness, and his love. It is only a matter of time. I pray that I am wrong, and that we are able to make it through this, as we have made it through so many other things.

 

I find that its not the world that is off-kilter, it is me, and I don’t know how to fix it, or make it go back to normal. I’m afraid it never will. I’m afraid I will never be whole again, or that the shattered pieces of myself will ever be found. I’m afraid that I don’t know who I am anymore, that my children will grow up and be disappointed that I was their mother.

 

I am so emotionally scarred, I have a hard time believing that the scars don’t show on the outside, that someone can’t look at me and see that I am broken.

 

I don’t know what to do. I don’t even know what to say anymore.