When I was a little
girl, I loved learning. School was
everything to me. I wanted to get
straight A’s, and the mention of extra credit created an electric current of
excitement that wouldn’t be rivaled until the onset of adolescent
hormones. I got a little carried away, going in before
school and staying after to do assignments I made up all on my own. If the teacher didn’t assign the Taking It Further section of every
textbook, my inner perfectionist did. I even created my own dictionary from our
weekly spelling words. All this
paperwork grew until I was carrying 2 or 3 bags of books, notebooks, and
folders back and forth to school every day.
I was in 5th grade. I
might have weighed 50 pounds soaking wet.
It was a strain; I was likely the only 5th grader whose back
ached during silent reading, but I couldn’t help myself. I needed all of those things. I needed every chance to learn, to prove, to
become. I needed the validation. I wanted to see that look in my dad’s eyes
when I could recite all the state’s capitals or all the presidents to
date. I desperately wanted to please my teacher, my
parents, and all adults. I was so worried
that at some point, an adult in authority would ask me a question, and I would
be caught without the answer. I could
not allow that to happen.
Carting around all the baggage from my past with Bob is
hard work, too. Sometimes I hand it off to
the wrong person to hold for a minute while I catch my breath. Some days, my back aches. I
haven’t yet figured out the trick to just setting it down and going my own way,
free as a bird. See, there are things
that I need to have on my person every moment of every day…just so I won’t
forget. The bad memories remind me to
never allow myself to be hurt like again.
The good memories remind me that there was something I was fighting for,
and I wasn’t wrong for wanting him to be well.
The more I take these memories out and examine them in a quiet corner
and with a good, strong light, the more I make peace with the fact that I
couldn’t change him…the only person I could change was myself. I do it everyday.
I finally did it; I left him. But it didn’t feel victorious. For a long time, it felt like I was the one who had lost,
like I had failed the most important test of my life. It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever
done. And there are many questions that
remained unanswered.
The
one question I can answer–should
anyone want to know– is exactly what it felt like when I finally turned that
corner and left him behind. It’s funny-
that’s never the question that gets asked.
It’s always, “Why didn’t you leave the first time he hurt you?” But if someone did ask me how it felt to leave him, it was like this:
It was like waking up in the middle of the
night to find the house burning down around me.
When arriving at the family meeting place, Jake was there, the pets were
wandering out on the lawn, but Bob and Cory were still stuck inside. I could only save one. I loved them both. Instinctively, I carried Cory out on my back,
but couldn’t make it back inside. I was
forced to watch, screaming his name, as the house went up with him inside. I wanted to save him. But I couldn’t. He was too heavy, it was too dangerous, and
it just wasn’t my job.
Probably
not the answer everyone would expect, or want to hear. I suppose I should’ve felt set free and proud
for making the right decision, for myself and for my children, but those feelings didn’t come till much, much later. And that is okay. At least I’m being honest. It’s amazing after all that time of lying to
myself, how good it feels to tell the truth.
No comments:
Post a Comment