6 months out of prison
Guys, I have a confession to make.
I stopped writing in real time like I promised, and you deserve to know why.
I wasn’t emotionally capable of writing this story as it unfolded.
Healing can be so messy. I began to shrink back inside myself without even realizing it was happening. Hayley saw it, but I didn’t listen.
Little by little, guilt and shame found the tiny cracks that still existed in my soul and crept back in. Until suddenly, I was watching my life from the outside in. Once again.
I didn’t want anyone to know. Not because I was pretending everything was okay. Because I honestly wasn’t sure if it was.
I went to work every day. I smiled at the right times. I kept checking all the right boxes.
I stayed clean and sober, but another solution quietly found its way back into my life in a desperate need for validation from a man. A need I genuinely thought I had buried in prison.
The man’s name is irrelevant. What he taught me isn’t.
Here’s my disclaimer. Everything he ever told me might have been true, but truth is often subjective, isn’t it? That part isn’t what’s important though.
Because this story isn’t really about him. It’s about what healing in real time looks like.
The first time he became upset with me, his reaction triggered trauma I thought I’d left behind.
His voice was no longer just his but blurred together with every toxic man in my past who ever hurt me, beat me, degraded me.
My father. My husband. Other past relationships.
I could no longer tell the difference.
I was no longer reacting to the man standing in front of me anymore but to every man who had ever made me believe I wasn’t enough.
That wasn’t fair to him, but it also wasn’t fair to me.
Every joke he made, I took to heart and my newfound confidence waned.
Every disappearance became another abandonment.
Every suggestion sounded like control.
It was like he knew exactly how to break me. Little by little, I crawled back into the shell I had spent years trying to escape. He isolated me or I isolated myself, especially from Hayley. I didn’t want anyone to know.
At one point, I almost convinced myself to stay.
I heard my father saying I should be grateful for less than I deserved.
“If a successful man is willing to take you on after everything you’ve done, you should be grateful.”
“Don’t mess this up. What value do you really bring to the relationship anyway?”
Those voices had been quiet for a while. Now they were screaming again.
I began believing the disrespect, the criticism, the control were what I deserved. I convinced myself it was still better than my best day using.
He once told me I would always have a home with him. I think he knew exactly what that word meant to me.
Home.
After addiction.
After prison.
After motels.
After couches.
Even storage units.
Home was the one thing I wanted more than anything else in the world. And I clung to that word long after I should have let go.
We always knew he would eventually leave Florida. He wanted to find a way around all the red tape in my life so I could join him. On paper, it sounded like hope.
Inside, I was falling apart. In the end, I was praying for him to leave while begging him to stay. I needed him to leave like I needed breath in my lungs, but my heart was still stuck in his hand.
When he went home, we were still making plans for my arrival. He apologized for his behavior. He promised things would be different when I got “home”. He said he had only acted the way he did because he was scared to lose me.
Sound familiar?
Finally, I prayed hard enough and listened long enough to hear God whisper, “I am strong, and I am worthy.”
So I was the one who walked away. And I never looked back.
Walking away hurt, but it was also the most liberating experience of my life.
I don’t hate him. I don’t resent him. I genuinely hope he continues to succeed.
I hope his business thrives. I hope he finds peace. I hope he finds love.
I genuinely hope he finds the woman who makes him truly happy.
It just isn’t me.
I was fighting a war he could never fully understand. Not against him. Against every voice that convinced me I had to earn love by accepting less than I deserved.
Walking away hurt. It left new scars. But for the first time in my life, the scars didn’t remind me of what someone did to me. They reminded me of what I finally did for myself.
I didn’t learn how to never get hurt again. I learned that loving myself has to come before loving anyone else.
And maybe that’s what healing in real time really is. Not avoiding pain. Not pretending old wounds don’t reopen.
It’s recognizing when they do and choosing yourself anyway.
Choosing to never disappear again.
