Ten years ago, she was beaten within an inch of her life by a former boyfriend...
This one's for my neighbor's daughter, who has come so very far...
Truth be told, the abuse - first emotional then physical - had been ever present in the relationship. The "relationship." Does that word apply to any two objects gravitationally related to one another - even if one, like a black hole, intends to completely subsume and swallow the other? Like a trawler plodding its way through previously untainted serene waters, he had slowly but surely roiled every aspect of her life until she was unrecognizable, even to herself. The way he spoke to her, his specific choice of words, alternating between adoration and diminishment, creating an unsteady ground, eventually becoming a quicksand, impossible for her to traverse, left her falling until she eventually felt helplessly weightless, adrift in space not even her own, but entirely his.
She knew something was wrong. A simple trip to the post office was cut short by a persistent sensation that she was ShRiNkInG. Running, getting into her car, driving as fast as she dared, fleeing to the safety (was it really safe) of their apartment, a letter to her mother still in hand, she locked the door behind her and immediately began trembling, then sobbing. When he came home and found her on the ground, still blocking the door, rather than soothe her, he chastised her. What was wrong with HER? This question, these words, had long since become mirrors within her mind, reflecting both blame and shame back upon herself. Perhaps it was for this reason that, when he first came at her not with words but rather fists, she retreated into that same mirror filled abyss.
When at last she emerged from darkness, she was greeted by diffuse hospital lights she could barely see through swollen eyes. A voice, that of a woman, a little older and wiser than herself, explained to her what had happened and what would happen. Over the ensuing months, there would be so many steps to climb before she once again reached stable ground. How far and for how long had she been falling? Still healing, she returned home to the embrace of her mother, a warm and almost forgotten sensation. In succession, physical and mental therapy, a rebuilding her sense of self, a determination to give purpose to what had happened, depositions, hearings and then a trial. Eventually, a thing she'd once thought of as human banished to a place reserved for demons.
And then, after quite a while passed, something happened that was so out of place with the life she'd previously known, that it appeared almost as a sudden cosmic event. She met a young man. He was kind and honest and smart and understanding. He listened, and he did so without judgement. And, as chance would have it, he was an expert on the laws of objects in motion, a rocket scientist, albeit one in training, two semesters of graduate school to go. Two years later, they were married. Another year after that and they are now welcoming their first child, a daughter who'll bear the name of a flower. And, when she thinks about what kind of life this other girl will live, she imagines one where that girl is always in control, never falling, ever earthbound.
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May her life be immeasurably better forever.
