I found pictures of the animals I left behind so very long ago ~ his pets who were like children to me ~ I teared up at their precious faces and remembered how much I love and miss them every day.
Then I found some pictures of me taken in my old rental office on campus the night before my 41st birthday.
And I was amazed at how clear and blue and full of life my eyes were in each picture. The weight had been lifted from my shoulders. I stood tall and proud. The color was back in my face, and my face was fuller because I had finally started to regain the weight I had lost when my food intake was so limited on the weekends.
My eyes sparkled in those pictures. I could not stop staring at myself. The pictures were proof that I was free. That I was me again.
I looked at the CD and reached for a snack. And I thought about how I can eat whatever I want now. There is no watchful eye mentally counting my calories ~ keeping the cupboard bare. I am no longer charged $20 to eat a home-cooked meal. I am no longer ridiculed for not cooking that home-cooked meal myself.
I can do what I want, say what I want, feel what I want, wear what I want. I am not some dress-up doll used to cloak in leather to be propped up on the back of a motorcycle for the whole valley to see ~ no I am middle-aged now, often without make-up, and finally comfortable in my own body not to care if I am not perfect.
Because perfect was never good enough anyway.
I can speak again. I have a voice. I can have an opinion on anything I want.
I see my family again on all holidays. I do not have to lie about where I am living. Where I am going. What I am doing.
There is no shame anymore. No more secrets. Even the writing I am doing has eliminated the secrets from the people I care about the most.
I think about all of these changes as I ponder what it is like for him to be sitting in jail right now. To have his freedom finally taken away from him. To be told what to do, when to do it. And to be isolated from family and friends.
It took the news of his jail sentence to wake me up to what I had blocked out for so long. To bring those horrible memories back up to the surface in dreams, flashbacks, and fleeting moments of sadness. To finally realize that I had to write down my truth, or they would never go away. He would still be controlling me in my head through those nightmares, those flashbacks. He would still be present in my life if I did not get rid of him by writing down all the ugliness of our time together and sharing it with the world.
He never wanted me to be a writer. He made fun of my dream every day. And it hit me today that the irony of my life story is that one of the biggest stories of my life will now be about him. And maybe there will come the book or the screenplay out of all of this ugliness that I have shared with the world. Because if you can skim off the scum, if you can sand down the rust, beneath the surface of all that pain and sadness is the beauty that was once there ~ that was once my life ~ that was once me.
Beneath the surface lies the freedom that never really left my side. Freedom was waiting in the distance for me all along. Freedom was God taking care of me through the whole ordeal and seeing me through to the other side. Where life is precious and pure and sweet.
Freedom led me to a new life where I can now help others as they had once helped me.
Freedom came with its own price ~ the scars beneath the surface that may have scabbed over ~ in order for me to survive.
But those scars are my battle wounds for my freedom. I paid the price for a new life. I earned my freedom. I survived.
Freedom is Glorious!
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