Parents preach the importance of maximizing memories with their children, emphasizing the relatively fast pace in which these precious moments will pass. Often, examples such as the last time you nurse your newborn, or the final night you tuck in your toddler are used to justify the significance of making every experience count. “They will grow up before you know it”, echoes in my mind as I reflect on the past five years.
Yes, its true what they say. However, for parents caught in this judicial system Jumanji, witnessing my children age has shifted from enjoyably watching them evolve, to counting down the days until I can close the game, and lock the box of turmoil away forever. Fourteen years. Fourteen years is how long I may have to endure a burden that was bestowed upon me, by trying to protect the precious lives I so desperately cherish.
Stigmas shame survivors, and society projects a demeaning double standard. Victims of domestic violence are encouraged to leave their abusers, yet protection is scarce, or hidden in a legal labyrinth.
Coercive control continues, past the relationship’s demise, and accountability becomes a majestic, mythical creature, chased but never captured.
“Why did I stay”? Please stop asking this question. Understand, that staying was not a choice or a preference. Rather it was means of survival. Weakness was not my alias. Notable, divine strength encompasses the heart of a women who subjugates herself to harm, in an attempt to protect those she loves. Responsibility doesn’t belong to the victim and focusing on our “why” implies that what happened to us, was at some extent, a consequence we accepted or one we deserved.
We stayed because we were scared. Violence, we witnessed escalate from condemnation and criticism, to gaslighting and manipulation, to shoving and pushing, to rough hands around our necks and loaded guns to our heads. Immeasurable uncertainties suffocated our judgment, and the question as to how far and to what length this person was capable of, drowned our hope. These events all occurred while the perpetrator held his position above us, his status of complete control. How far would this person go once they lost their prize?
We stayed because we love our children. Abuse became our cross to bear, because it meant our children didn’t have to relocate, or disrupt their only known sense of security. It meant our children were fed. It meant that we were not huddled together in a small SUV, on a February morning in Ohio, with our trunk full of the few items we managed to grab as we crept out the door. It meant that we could still intercede on their behalf and revert the vicious projections from their fathers upon ourselves. We protected them by sacrificing ourselves.
We stayed because we felt we had no choice. We worried that no one would believe us, and sometimes we questioned whether or not we believed ourselves.
We stayed until we couldn’t, anymore. Until, one day the realization that your life, and your children’s lives might be traded for a man’s anguished attempt to divulge his dominance.
Perhaps one could move past such events, if leaving meant escaping. If removing oneself from such a chamber, meant the torture would end.
More often, the dragon flies from his perch and pursues his prey. Harassment haunts us and intimidation attempts prevail. Finances are depleted, reputations are slandered. Fire breathing frivolous motions are filed and now the courtroom becomes the ring, where he ventures to reclaim his possession and his victory.
Our children, our reasons for staying, our reasons for leaving, have become collateral. Shuffled from one home to another, dangled like the mouse before the lion. Subjugated to malicious tactics, surrendered to a predator. Defenseless as their protector can no longer stand before them. Innocent, malleable souls, exposed to their mother’s self-proclaimed enemy. When did children become possessions, another classification of assets to divide?
Masks made of wool, marked with self-righteousness and imitated religion cover these wolves, and they remain free to roam the world, presumably on the hunt. While we wait in the shadows and the brush. Praying for light. Praying for peace. Praying for rescue. Praying for a moment when the attention refocuses from awaiting eighteenth birthdays, to celebrating their fifth. We pray for a miraculous intervention, a God given gift, a breath from above that resurrects our faith. We pray to live without fear, and delight in the moment, before our opportunity deteriorates.
Comments