I am navigating the day on the heels of a terrible dream in which I am at a pool with people from my other life, my former life. A swimsuit cover up falls open to expose my pronounced scars and a comment is made he should have “just done everyone a favor and finished the job”. My heart drops as I shrink; withdrawing, defeated, embarrassed that everyone has not only seen the scars, but heard the comment and not called it out.

My children are at the pool and I sense they are torn between keeping the peace so they can enjoy those who have been absent from their lives these six years, and defending me. I attempt to defend myself but quickly retreat, feeling a familiar inescapability that although he’s gone, his power and cruelty outlives him. The others at the pool call to the children to join them and I make the painful decision that they must see for themselves, helplessly watching as they jump in the pool as I walk away to protect myself.

As I am prone to do after difficult dreams, I awoke and immediately began a project. Focused on the excitement of traveling to see my best friend who I’ve known since eighth grade, I went about looking for a particular item to pack. In searching for it, I digressed to anxiously cleaning out drawers of business cards and old receipts, the familiar physical purging of churning negative emotions.

Sorting through a stack of old cards I found a chilling reminder, a punctuation of sorts, to my dream. On the back of one of my own cards, the words M Johnson you are a cruel man are written in a child’s handwriting. It sends chills down my spine, especially to find it this day. Though on another day I might find a place in my heart to be kinder in my assessment of why did what he did, today I am reminded of what was likely always a distorted filter that I looked through.

While as babies we may all have been born good, that doesn’t translate to adults being able to access an inherent good. However sad the experiences that shape the minds and hearts of those who perpetrate violence and evil, there is no denying that anyone who comes near these people runs the risk of being destroyed in one way or another. We can’t love it out of them, we can’t save them from themselves, we can’t demonstrate that goodness prevails and dispel their darkness.

In the end, we can only save ourselves.