Fight

Posted on December 17, 2011 by Lisette d. Johnson

I see my daughter has liked a poem posted on facebook that is rather desperate. I go to check on her and she is asleep. I sit next to her, kiss her forehead, and smooth her hair and tell her I love her. She sleeps so peacefully. I watch as her chest rises and falls quietly, and notice her beautiful face absent of all makeup, her rosy cheeks a reminder of the toddler whose sweet fingers intertwined mine as she held on to my hand. I remember leaving her, peeling those fingers away, one by one, extricating myself from her, feeling it so necessary. I wanted her to be independent. She was not ready to stop needing me. I did not know my child. I still do not know her.

I lay down next to her and hold her tightly now, my body puzzled into hers like we once were before she was born, fitted together. I’m listening to her rhythmic breathing, and I pray. There are no words. I simply think of God and match my breath to hers. She is warm and soft and once again, for this short time, the child for whom I could fix what was broken.

So young to understand the impermanence, that there are no guarantees. Whose pain is greater, that she does not feel grounded here? That she has considered her options?

So cruel to contemplate how I could live if I lost her. I could not survive with only half my heart. I think of her brother and what would be left for him without us.

So maybe there are words to my prayer. God who gave her life the first time, do not leave her alone as I have. I am a mother watching this beautiful tortured soul struggle to find herself, to come of age, in the midst of the messy life we have been left to clean and this utter darkness as she struggles to see the light from the cover. Surround her with protection from the world, from herself.

I smell her hair, very sweet and pleasant, her scent this my child. I cannot reassure her it is just a bad dream, cannot make the bad dream go away.

Little one you have to fight. I do not want to leave you. Yet I peel my body from yours and slip out of your bed and room as I see it is me who is needy now. Me who would hold onto you when you need to be your own woman.

I am not the perfect mother and his words echo about how bad a mother I was. I sometimes don’t even know the truth. I want nothing more than to be a good mother and if love is enough, I am. Even now, after all this time, his voice is so clear.

Was I not a good wife, nor mother? Were you just repeating the voice you heard in my head, or were you that voice itself?

Hold on to life even when it is easier letting go. Hold on to my hand even when I have gone away from you. unknown

Her children rise up and call her blessed, her husband also, and he praises her. Proverbs 31:28

 

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The Lost Journal

Posted on November 25, 2011 by Lisette d. Johnson

As I begin to write in my journal again, something I have not done for months, I mistakenly open a forgotten journal, restored from my old computer. In it is email correspondence between he and I that last summer. Discussing separation, indicating his desire to change; how much he loves me and doesn’t want to lose his family and home. Too little, too late. So complacent for so long. So willing to continue his behavior until everything began to unravel. To read the emails is to experience him again. The person I married, who vowed to love me, honor me, cherish me, protect me. The person who cared little over the years he had done none of those things.

He writes he wants to change. I see someone in that email just like you or I. Earnestly trying to undo a mistake. But he made different choices, choices you or I would not make. They were not mistakes. They were purposeful acts to control me. What is said cannot be unsaid, what is done cannot be undone.

It is sad to read the emails because in my responses I see I have let go, finally, of any hope that he will indeed change after so many years of trying to figure out a way to make our relationship work. It is clear to see as I read I have let go of hope for my marriage. You see, it was not our marriage. It was mine; a relationship I invested in, not him.

I remember wanting to believe him, that what he was saying was true. I remember accepting it had not been true, any desire to change, the many times I pleaded for him to stop, pleaded for him to leave me alone. It is clear to see we were irreparable.

I remember thinking apart from one another we would be so much better than together. I now understand this would not have been the case. He would have been the same. He was not willing to work to change. History had proved again and again there would be no reprieve. With each email of mine, a more final resolve. A determination to get on with my life. An acknowledgment of the truth, an emotional separation. A reconnection with myself. With each email of his, he edged closer to the ultimate end. Declarations of love, like those over the years, always countered by pain. I love you but I will hurt you now. Final declarations of love, painfully expressed with his last words ‘I love you too much to live without you’ seconds before he shot me. And kept shooting me.

Love…..he took mine and murdered it. He made it into something ugly. And me, in it, damaged. Love=anger. Love=control. Love=pain. Love=humiliation. Love=harm. Love=loss. Love=sadness.

 This is how I was loved. This is what his version of love felt like.

Damaged people are dangerous, they know they can survive. Josephine Hart

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The Truth

Posted on November 6, 2011 by Lisette d. Johnson

The truth.

The truth is I am not brave. I am not courageous. I’ve done nothing spectacular to earn my spot on this earth. I survived by God’s choice, in the grace of His gift of will and tenacity.

In truth I am not fearless as I may seem when I write and speak. The truth is I am gripped with fear. Fear that someone will try to harm me once again. Fear I cannot even identify, that comes from some unknown place deep within. The truth is I fight it with every fiber of my being to not let fear control me.

The truth is I made some serious mistakes, had some downright stupid lapses in judgment, and the truth is I continue to stumble along trying to help the next person be aware by understanding how very unaware I was. The truth is I felt, on some inexplicable gut level, I was in danger and I chose to ignore those signals because I didn’t understand them, or that he, anyone, was capable.

I choose to advocate for intimate violence victims because, frankly, no one advocated for me in adequate time. All the people I knew who had experienced it only came out after I was shot to tell me their truth. Most still don’t want it to be public knowledge. Still, after all this time, they carry a shame that isn’t theirs.

I would love to do just what they did. Put it away as a most unfortunate experience, a relationship that happened. One which is so highly emotionally charged it is self-preservation to leave the story behind, maintain the secrecy, and build a new life that doesn’t include those ugly scenes.

When I want to curl up and wish it away, go about my life and leave it lay, I remember what it felt like to learn those women knew what I had lived, yet could not bring themselves to share it. I remember what it felt like to feel so very alone, not the bruised and black eyed woman in the poster, but the emotionally battered woman whose injuries were invisible and undetectable to everyone else. The one who didn’t call a hotline to report he’s calling me names again, threatening me with what he’ll do ‘if’ again, using my children to control me again.

I have a prayer. It goes like this

Dear Lord,
If you want me to be the light, give me the candle
If you want me to be heard, give me the voice
If you want me to lead, show me the way
If you want me to reach out, hold my hand, tightly. Never let me go.

The truth is I believe I survived to do something. Since I wasn’t handed written instructions that day, the only truth I know is as long as I am given the words and the voice, as long as my hand is secure, I am being called to reach for someone else’s and support them. And God will give both of us the strength. He will give each of us that strength if we don’t look away from the light.

‘And now Father, send us out to do the work you have given us to do, to love and serve you…’ BCP

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Monsters In The Closet

Posted on October 26, 2011 by Lisette d. Johnson

Living in violence….

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Again

Posted on October 16, 2011 by Lisette d. Johnson

I’m writing as I sit overlooking the river. It is beautiful. Breathtaking. It is deceiving, the river, how serene it looks on the surface when just below the current is so strong. I am in the low filtered light of a fall afternoon, the leaves changing, ever so subtly, marking the death of summer.

I have this sense of isolation. As people pass by I think I know something you do not. Something secret. I know what death feels like, both to die silently while still living and to leave my body in physical death; an observer for a few minutes before being allowed to rejoin.

I attended my high school reunion specifically to meet up again with a school mate who piloted a 777 cargo jet as it lost three engines and crashed a year or so ago. When I read his story, saw the pictures of little left but bits and pieces, I recognized the miracle of his survival, and that of his entire crew. I finally felt like there was someone who could understand. Feeling, finally, that I am not alone in this suspended life of before, and after. In him I find someone who also feels the weight of the gift.

Here we are, he and I, thankful to be alive, desperately trying to reconcile why we are here, what our purpose is; what we are to do with this blessing of a second chance at life. It is an odd place. A paradox of burying the pieces while reliving the event over and over, churning up and under, converse water flows. The swift current pulling downward, under this placid surface. Entangled out of sight.

 He appears happy and cheerful, as I remember him, as I am. But I know he must have dark hours, too. The video playing, the questions circling around, with no answers clear enough to make sense. Both of us on our own separate journey in a parallel exploration of why. Why me. Holding this bewildering gift; so precious, so precarious, so fragile. Refusing to surrender. Struggling to use it. Searching.

 “Every day each one of us has to reinvent ourselves. We have a chance to create a new ending. It is the most difficult work.” Lisette Johnson

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