Woebegotten memories, paving the road behind me

"You can't dwell on it Louise."

"I know, Boy. But I can't get rid of it either."

Sometimes I feel like I should affix a Vaccumm cleaner to my tail, and wiggle as I walk to be sure to leave no trace of where I've been. If I can't see it, maybe it doesn't exist. If I never had anything to look back on, maybe these nightmares would subside and I could have a clearer view of what I wanted to see ahead of me.

WARNING: The rest of this post is me. Just me. No Young John. No Benny. No lies. No vague, veiled or poetic musings. Just me.

I remember the night you threw your fist through the wall, and the day you blamed me for it. I was so frightened. Frightened of you, frightened of the mistakes I had made, frightened of what tomorrow meant. If I woke up tomorrow, it would only be worse. It would only make you more real and me more hateful of myself. What had I become?

Just a year before, I was a young, stupid, innocent girl. Struggling with my self-image, I was muddling through ok. Just ok. I worked hard and regretted not partying harder. I loved hard and regretted actualizing my dreams so early. Why hadn't I stayed Innocent? Why hadn't I pretended to understand adult relationships in that simple way we do before our youth is compromised?

Now, here I was, sitting in the bathroom, watching your face turn red and hearing the sounds of fury flying from your strong hands. It was easy to displace myself and forget the things you had said before and the wrongs you had already done, but now... Now you were busting up your own bathroom and swinging a piece of trim over my head like a banshee. Now you were smashing my watch, sending my rings flying into the sink.

Now, shit was real.

Not long after, I had packed my bags and set them at the door. You had left at eleven, quite literally howling at the moon. No answers. No reason. No one would explain to me what was wrong with my new husband. Why he preferred to disregard me. I had gone for a four a.m. run in the foggy river town in pitch blackness. I was so foolish to think I could find you in the dark. I was so foolish to think I wanted to find you. When I saw your car in the drive at the local bar, I was so foolish not to march right in and tell you to go to hell. To pack YOUR bags.

When you did come home that morning, you were furious at me. I don't even remember why. I do remembering imagining what it would feel like to jump in the river and float on down stream. Would it hurt to just stop breathing? Would it hurt to just keep running? In the dark? In my flip-flops? Without you? Why wouldn't you see why you hurt me?

All I had wanted was an explanation. A rational response for one god damned minute. Instead you went out with god knows who and did god knows what and then yelled at me for asking questions of you. For fearing you. For fearing myself, slipping fast down a slope headed in on direction: the death. The death of me, of my heart.


I will never know more truly than I did then what it is to lose your senses.Too consumed with the ever slowing and tired sounding thump of my heart, I forgot to pray. I forgot to listen. I forgot to see.

To pray for God's will and deliverance, even though I had sinned in marrying you in the first place.

To listen to His answers, answers that came pouring in from the Holy spirit, my friends and my family calling me to home and to safety.

To see the path before me straying from what I had wanted all along.

The goal quietly pushed aside, I lost all frame of reference. I married you because you said you loved Christ. Because you said you would protect me. Because you said you would love me. The moment I heard you say I do, I looked into your crystal blue eyes and realized I had married a dangerous, unfeeling serpent of Satan. I realized your grip on me would tighten and squeeze and pull at every nook and cranny, every crack and crevice of my heart until it burst, until I disappeared, until you won.

Why can't I get you out of my head?

Because you owned it in that brief fiery storm of my youth.

But I am a Phoenix.
Strong.
Proud.
Rebuilt.