A violent life meets a violent end
And yet I find myself sobbing
Sobbing over the memories unearthed by your death.
The door reopened
The coffin exhumed
The terror in my chest
The fear in my heart
The memory of meeting you
The article said you were in your late 40s or early 50s.
I also thought you were younger when we met.
Like me, they were wrong.
You were almost 60 when you died.
The pain you must have felt.
Hopefully you didn’t feel anything.
Or maybe you felt it all
Like the bruises you left
And the permanent scars
The violent way you screamed at me
Did the tires of the cars scream just as loud as they tried to stop?
Was it dark outside?
As dark as the cheap Canadian whiskey you would spend the last of our money on so we would be stranded on the hill.
Unable to leave for days.
Unable to get help.
No gas.
No phone bill paid.
Until a friend would stop by with a few bucks to get us to the next job.
The site I would drive you to because you had no license from all the DUIs.
Did the drivers of the cars fumble to get their licenses out when the police arrive, terrified and permanently scared from what just happened
Unable to get help
Unable to erase what happened?
Did they cry?
In the article, you were unidentified.
In the text, you were immediately named.
As though you were my friend.
“I’m sorry to hear…”
The first I had heard, and now given the unfortunate task of proving the details.
What an idiot to challenge that road.
In front of that venue.
But then again, you’d probably done it a million times before.
We’ve ran from venues across the street a decade and a half earlier.
When things were good.
At least when we wanted people to think things were wonderful!
Before we made it up the hill, to home
Where you blacked out to Iron Maiden and locked me outside in nothing but a bath towel in winter.
Or where you didn’t like that I smoked cigarettes so you dumped your bottle of chew spit on my head as a reminder of how gross tobacco is.
Or where I locked myself in the car during the summer for two hours as you circled it, daring me to come out simply because I wanted to make coffee when you were too hungover.
“Call the police”
I did.
You would always flee the property.
“Call us when he comes back”
But there’s never any urgency to return – for either party.
“I’ll never do it again”
And you didn’t.
You found a way to never do it again.
But you sure found a way to do something different.
Until the day you took a closed fist punch straight to my chest.
In my heart
The one thing I’ve had to repair to live
To be here on this earth
My parents had to put me under as a child to save my life.
I remember your hands around my throat.
The look in your eyes
The stillness of the night.
The stickiness of the Amador heat.
And then the punch.
In that moment
I knew I didn’t want to be a dateline episode
And my planning
My wake up call
My snap out of it
My exit
My survival
My future
Began
It took a few months
But on Black Friday, I saw my opening
I packed everything
I called in help
And I left
And it still took a few more weeks of survival to completely exit from the relationship with you.
To preserve what I worked so hard for
Our company
My company
My reputation
My friends
My future
My safety
But your exit from this world felt so fast.
And it was jarring.
How will your kids handle it?
I’m sure they expected a slower passing, more years, more time.
We all expect more time.
Usually we want it.
I feel like I wanted some kind of closure
Although I wasn’t expecting it
Through all my years of recovery.
You haven’t been a real person in my life for almost two decades
Just a figure in a cautionary tale to others
A chapter in a story I share to educate how hard it is to leave
How easy it is to find yourself in a similar relationship
And how it isn’t
Wasn’t
My fault.
As I cry tonight, I didn’t feel sad.
I felt
Freedom
Release
Emptiness
Alone
Confusion
Conclusion
I am now the only person living who went through our shared experience.
You are no longer here.
You will never be able to share your point of view.
I’ll never be a step in your recovery.
I’ll never get an apology.
I’ll never get to tell you how much you scared me
Scarred me
How much I hated you
And how much I thank you for showing me how strong I can be
Had to be
And can help others to be.
I wonder how strong your friends had to be that night.
How strong the onlookers had to be.
The drivers.
I’m sorry this is how it ended for you.
I’m sorry a violent life ended in such a violent way.
I’m sorry social media will be flooded with good memories and words of positivity and praise.
I’m sorry I can’t end this with happiness and kindness.
For you never gifted that courtesy to me.
There was never kindness without manipulation.
There was never happiness without anger.
There was never positivity without aggression.
There was never praise without insult.
There was never a good memory without violence.
I hope the demons that plagued you are now at rest and your next go at life has some peace.
And may our paths never cross again.
Mimosa Mom 