Sticks and stones break only bones

The heart will lie for its own happiness,

if true or false, only when the soul is at peace

that’s when the heart is truly happy.

Once or twice a year I get a special call from a friend of mine, asking me if she can stay with us for a few days. “I finally have enough…I am leaving him,” she says each and every time it happens.

She is in a relationship with a man, who seems to be the reincarnation of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. He can be nice and sweet -when he tries to be- and then, after a while he can’t pretend anymore, he starts drinking again and his other personally comes out, the one that hurts her with words and gestures, then he becomes violent and offensive.

I know she is reading my blog, so this post is for you my dear friend.

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Her heart almost stopped as she heard him come home this night. The joy of her cooking for him gone, replaced by fear. For she heard the key drop and scuffling footsteps on the floor and she knew, there was no place to hide from his drunken rage. 

His eyes were blurred and yet wild with power and rage at her, not for anything she had done, but just because she was there. All the things wrong in his life were – at this moment – her fault alone and he thought, surely he could have his vengeance on his own wife. 

He started yelling and shouting, called her names and pushed her around.  It left her feeling isolated and alone and badly broken inside. As he passed out again, she pulled herself together for once more. She watched him as he lay there drunken and snoring and she cries. 

Tomorrow – f0r the hundreds time – he will be so sorry he hurt her. His promises to change will fall again like rain on the deserts and will bring a short relief. It will bring memories back of a time when love was new and he was mostly sober, memories of the man she thought would fulfill her dreams. 

Grasping to retain her sanity, trying to find the logic of why she is there she convinces herself to believe he is still there…somewhere. For if he is not, then she is alone with her dreams that have died so long ago. So afraid to face tomorrow alone, thinking she is worthless and never believing she has the power to be all she wants to be. 

Tomorrow will be better, he promised didn’t he? Tomorrow he will stop drinking. All the love she has unselfishly given has been carelessly thrown away. For she has forgotten, you cannot help someone who does not want help. Tears, pleading, and her love falls on deaf ears and are wasted. Thrown out like trash, for they are of no real importance to him.

For if he really, truly cared, none of this would be happening. Apologies and tears cannot alter the recurring facts and actions. Tomorrow, she says…tomorrow, if he doesn’t change, then I will leave. The words come easy, they have come too many times before.

She lays awake all night, feeling her inner fear, the loneliness of her heart. The overwhelming guilt for accepting this treatment she knows is not right. 

While her spirit slowly dies in his cage, the key to the door is in her pocket. For deep inside, she knows the truth her soul cannot hide from her. She may not be responsible for the situation she is in, but she is responsible for her own actions…her own life…her own joy. 

She is responsible for how tomorrow will be for herself. As sleep comes slowly to her now, she smiles thinking of tomorrow.

 

Tomorrow is a new beginning

If he doesn’t change, then I will leave

Nothing is worth this…tomorrow

…but what if tomorrow never comes?

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Scars