Today is Thursday. A year has passed.
Exactly one year ago today, I was sitting on our couch, watched by a trooper as the state police executed a search warrant on our house. I was a little chilly – our furnace had broken down the days earlier – and I really had to use the bathroom, but the trooper wouldn’t let me off the couch. He also wouldn’t let me know what time it was, or even what the the hell was going on, at one point asking me “so you really have no idea what this is about?” When I assured him I didn’t, he made one of those sounds that conveys disbelief and pity and amusement all at once and said,
“Then this must be a strange feeling.”
After an hour or so, with my husband in cuffs, they left, leaving a path of literal and figurative destruction in their wake. I called my mother. I called his mother. I posted something to social media threatening to burn the house down with everyone in it. My mother called back and told me to pack a few days of clothes and go to an uncle’s house. No one had any experience with this, no one knew what to expect, and no one wanted me left alone. As I left my house, I snapped the top photo and posted it, saying something like “it looks like such a nice day, doesn’t it?”
Now, here I am, same house, with a photo taken in the same driveway.
After a lot of false starts, the legal aspect of things is finally moving along, laying out his options almost exactly a year later. We’ve had our own issues between us. While the honesty can be painful, it’s very much needed after years of lies. At times, I’ve wondered why I’m here, and what . I don’t talk about things, because I know I’m silently (and not so silently) judged for everything. We’re barely into November and I’m already dreading the holidays.
But I can say with certainty, a year later, I’m not broken.
What a nightmare! I don’t know how you ever really recover from something like this.
Slowly, if you ever do at all. Right now, my priority is me. I’ll help him, and support him through his problems, and be his wife, but not at the expense of my own wellbeing.