Written March 4th, 2007 - Women's Correctional Center

I am a list maker by nature - I feel the need to create lists of nearly everything. I thrive on routine and schedules. Its not that I can't be impulsive and decide one minute to go away for the weekend and be gone within the house _ its just that I like feeling organized and, I suppose, in control. The problem right now however, is that I want to leave the jail without any property so I don't ever have to go back here to get it when I am released from the court. So far, I've been successful although it meant going through more than three months worth of papers and ruthlessly tearing them up so I had only the most important ones remaining so I could mail them off to myself. When I decide to clean house I do it without any regrets. Maybe that's why I have no regrets in the choices I have made with regards to my marriage because leaving him was like going through the potato bin - seeking out the one rotten potato in order to protect the others from spoiling. Its a bad analogy but you get what I mean.

I'm an optimistic individual and I have a good, long fuse but when I reach the end of my patience - and my optimism - that's it. Game over. It took 8 years and I had finally had enough of being unhappy and sometimes even afraid that I did something about it. I wonder why he is surprised? I'm not one to be treated like a doormat and heaven only knows why I waited so damned long, but here I am.

That's what this journal is about. My struggle to stay sane after 8 years of marriage to a man who systematically tried to destroy everything good that I had built myself up to be. My momma and daddy didn't raise a mealy mouthed pushover so how he managed to turn me into one and why I allowed it to happen is definitely on the agenda of self discovery. So is why I went against all my instincts and married this man in the first place. I am not the type of woman how has this inner need to save a man from himself and wants to fix his poor, broken spirit. I hate ignorance and loathe incompetence. Maybe that's what drew me to him - as he is none of those things. Unfortunately his take charge and confident personality hid a broken spirit and anger so deep I'm not certain it can ever be fixed. S0, there I was in a marriage with a man who would praise me out of one side of his mouth, then yell at and degrade me with the other. Eventually, his right hand would reach out to hit me while his left could come later to comfort me. He kept me just confused enough about his behavior that I believed all the excuses I had made for him. The good times, when they happened, were just enough that I could almost forget about the bad ones.

What he wasn't counting on was the fact that underneath the shell of who I used to be I still had a light burning. I never believed that it was my fault like so many abused women do, and I damned well never thought that maybe I deserved it. I simply existed and nourished that light whenever I could so it wouldn't burn out. I waited... either for him to change or for my spirit to scream ENOUGH! and stand up and fight. Then one day, when we lost everything, I stood up. I stood up for myself. I stood up for my children. I stood up and decided that I had had enough and that if I didn't stand up no matter how I nourished that inner light it would fade and die, taking me with it.

The road before me will be a hard one I know. Standing tall and keeping to my decisions may be difficult but I am, if nothing else, a survivor. I will survive and come away from this bigger, better and stronger, I will do it so my beautiful daughters do not marry or become abusers. I will do it because I deserve better. I will do it so that someone can gain hope from me and change their own lives, and if I can, I will extend my hand and lift them up to stand tall beside me.

I will do it because I CAN.