It had rained most of the day and the outside was cooler. Arial sat on the back porch in the dark and stared out across the tiny yard that had become home. She did a lot of thinking over the span of her life. She let the thoughts of the past wash away with the rain. It was harder to do this time; it was close to home you might say. There always seemed to be steps to problems and they tended to end the same way each time. She had never considered that emotional abuse was a form of domestic violence. You really don’t see that much on TV and it tends not to get the same notice. So in the end she had come to realize that it seemed to be the worse of the two, for her anyway.
Even though Jack played a major role in her recovery of her past, it seemed that lately he brought a lot of it back in full form. Maybe you can recover, she thought, but you never truly shake it completely. She found odd moments where she had begun to stop making eye contact. She felt that old uncomfortable feeling of being guilty for talking to someone. As time progressed she had started to be that young woman again caught in a prison of insecurity and doubts. Could she really go through this all over again?
She sat silently for a long time just thinking about everything and bouncing from one situation to the next. Today had been difficult. She had called her mom, who suffered from Alzheimer’s and for the first time, her mom did not know who she was. It was a punch in her stomach at this knowledge but it also taught her something. We base our emotions and feelings for another person, based on shared memories. A shared life and past, that once one person loses the ability to remember these things, they become a stranger and she seen the fear of losing her mom’s spirit.
She silently mourned this spiritual death and the darkness once again had its cold fingers easing down the back of her neck. A deep sadness and loneliness set in her own soul as she felt the need of arms around her.
Still as the night progressed on, she remained alone in the dark and it ate away slowly at her soul. It was always harder to fight the demons away at night time. The world felt smaller and more confined in darkness and there was no escaping it. Still she sat alone not only fighting the darkness creeping over her flesh, but the sheer ability to mourn without breaking over the loss. Anymore it seemed that loneliness was a constant companion in her life. Always she felt the need to reach out for a rock to lean briefly on, and finding nothing but air. So she pushed the pain and hurt to the back and tried to focus on things she could change and do something about.
Every single moment of the past 20 years was like a video. Some parts would replay themselves over and over. Good memories fast forwarded through without pause, but the bad ones, well they replayed over and over. There was no escape from it and she learned how to put it on the back burner. That is what hurt her the most. The one, who helped her to recover, was now the one bringing everything back. Each morning she would wake up in a panic. What would happen today? Would the life she lived change this day or would she suffer to wake up to another one? She admitted to herself and a friend that she could no longer take advice and try it. That with the past year of doing all she could, she still had remained at “go”. The more effort, the more heart, and the more distant he became. Was it time to let go?
The night he had stated wanting a divorce, she had taken her wedding band off. It lay on the shelf gathering dust for all these months. It hurt to take it off, but more that he never noticed it gone. She felt like something major was missing, naked without it. Now as she stared down at her bare finger she realized that it no longer felt that way. Maybe it was at that time, that in her mind, her marriage was over in many ways.
Arial stood up and took one last look into the dark. Turning her back on these thoughts she went inside and shut her door.
Fire and Ice. Ice kills, too. :-(
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