Trigger warning: The poem featured in this month's blog is from the perspective of a person in an abusive situation. It's dedicated to all those who have ever faced the dilemma of how to deal with it.

You might think the obvious answer is "get out, any way you can", but for those of us who have been there, we know first hand that this so called "obvious" answer is not as simple as it seems. And the options we have may offer little to know assistance in keeping us, or those we love who are also threatened, safe.

If you choose to read it, please do so with an open heart, and compassion. You cannot know the "right thing" for someone to do, unless YOU are the one walking along that very path yourself. And then the answer you might come up with, will still only apply to your situation.

And if you are in an abusive situation, I see you, I hear you, I love you, and you matter. Please believe that you are worth fighting for and give yourself permission to get out - any way you can.

​“I want to cut my hair off!”

My excited voice entered the salon a beat before I did. Michael was a bit surprised to see me as I had just been there a week ago touching up my roots to keep my tresses gypsy dark. He paused in what he was doing and smiled. 

“Do you mind if I sit until you have a sec?” I asked a little more hesitantly. “I have inspiration pics and want to hear your thoughts.”

He waved me to a chair while he went back to cutting. And as I sat there fidgeting, I thought “Am I really going to do this?”

I have a deep attachment to my hair. When I was a kid, it was a golden brown wavy thick mass. Ironic considering I was bald at my first birthday. Family legend has it a bow was pasted to my head so that people would know I was a girl. As though it mattered to a one year old what others thought.

At some point in my early elementary years, my hair was cut off into an ugly bowl shape. No idea why, and I remember being really upset by this. But then it grew out again. As I got older I kept it long until the day my dad took me for a trim at the salon.

The gum chewing girl was gossiping away with the stylist next to her when I heard “Oh shit”. I came out of my daydreaming to see my long locks had been hacked off accidentally as she laughed at something her friend said. I cried for weeks.

It was like they were always watching me. Judging me. Finding me lacking. Even when I went to sleep each night, their eyes glistened in the darkness. They soaked up every ounce of ambient light, leaving me vulnerable, cold, and frightened.

What if they came alive?
Would they replace me?
And would she finally be happy?

By daylight, they weren’t any less scary. Frozen in perpetual RBF, always immaculately dressed, the dolls seemed to be a constant delight to the parental figure who claimed the name of “mommy”.

​Some even had their own cabinet, kept sparkling clean like everything else in the structure where we lived.

I, however, had the audacity to BE “less than”… 

I am many things. 
But there are many things, I am not.

I am NOT your ride AND die. 
I am NOT the woman BEHIND the man.
And I am most certainly NOT proving my loyalty by staying home, when I could be out living my life.

Perhaps we can blame this current set of mentalities, like so many other things in modern times, also on the pandemic. Because while such nonsense did in fact exist before, it seems to have taken on epic proportions lately.

​Like this ridiculous notion that I, as a woman, am supposed to prove myself, to a man. Or that I am to stand unflinchingly BEHIND him as his “Queen”, while he goes out and creates a life for “us”.

There are multiple flaws to these being essential qualities for a “good woman”. 

​There is nothing sexy about unbuttered toast. 

It sat in front of me, a single piece, sliced diagonally on the plate. A very small cobalt blue plate. With a glass of water in a lovely wine glass. It was as though serving this poor substitute for a decadent drip of a buttered biscuit on attractive tableware, would make up for it’s complete lack of luster.

The toast looked like I felt. Flaky, dry, as though I would disintegrate when touched. I was practically parched for anything that might have some taste. But this cardboard looking imitation appeared to have been sitting out too long in a desert sun.