As children, we know to stick up for a child who is being picked on by the class bully.  But as adults, where is the line between helping and sticking our big fat nose where it doesn’t belong, in someone else’s business?

Over the last 18 months, I’ve spent a lot of time learning about the patterns and cycles of abuse – how to spot them and how to stop them.  One of the things that has kept me up at night, lately, are the red flags.

Red flags are often little, subtle things that someone who is being abused might slip into conversation here and there.  They are showing a glimpse of their reality, usually in a way that can be easily explained if they are called on it and decide not to open up.

Red flags are a cry for help.  They are the first step to breaking the cycle of abuse.  But they often go unnoticed, and the cycle remains intact.  After all, they are usually so innocuous that the average person would think nothing of them.

A woman came into my place of business not long ago, and though she was a stranger, I could see red flags popping up with every word she spoke.  It would have been entirely inappropriate for me, at work and in a professional capacity, to step in and say something.  But I haven’t stopped thinking about her.  Should I have reached out to her in some way? 

I think about the woman I randomly helped the other night and I wonder – where is the difference?  Do I have to wait until someone is battered and walking along the freeway to offer my help?

I think about my own red flags, and how long it took for me to raise them.  How I didn’t even know I was waving them around.  And how it felt for someone to notice them.

I am so lucky to have people in my life who took the time to not only recognize them for what they were, but who dared to say something and then offer to help me. 

To everyone whose actions, words or thoughts went out to me and my family: 

Thank you.  For caring.  For helping.  For being there.  For giving me strength.  For listening.  For being kind.  For being patient.  For everything.  It is long overdue.  But a day hasn’t gone by that I haven’t felt grateful for having you in my corner.

xoxo

~Dre

In a rush to get home, I was moving too quickly to stop, but slowly enough to notice that she wore nice clothes, carried a small purse, and had beautiful brunette curls that bounced against her shoulders with every step.

When I took the next exit, the girls asked where we were going and I told them that we were turning around so we could offer that woman a ride.  There are no street lights along that stretch of the road, and anyway… she was miles from anywhere decent.  

We pulled up just as she reached the point where two freeways merge into one, and I was relieved to have gotten there before she had to cross two lanes of traffic in semi-darkness.  When I offered her a ride she hesitated, glanced back at the freeway and shivered, delicately, before nodding.

As I drove I snuck a sideways glance at my passenger and saw she was thin, in her early forties and pretty in a quiet way.  She was making her way to the Greyhound bus station.  The local buses had stopped running an hour before, so she had decided to walk.  She hoped she could still catch a bus leaving town.

The woman told me nothing else of herself, not even her name, and I didn’t ask.  She crossed her arms and looked out the window, and I couldn’t help but wonder about the thoughts running through her mind.

The bus station looked deserted as I pulled into the parking lot and I told her I hoped she could still find one tonight.  She sighed, grabbed her purse and a small bag I hadn’t noticed before.  “At least I’m in town now, and not on the freeway.  It was scary out there.” 

For the first time, she looked me full in the face and I saw her bruised right eye, her cut lip.  “Thank you,” she whispered, and opened the door.  At the same moment, we both saw the bloody tissue she had dropped and she snatched it up, quickly. 

“It’s okay,” I said.

And for her, I hope it will be.

No white noise, no static, no background music.

For someone who has always found comfort in words, the silence is sometimes deafening.

Have I disappeared from your life?

Most likely so, and I apologize.  I’m still here.  I still observe, listen, read.  But so often, I can’t find the words to join in the conversation.

It’s hard to explain the changes I’ve gone through.  Harder, still, to introduce people to the person I’ve become.  I’m still me, and yet I’m not.

For the most part, I’m somebody better than I was.

There’s this fluff that we carry around with us, over the top of who we are at our very core.  It shields us and gives us a buffer between our most bare, essential selves and the world around us.

I feel like I’ve lost mine.  Or, to be more precise, I’ve torn it off and set it ablaze.

I had a life that I loved, and it turned out that nothing about it was what I thought it was.  My carefully made plans, my hopes and dreams, all had to be released like balloons floating off into the distance.

It’s amazing to discover the person I’ve become, and to create a new life with new dreams, but I feel vulnerable.

I’m starting over as my truest, most authentic self.

And I have nothing to hide behind.

Given the amount of time I spend getting them to fall asleep each night, you might think that those photos are my trophies, my way of celebrating another successful bedtime battle where I won and they lost.

But no, I don’t think so.  I think I’m trying to capture the way my heart feels when I’m awake and they’re asleep.  It’s this mixture of love and pride and nostalgia.  Of holding on and letting go, remembering what was and looking forward to what’s ahead.  There they are, asleep and growing.  Always growing.  Up, up and away.

As each evening draws to a close, I plan to fall into bed as soon as they settle down for the night.  But instead, my mind moves from the necessities of the day to other things.  When the house is quiet and the kids are asleep, I find myself suddenly and inexplicably wide awake.

My mind fills with so many thoughts, but I can’t put them into words.

So I sit there in the dark and watch them sleep.  I listen to their little girl breaths and watch their little girl chests rise and fall.  I reach out and touch their smooth little girl cheeks, soft as a feather.

After a time, my mind quiets itself.

And finally, I sleep.

I’ll be thirty-four. 

This year, my birthday is also an anniversary of sorts, and it has me struggling.

In five weeks, Jeremy will be able to say he has been clean for a full year. 

In five weeks, it will have been a year since we separated.

A year. 

And I’m not over it, yet.  I’m nowhere near over it, and some naive part of me  thought that I would be. 

Nearly a year later, I’m only just starting to come to terms with everything that happened. 

Leading up to this point, my focus has been on trying to survive and rebuild and adjust.  I’ve been so intent on moving forward that I haven’t  allowed myself to look back.

People ask me all the time how I am, and I tell them, truthfully, that I am well.  I’m happy and I’m at peace.  I no longer live in fear and I have so much hope for the future. 

I feel strong and confident and alive.  I am more myself now than I have ever been in my life.

But I struggle, too.  Life is good in so many ways, but it is also hard.

I’m happy.  And I’m sad. 

On my birthday, I’ll celebrate.  And grieve. 

The passing of a year.