The Threat of Him Still Haunts Me

Shadow of a Man

I'm sitting in my car looking at the ducks swimming in the pond at the park - trying to stop shaking, calm down, and breathe. Trying to remember my grounding exercises from therapy - "notice how your feet feel touching the floor...count the cars passing by...breathe."

I just left the doctor's office feeling so very humiliated from having to explain my medical history which is riddled with the stories of my illnesses which were caused by his abuse.

If that weren't embarrassing enough, his probation officer called while they were taking my blood for labs, and I had to answer because he had just shown up out of the blue last week, and I needed to know if they knew he had been here.

The terms of his probation include a requirement that he get permission from his probation officer before leaving the state. I purposefully moved over a thousand miles away to try to ensure that I would be safe. The probation officer was stumbling around in our conversation with lots of "ums" and "ers" and "wells" while she tried to convince me that she had given him permission, while at the same time trying to convince me that she had not known that he was coming. Both of those things can't be true - unless she just, at some point, had summarily given him a free pass to leave the state whenever he wanted. This "justice" system isn't very just.

It's been almost three years since I fled from our home after he almost killed me. "No," I tell the probation officer, "he didn't try to talk to me while he was here...that I know of. After all, the last time he showed up here, a few months ago, he just texted a picture of a package that he had placed outside the gate where I live with no explanation, just the picture. Should I not feel threatened by that? Should I not be concerned when I see a picture of him on facebook at a restaurant here in the town where I now live?"

The nurse, who had heard my phone conversation, looks down at me sympathetically and says, "They will always try to push the boundaries." All I can think is that she, or someone she cares about, has experienced this same type of misogynistic abuse from a man. I appreciate her kindness, but I also hate the fact that this crap is so common that she understands my situation all too well.

4 ducks on the pond, three geese...one red bird in the tree...breathe...breathe...breathe.