Another Beautiful Morning

I recognize faces, and the names won’t come.

I recognize names, and can’t picture the face.

I’ve made the strangest bedfellows. Baseball bats and FBI profilers and the dread of morning.

Another beautiful morning.

Another shower. Showers are hard. I’m so slow, but I don’t spend any extra time in them anymore. Showers make me cry. Showers were an onslaught of emotions and memories and desperate pleas for my safety and sanity until the charge was dismissed. I went over every detail, every moment, every shred of evidence and every scrap of hope. I built and rebuilt my case over and over and over, but my sugar scrub and razor couldn’t help me. There is no soap strong enough to wash the scum of his violence out of my life. I stick to the drill now, nothing extra. Shampoo. Conditioner. Sugar scrub. Shave. Body wash. Rinse my hair. Wash my face. Get the fuck out, and draw the curtain on those ghosts for the day.

Another mad dash to make it to the bus stop on time.

Another fight to stay present, stay focused, stay moving.

Log in, check the emails, check the notes.

I have two legal pads worth of notes on my desk.

I write everything down.

I remember about 20% of it without cues, reminders, alerts, tasks, and lists.

The deeper stuff is there. Enough that I can do the job, and do it well. But I forget the little things, and have to ask. Have to revisit. Have to stop and think. Have to face that opaque wall in my head and try to find the writing I’ve left, the map to the other side, the clues. I scale that god damn wall all day long.

I look in the mirror and see the corners of my mouth turn down a little more as time passes, and my right eyelid droops lower and lower. I don’t know exactly why, but my face changed after the attack. It was crooked, slack…like it just couldn’t quite come back to life. I drink the water and take the walks and diligently sleep at night, but my face tells me what I already know: I will never be the same. All systems are not go. I know part of my brain died, cell by cell. I think other parts of me died too, or were damaged beyond recovery.

As I write this, my ears have started to ring. My heart rate is a little bit high. I can’t compartmentalize quite enough to escape the emotion. To block out the flashbacks. To not feel my body being dragged across the floor by a fistful of my hair. Back to the couch, back to the corner, where he could keep one foot on the ground with his left leg, a knee on my chest with his right left, and crush my throat with both of his hands as my screams died too.

He had to drag me past the antique table I had just painted. Red, for Ohio State. We found that table at the vendors mall, with a little tag that said it was from the house we had just bought.

He smashed it the day before, when he strangled me on the floor. You’d think the floor would be easier, but it wasn’t. I bet it hurt his knees. I can’t remember. It hurt my back, so bad. I was unconscious at least once during that attack, long enough to lose bowel control and not even know it. Long enough to leave me confused, weak, and tired. But he couldn’t kill me, so he had to try again the next day, with a new plan, a new place, a new position.

Over and over, I was dragged, shoved, thrown into that corner.

But I lived to see another beautiful morning.

And now I’ve lived for 18 months of beautiful mornings.