Windows and Walls

“At fourteen, my sister sailed away from me into a place I’d never been. In the walls of my sex there was horror and blood, in the walls of hers there were windows.”

-The Lovely Bones

~ ~ ~

My life is split in two.

Before and after.

Sisters, light and dark.

The blade that sliced clean through?

My murder.

I died that day. The before. The illusion. The hope. The belief in the best. The family. The marriage.

I was born that day. The after. The stark reality. The hopelessness. The danger. The isolation. The truth.

The before is youth and laughter and color, with a sickening underbelly I couldn’t see.

The after is age and anguish and shadows, with a ribcage cracked wide open.

The before was a dream, or the chase thereof.

The after is a nightmare, and I’m the only thing being chased.

I lost everything I never had that day.

I never had a husband.

I never had a happy family.

I never had a future.

I never had a chance.

And -

I gained something that will never be taken from me.

I know what he is.

I know what he did.

I know what comes next.

I know what is worth fighting for.

I have always known who and what I am.

That didn’t change.

That is the piece of us that can never die.

Soul, spirit…ghost.

Pick your poison. To each their own. Mine is ghost, and still intact. But I’ve stepped from one body into another.

The old body was so tired. The old body hurt, and stung, and bled, and I didn’t know why.

The new body rests, and is slow, but it doesn’t sting, and it doesn’t bleed.

The old body was offered a cup of tea at night. Such a sweet gesture, an act of love.

The new body sleeps alone, behind locked doors, and drinks from no man’s cup.

The old body woke, sobbing and in agony, to find another body on top of it; to find another face sneering until its eyes locked with mine.

The new body has slowly made sense of memories, dreams, fights, flashbacks, and “symptoms” that disappeared overnight.

In the walls of my mind there are windows, and now I can see the horror and blood that my old life held.

Survivors of coercive control, spousal rape, domestic violence, and strangulation are often left grappling with broken bodies and brains. Trauma changes you in ways that nothing can prepare you for. It also reveals more than you ever wanted to know.

For me, hindsight is agony. The day I met the murderer is a day that haunts me. He lied on that day, just as he has lied to everyone around him, everyday, for his entire life. He has lied for, and he has lied against. He is what everyone deems worthy of a woodchipper, but they can’t see him standing right in front of them. Or so they say.

I see him. I see so many other men like him. I see them plainly. And I see how their friends and family lie right along. They know better. They’ve seen what I see now. They are colluding and covering up acts so vile that there is no going back now. They have to hold fast.

But the murderer’s lies have outrun his capacity for calm, cool, or collected. He can’t remember what he said under oath before. He can’t remember what he said on camera. He can’t remember what he put in writing. He can’t remember which year or which diagnosis or which version of events he landed on.

The ice was thin to begin with. It will never be able to support someone that dense.

Ghosts can’t drown. And this ghost will watch from the other side of the window as he drags every last one of you under.

~ ~ ~

“How to commit the perfect murder was an old game in heaven. I always chose the icicle: the weapon melts away.”

-The Lovely Bones