Day 8-9: I want to break free

After everything happened with Allen, I ordered a book from Amazon called "Surviving Domestic Violence." In the emotional state that I found myself, confused and isolated, the book offered nothing to console me and nothing I could relate to. It pissed me off to the max because it only made me feel like, really, absolutely no one, even those whose stories appeared in said book that was designed to make me feel something, understood what I was going through.

A year and two months later, I rediscovered the book. Flipping through it I noticed a section at the end about healing, growing, and moving on. It's an easy enough read, so I dove in.

It was gratifying.

It reminded me of a new kind of independence that I haven't mentioned yet in this blog: freedom from abuse. Like the women in the book, I broke free from one abusive relationship only to have the aftermath hurt more than the relationship itself. But, also like the women in the book, the straw that broke the camel's back was what enlightened me and made me see that I was in a relationship with an abusive alcoholic, the two "a's" i had denied associating with Allen.

I've had the conversation many times with many friends where we discuss our past relationships in comparison to the current one; our conclusion is that the relationship we're in now is what relationships are supposed to be like, and that the relationships we were in before were horribly lacking in many essential things like trust, respect, communication, and other important aspects. Thus, by being in the relationships we're in now, my friends and I are essentially free from the problems that used to plague us in past relationships.

We are free from the paranoia that led our significant others to assume we were cheating on them if we spent social time with someone of the opposite sex; we are free from the degradation that came from our significant others' own insecurities; we are free from the inability to be social without our significant others; we are free from the constant nagging worry that something will push our significant others over the edge; and we're free from the emotional prisons that they had us in out of their need to control us.

I never realized that my exes didn't respect me until my current boyfriend led into this relationship on the premise of mutual respect. I never realized that I didn't have my own friends when Allen and I were together until Allen had been gone six months and I suddenly had friends. I didn't realize I was entirely trapped until the tables were turned and he was the one behind bars.

And now, with all that said, there's another form of independence to check off the list. Independence from relationships that trap me.