I realized my anger wasn’t even at the man who had let me down. That, that, I had expected, that I had mostly dealt with. What I held on to was that my grief, my feelings, never had a safe place to land.  That frustration balled up inside of me and I called it anger at him. And, I do have reasons to still be angry at him, but he… he didn’t actually let me down like everyone else.  I always half expected him to be a jackass.  I never expected my friends and family to treat the situation the way they did.  To act like it was draining to talk about, or that I was exaggerating the abuse I had gone through.  To throw bandaids at my hurt like “I’ll pray for you”, and “yeah, he’s obnoxious”. 

What I really needed was a deep understanding of the hurt I was feeling. What I really wanted was someone to see how fragile I had become and finally take care of me the way I took care of everyone else. Their lives moved on a current, and seemed to swirl around me. I felt stagnant. Stuck in fear. Stuck in hopelessness. What was worse is that when I felt I did have an audience to vent my frustrations too it was brushed aside. That is one of the downfalls of being the strong one.  When you are finally brave enough to ask for help they don’t realize the severity of it. You have always been so capable. And you will continue to be.

But that fucking anger lingers in me… of not being heard. It rears its ugly head in the strangest of times and I have to do all I can to quiet it and tell it to go to sleep. It doesn’t want to sleep. It wants to be heard. It wants to tell everyone that I almost died surving that fucker and that NO it’s not fuccking comparable to your situation. My anger wants to scream and rage that the man I loved hurt me ON PURPOSE, repeatedly, methodically, intentionally, during some of the hardest moments of my life… so forgive me if I actually do not have advice for your delusions and situation right now. 

People ask why I do not share my life with them anymore and the truth is… I don’t have the energy for it. I don’t have the energy to be ignored. I also don’t have the energy to answer a million questions that have absolutely nothing to do with how I feel. I don’t want to have to perform my grief anymore. I don’t want to tell someone how I feel and then constantly have to follow it up with the “but at least” because that is what is expected and needed of me. Because if I don’t do that, if I am not the strong one, the one they come to with their problems… what am I?

If they can’t take from me, do I even matter?