Lessons in Acceptance

We had arrived and parked the car as everyone else was leaving. We weren’t at a launch or a bike path, so I’m not exactly sure where we parked, and, actually, I don’t know the cross-roads because I was too nervous to notice. I stared at the people getting into their cars, hoping to make eye contact with one of them. Hoping that they would think it odd that a young, uncomfortable looking couple would be walking into the park at this time of night.

The sound of mulch and branches cracking wasn’t as loud as the deafening sound of silent fear blaring in my ears as we walked down the path into the woods. It was dusk sometime in the summer of 2007. I can’t remember the month now, but the days were getting shorter, so maybe it was august...

The deeper we walked into the brush, the narrower the path became until there really wasn’t a path anymore. It became a little hillier and I could feel my stomach sinking as my heart felt like it was lodged in my throat. We walked further and I kept trying to keep my composure, but it was increasingly difficult.

We neared the water, and that’s when the fight broke out. Honestly, it’s all a blur. In my memory, I see the water and I see the trees all around me. The water seems still and dark and the trees seem to reach the heavens. They looked about a thousand feet tall.

Whatever I can see always begins a violent swirling and turns at a dizzying pace. I hear my feet running through the woods in dark, I hear him yelling after me. That familiar, vicious tenor in his voice. Only this time, it’s worse. For the first time, he’s panicked; He went too far, and things didn’t work out the way he wanted.

Fast forward two years. Life has settled into some type of normalcy. I’m working, living in a house my family helped to make a home. I’m busy and curious, and doing all of the things I used to do before he walked into my life. For the most part, I feel somewhat whole again. Every day is a new chance to start over again.

Better – I feel like a new person, the someone I was born to be.

Still, sometimes something is not quite right. I still think about it every day, not on purpose….Maybe 10 or 20 times a day, depending on the season, or the music playing on the radio. I always think about it when I run.

I sleep through the night now, with fewer night terrors than ever. The only time I dream about it is when I’m feeling stressed about some other aspect of my life.

I have friends, I go out on dates. I’ve had relationships, and even brushed up against something that looked and sounded like love a few times. I start all over again, practicing for the real thing. There is a hopeful feeling about the future. There is a certainty about the brightness that lights the path ahead - my whole life, just lying out there infront of me.

But sometimes, when things are really, really quiet, there’s that feeling. It mostly happens when I’ve taken a risk and made myself vulnerable to something on purpose, as a learning lesson; a chance to grow.

I run errands, I pay bills. I walk my dogs and grocery shop. I teach my classes, I shop for vases and accent pieces. I listen to my favorite music and buy pretty bouquets of flowers to cheer my home, and dog bones to spoil lucy and mia.

I work everyday. On the rare occasion that I don’t, I stay home and sleep late. I shuffle around my house in my pajamas, avoiding boring chores like dusting and cleaning the bathtub. I’m just not into it. I want to relax.

I notice that even after two years, I still require a tremendous amount of rest and peace. I need things to be easier than I used to make them on myself. I’ve learned to avoid unnecessary stress and drama as an energy preservation technique. I walk away when I need a break. Sometimes, I even avoid having to make a decision. I just don’t want to.

I went to the bank last week to make the mortgage payment. The parking lot is under construction. I drove around the long way to avoid the blocked view onto the main road.
I drove through the strip mall and glanced over to the right. There he was.

There is a jarring feeling. Even when I think I’m not thinking about it, I must be, but I’m too busy to notice. It lurks around for a few days. Everything that happens after, even the really small, inconsequential stuff can only be seen through that lens. Everything floats to the surface like debris from a shipwreck. Memories like driftwood bob up and down.

Good news! Here’s another chance to start over again. I hype myself up to look at it as positively as I can. What am I going to do? Cry?

The thing is, everyone wants to talk to me about forgiveness. Everyone tells me that I have to forgive him for my sake, and not for his. And, for two years, I just can’t bring myself to do it, because it makes me feel that I’m continuing to allow or accept his abuse. It seems like it would be representative of me saying that it is ok, and giving him some kind of pass.

Maybe, worse, I realize that if I think that if I forgive it, it didn’t happen. As if the brush of forgiveness will wipe it all away. He used to say that no one would believe me. The idea of forgiving and wiping it away somehow makes that true in my mind. Somehow, it seems like it would make him right.

The events of the week have my thoughts whirling around in my head. I’ve had a stomach ache for 9 days. Even when you may not be consciously aware that you are stressed out, unconsciously, your body has way of letting you know how things are really going. That’s good news for me, considering that I spend almost every moment working with nose to the grindstone, with the serious business of moving on with my life.

Sitting at my desk, I notice that the churning hasn’t gone away. I decide to pay attention to the nagging feeling; it’s time to acknowledge that it’s there. I take a quick, and somewhat ugly self-inventory. So…. I’m frustrated. There’s also some disappointment. Hmmm…. Maybe a tinge of anger. I start looking for the reason at the root of it all. Doesn’t take long…

I look down at the ring that always, and without conscious intent, ends up on my left hand. The ring I kept and still don’t know why, except that wearing it is a way to remind myself that I believe the right thing, the real thing is out there. It’s comforting to wear the symbol, even if the dream died. I believe that it’s possible for the dream to be realized one day, but not if I keep holding on to the little pieces of what was supposed to be.

I wrote and re-read that last paragraph and can’t even begin to write it the way it is supposed to read. Sometimes, my thoughts don’t necessarily match up with what I end up writing. The ring isn’t about love. The ring isn’t about some jackass I was engaged to. The ring is the reminder of where I was and who I am now, and reconciling the two. The ring is about holding on…. And there is nothing good there to hold onto.

The ring is also a way to keep others at arms length, and sometimes, I still feel the need to do that. It’s the universal sign for “not interested”, or “unavailable”. It’s also the universal sign that you aren’t alone, and, for someone like me, I don’t want anyone to think that no one would notice if I were suddenly missing. I don’t want to appear to be an isolated single woman.

His ring is titanium. I remember vividly the day I bought it.

The churning is still there, and I’m realizing that there needs to be acceptance and detachment from what was. There needs to be another new beginning. I feel like an animal molting every few months. It seems like I need to shed the old, scaly skin, peeling off another layer. I haven’t forgiven him, and I’m still very angry towards him, but I’m getting closer to my goal of total resolution.

I drive out towards where I used to live, trying to remember exactly how to get there. I make a couple wrong turns, and am getting impatient. I just want to get this over with and be there before dark. Finally, I find the right road and turn onto the gravel opening to my left. I park my car and notice that there are other people there, eating dinner on the grass.

The sun still shines as I walk slowly over towards the soft dirt path and start making my way into the heart of the woods. As I walk, all I can think about is how long it’s taking to get there. I thought that the trek was only long in my memory. I thought I was walking miles into the darkness that night, and now I can see with a clear head, that this is a very long walk after all. I feel calm and detached until I see the opening from the woods and the water just before me.

There’s a Cub Scout group pitching tents and a middle-aged man fishing off the pier.
They say hello and I sit down on the grass and stare at the water. I never expected anyone else to be there, and, I’m somewhat disappointed.

I wanted to do this alone. I came here before without another soul in the world to help me then, and I wanted to be alone now. Alone with my memory, alone with what was left of my anger, alone with my resolve to start over again…again.

I sat there for a while longer and took one last long look at the water that lie in front of me. I noticed the cattails and the lily pads a little further away. Without my conscious permission, my imagination saw what I had imagined the first time I was here; my body floating and hidden in the cattails and tall grass. Sick, I know.

I got up and turned back towards the path to find a higher place to look at the water in privacy. I kept walking, feeling like I could walk for miles until I found the right place. Finally, I came to an incline where I could see the water, and was completely enveloped by the green brush. I looked up at the trees. They still seemed a thousand feet tall. Looking back at the water, I took the rings out of my pocket, and threw them into the lake.

As I watched the water ripple out into larger circles, I thought about how the actions of one person cause such larger effects on the people who get close to them. I thought about how out of the millions of people on this earth, one person made not only ripples, but tidal waves in my life, and not only didn’t care, but tried to drown me in his own wake.

I thought about the kind of person that I want to be, and how I fall short of who that person is, but believe that I’m doing the best that I can. And honestly, I’m proud of how far I’ve come, but I fear that I have made unwelcome ripples in the lives of others without meaning to, and though it makes me a hypocrite, I hope they can forgive me.

Standing there, I don’t believe that my life is terrible. Something terrible happened to me, but I knew that if I allowed myself to be ruined, he would get what he always wanted, even if he wasn’t around to see it firsthand. He already had enough influence when I was with him, I wasn’t about to give him anymore in his absence.

I watched the last ripple disappear and took one more look at the greenery that surrounded me. I turned and walked towards the path and listened to the sound of the brush crunching under my feet. I felt happy that I faced my fear and brought myself to the site of one of my worst memories. I felt a little lighter and a little closer to letting it go. I thought about the concept of acceptance and embracing what was and what is, as well as accepting that I have no control over either, or, what will be.

I may never forgive him…and I accept that too. And I’m learning to accept that I can do whatever I need to do for myself at any given moment - and sometimes it will hurt, and sometimes it will be fantastic. And while I actively practice the teachings and principles of acceptance, what I won’t accept is a life without boldness, a life without truly experiencing everything I can, because that’s just not a life at all.

Birthday

On a chilly day in March of 2007, the Macomb County Sheriff’s office announced that they had found a torso that they believed to be the remains of Tara Grant, a woman who had been murdered and dismembered by her husband, Stephen Grant. I had been following the case for months, hoping that if I were missing, people would be looking for me.

Obsessed with missing persons cases, I followed the updates religiously. It was pathetic and sick, but I couldn’t keep myself from following them. It was a tribute to the sisterhood of the abused. I saw myself as a missing person waiting to happen – a future series of headlines that would eventually fade from the front page.

I knew it wasn’t a matter of if he would kill me, but when. I knew that if I stayed with him, my fate would be the same as the hundreds of women who were involved with this type of person. On a long enough timeline, living in domestic violence, the survival rate drops to zero.

As Steven Grant feined agony and worry of his “missing wife”, knowing full well that he chopped her into a million pieces and shoved her in a Rubbermade tub, it was in that moment that I resolved that I would end my relationship with this man. Standing in the lobby of Lifetime Fitness, surrounded by people who thought I had the perfect life, the perfect job, the perfect fiancé, the perfect future, I started thinking about reclaiming my life, even if it meant that I would lose it.

I was just longer afraid to die. I had nothing else to lose. I decided I would rather die than to live one more day under his control. I would rather be dead, and finally at rest than to walk around, tormented and exhausted, acting as if everything was ok.

Don’t rock the boat. Keep the peace. I was certain that this was going to be my situation for the rest of my life, so I resigned myself to making things as “easy” as I could for myself because I had no reason to believe that there was a way out.

I stopped running when I was engaged to him because I was exhausted. It was strange because I thought that running would be the only thing I would want to do, since the abuse was never-ending, and escalating all the time.

No more visits or phone calls from my friends, no more time for the things I used to enjoy. No more yoga. No more running. No more me.

During the lonely and frightful times, I was hurt and very afraid. Exhaustion had become a way of life because he would disrupt me at every turn. Phone calls in the middle of the night, late night visits, constant calls at work. There was never a moment that I could get away from him.

In September 2007, 5 months after my resolution, I walked away with the help of a small handful of people I trusted with my secret and I started my life over again. It seemed like I would never stop being angry. It seemed like I would never stop hating him. I was certain that I couldn’t let go. The physical scars were gone, but the emotional scares were still there.

this person ran through my life like a train off the tracks, leaving total devastation in his midst. For a solid year and half I managed to hold it together, convinced that there was no way out. I purposed to placate him as best I could so that the blow-ups would be “manageable”. And then I realized that “manageable” really meant, “fatal”.


After it was over, I would go for the occasional run when I could summon enough energy to lace up the shoes. I felt frustrated at first, starting all over again, thinking about how I used to be so much better at this… faster, stronger, more graceful. The judgment became too much and I stopped again. I had been comparing myself to the person I was before I met him, and that person has been gone now for a very long time.

I always thought about how I must have looked, awkward and slow(er), carrying 15 pounds that hadn’t been there before. How must I have looked to people walking by…. And, then, I realized, “who cares?”

Who cares that I’m not the same person I was in 2004, or earlier? Who cares that I gained 15 pounds? Who cares that I’m slower? Who cares that I’m not as graceful? Why did I want so badly to be that person again? What was “wrong” with the person I actually became?

The person I became as a result of that experience is stronger, more confident, and resilient. The person I became is fearless, proud and smart. Sometimes silently apprehensive, but always outwardly certain. One foot in front of the other, running towards the rest of my life. And, with this realization, two years in the making, I started running again, and, with a vengeance.

It’s on my run that I can think about whatever may be bothering me, or whatever swirls around me, with the relative distance that I still may keep from others. On my run, I can reflect on where I’ve been and where I’m going, and the people I meet along the way. On my run, I can appreciate that I finally have the gift of time and personal space, something I never thought I could ever have. Something I took for granted prior to meeting him.

August 31 is my birthday, but September 16 is the day that I got to start my life all over again, but it almost feels like every day is September 16. I get to start all over again every time I wake up, and as I wait to turn 29, I can’t think of a greater, more precious gift than that.