Overcoming the Demons

The lighter flicked, bringing to life the bright embers in a dark room, stale from sweat and dirty clothes, as smoke filled her lungs. Laying in the dark, listening to the silence around her, she contemplates all the reasons she had to get up. Sitting up and feeling her knee crack and her hip pop she slowly put on her tattered, slate gray sweats. She’s had the same pair of sweats for years and even though she’s purchased new ones, these ones hug her in just the right way to give her the comfort she just can’t replace.

It's a Wednesday, her weekend. There was drywall dust coating the floors and covering the furniture. The shower still wasn’t running and she’s day five of not bathing and without running water. Her long amber hair is engulfed in knots on her head. She’s playing her to-do list over in her head about what needs to get done in her bathroom, knowing that she has no idea how to do plumbing but she can’t afford a plumber and badly needs a shower.

The kids aren’t home yet from their father’s house and she only has a little bit of time left to get the house presentable before they arrive. If it is too messy then he will surely note it for the upcoming custody battle she was anticipating from him. He was still bitter she walked away from him after 10 years and is even more bitter that she qualified for a house without him.

She looked in the mirror and saw a check hanging on the frame. “Pay to the order of Katie Kittridge in the amount of $20,000.00. Signed Tyson Kittridge.” The check was a “gift” of the divorce she never asked for. Katie didn’t want to use Tyson’s money to start over without him. The money felt like a bribe, like she’d be selling her soul to the demons of her past. Tyson always wanted to be able to say that he did something and then play the victim and get credit for being the “good guy” when people were watching.

Katie opened the drawer next to her bed revealing a black pistol that was sitting on top of a small, black book notebook. She looked at it, having not cracked the pages in over a year. Katie picked up the book and opened to the first entry where her past was revealed and water droplets from tears had weathered the pages. Her history with mental abuse filled the pages with heartbreak that she began to relive once more with every passage.

In the pages Katie was left home alone with the kids most of the time, secluded. Tyson would go out drinking until he would blackout and his friends would drop him off. Katie would put him in the shower because he’d be covered in vomit and she didn’t want the kids to see him that way.

Tyson spent most of their marriage going out and living his twenties with his friends while Katie stayed home doing online school and raising the babies they had. There was even a moment where he disappeared with a woman for a drunken night in the mountains.

They had their first child when Katie was 20 and Tyson was 18 and he had just joined the Navy. Tyson didn’t last in the Navy and got discharged. It sent him into extreme depression. Katie did everything she could to pull him out of it but he didn’t want help from her. He just wanted to drink and take prescriptions. He spent as much time as possible trying to run from the problems he refused to acknowledge he had.

Katie almost died in the hospital during heart surgery a couple years into their marriage and that pushed Tyson even further away. It didn’t matter that she was in pain and hurting, he just went to work and she kept managing the children. Doctors could never determine what caused the heart issue, but Katie always believed it was because she gave her whole heart to someone who never really wanted it but rather wanted the idea of being a family man that has it all, so people could see how great his life was. He came from a family where public image was everything, even if it was a façade. He didn’t want others to take away the only person that had not given up on him, even though he clearly had no interest in taking care of her or raising a family until others were watching.

Katie had quit her job, right after they got married so that they could be together as he was away in the military and couldn’t handle the loneliness of distance. When she moved to become the stay home wife and mother he desperately wanted, she realized quickly that he had locked her away and she gave him the keys. She would get up in the morning and take care of the children, put on pinup style dresses and paint her face to look the way she knew he liked. Her tattoos would show, and he liked that she looked trashy beautiful. He preferred her that way. Katie didn’t realize that she had cut out every aspect of her independence to appease someone who couldn’t be appeased.

Tyson never called her beautiful or told her thank you, unless someone was watching and the children didn’t count. If she made something special for dinner he would find the only part of the meal that he didn’t like and tell her it had ruined it for him. When she cleaned the house he would find the one thing she forgot or didn’t finish and pick a fight about how he worked all day and she couldn’t even get her only job done. Tyson would tell her that she didn’t contribute and that raising kids didn’t count as a job, it’s just an obligation as a parent. Katie got an allowance every month that had to be used on groceries and necessities only, which he determined. Personal purchases had to be approved and were often declined by him. Tyson expected relations nightly. If they didn’t have any he would pick a fight with her. Even after Katie had a miscarriage and had been heavily bleeding and needed surgery he expected her to be intimate.

Tyson would watch the kids only one day a week. Tyson called it babysitting. It was always Sunday, the day all of her assignments were due. During this time he would have friends over and would not try to be quiet.

Katie decided that she wanted to be a police officer when she finished her schooling. She got into a police academy and finished her bachelor’s at the same time. On her weekends she would prepare dinners for everyday of the week as well as lunches for the kids and Tyson so that all he would have to do is open the fridge and heat it up. When she had almost reached graduation at the academy, Tyson became enraged and told her that if she did not go back to the way things were before he would divorce her; that she was selfish and being a bad mother. Tyson told her that she wouldn’t have gotten that far without him and she would never get hired as a cop because she was small and tattooed.

Katie started to have a support system at that point and called Tyson’s bluff about the divorce, but secretly she was afraid. Tyson told her he put spyware in her phone and computer and was printing and saving every single text, picture or website that she visited for over a year. Tyson would show up at her location all the time to try and catch her cheating. He couldn’t believe that Katie would just choose to leave without there being an underlying cause like another man. He started stalking her when she wasn’t home. Katie had started talking to a couple of potential love interests during their separation but discovered she was too damaged to begin anything new and was afraid Tyson might hurt them.

When Katie finally divorced him, she became afraid of being away from the children. Tyson started sitting down the street from her parents’ house and would watch the house from his motorcycle. He would post videos of shooting his handgun from over 50 yards away and was becoming incredibly accurate with it.

Katie became exhausted with the constant texts, calls and random encounters with Tyson. She was tired of having him show up at grocery stores when she was with the kids, and parts of town she would never normally go to try and avoid him. She was tired of being tracked. She was afraid that if she did not go back that he would do something to the children when they were with him. He had even threatened suicide. Katie moved back in with him for a couple of years so she could protect the kids from him. She had terrible credit because he let all her accounts close during the time she stayed home. She built her credit over two years and was finally ready to leave. She was done sleeping on a cot in the basement with a bullet proof vest on hoping the lock holds and she would wakeup the next day.

The final passage read, “I am worth only what I choose to endure.”

Katie sat quietly on the edge of her bed, thinking about the silence in the house. She didn’t know who she was anymore, but she knew who she would never allow herself to be again.

She picked up a pen and began a new entry. “I am a woman who gave all my love and power to someone else when I should have loved myself first. That was my choice. I am a woman who trusted that another person could fill my void, that they would love me the way I love them, when it is my job to fill my own void. I am a woman who believed another’s opinion of me, when I should have listened to my inner voice instead of silencing it. I am a mother who let my children watch me let someone treat me as if I was inferior. I am a woman who chose to return to the same situation that stripped away my identity because it was easier to let another make decisions for me out of fear. I am a human. I make mistakes and that is how I learn. Letting fear make decisions for me costs me a piece of my humanity and spreads like a cancer. I am someone worthy of love. I am worthy of someone’s time, only when I am willing to make time for myself. I am no good to anyone if I am not good to myself. I can do this, I have been doing it all along, I just didn’t realize it.”

She got up and picked up the check. Katie drove to the bank and cashed it and went to the nearest shelter for battered and abused women. She asked if she could volunteer. The lady at the desk gave her an application. She filled it out. Beginning every Monday, Katie would go to the shelter and donate her time to helping other women realize their worth and begin the journey of starting a healthy and safe lifestyle. She did this on the side of being a police officer for a small agency.

Katie made an anonymous donation of $20,000.00 to the shelter and continued volunteering regularly.

Katie also finished her bathroom and realized that she could do it herself and it was far more rewarding than signing her soul over to her demon. She allowed herself to be free.