Ruth - The Dragon Beside Me

I really hate that phrase..."not all heroes wear capes." It just feels overused.

However, I feel it's an apt phrase to use for the Dragon beside me, the only Dragon I want or need in my life.

There are a lot of great women that have been and gone in history, and they deserve respect and admiration. Of that there is no argument.

The woman that inspires me more than anyone in this world, past or present, is my wife, Ruth.

This is not just some clever suck-up because I'm married to her, and even if it was, so what. There are many reasons why Ruth, is the woman I most admire and most of those reasons are steeped in the adversity she has had to work through her entire life. From an incredibly early age, she learned that not only is life sometimes cruelly unfair, but so are many people. Sometimes, even those who are supposed to be caring and loving and look after you, do the exact opposite. She has faced countless struggles and enough trauma for more than 1000 people in her 50-odd years on the planet so far. From verbal to physical to psychological abuse - and everything in between.

I think about her past and what she has endured a lot. There's never really a day that goes by where I don't think about it. Though sometimes it's fleetingly because it is quite a lot to comprehend and digest. It makes me feel a gut-wrenching sadness deep in the pit of my stomach and want to burn the world and the people that have done all of these terrible things to her, but also this swelling pride, that she is still so courageous and resilient. She has her flaws and has her battles she is still fighting...but fighting she is, and I have been fortunate to spend 21+ years with her so far and over that period she has worked on herself...gone to counselling...did a lot of self-love...keeps trying.

Even before she remembered all the most terrible of things, she was dealing with the traumas of a neglectful and cruel narcissist of a mother. Had been raped and abused. What she remembered was already too much.

Then the memories came back.

You see, we discovered she has dissociative amnesia which is a disorder that means she forgets certain events that happen to her, generally the most traumatic.

Many unthinkable and abhorrent things happened to her throughout her life, particularly when she was younger, and for many years, she didn't even remember the half of it because her brain protected her from the knowledge, from the horrible truth.

Even when that all came to light - the abuse and more abuse, sexual and physical, the beatings, the sheer terror she has endured, she still works, still keeps fighting. Through the pain, through the tears. Through the disbelief that people would do such things to a young, vulnerable child who was already dealing with the grief of losing her father at a young age and the sadness and rejection from a mother who never seemed to care. Through the feeling of deep, internal terror she still feels for her stepfather...a man who is long dead and gone.

I often do not know how she is even able to do it. How she is able to work through it all and why she hasn't killed herself or taken a darker path than the one she is on. You often hear about people who suffer traumatic childhoods and teenage years going off the rails and self-destructing. Not Ruth. She's had her moments, but she never gives in. Not fully. Even though I know she would like to, sometimes. She also still hasn't given up hope on people.

I am glad she hasn't...but I understand why some people do those things...when they can't face up to the horrors of their past. Not my wife, though. She refuses to repeat the past, refuses to become her mum, refuses to give in after enduring all manner of atrocities from an incredibly young age.

She is determined and unbeaten. A living example of the phrase "the battle may be lost but we will not lose the war"

The Dragon beside me, that I admire and adore. She is a survivor.

She may not be a famous activist, singer-songwriter, poet, actress, politician, writer, comedian or businesswoman, but she has the courage, strength and a burning fire inside her.

Sounds like a Dragon to me.

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Thanks for reading!