I sat on that hand me down couch for quite a few weeks. Not being depressed, but more like decompressing. Things were still not all together back in it’s place, but we were surely getting there. The house had been set up, my daughter had gone back to school, I was working and my older daughter was now moving around enough to take care of herself during the day. Emotionally though…..I knew I was a mess. I could not wrap my head around so many things. You know how it goes, when a relationship ends you go over every conversation, facial expression, gesture, gift, sexual encounter. You walk yourself through remembering the good times and then all the bad times come flooding into your memory. I could not get over how this all went down. I knew I would never hear from him again. Like not a text, not an email, nothing. His pride was huge and so was his ego and I’m sure he had rationalized somewhere that this was all my choice and he was an innocent bystander. How could he sleep at night?

I knew I couldn’t. I had nightmare after nightmare with him in it. He was always doing something horrible. Like one time I woke up in a sweat because of the dream I’d had. I went to sleep like any other night, but as my mind was racing and going over things I was all of a sudden standing in his bedroom again. He was laying on his side of the bed and I got into my side. He was looking at me strange. I can still see this dream in my head as if it actually happened, but thankfully it didn’t. I was all wrapped up in the covers so he couldn’t touch me. He started to unravel the blankets and he grabbed my face as if to kiss it. He was looking me dead in the eyes smiling. And with a thrust, he rolled on top of me and grabbed my neck. He began strangling me and the whole time he just looked right in my eyes and smiled. It was creepy as hell. I woke up out of breath, sweating and almost in tears. He had now permeated everything that was sacred to me, even my dreams.

Between the couch and the nightmares, my nights were not all peaches and cream. I was going to therapy religiously, but felt that I couldn’t really begin to move on because I wasn’t even sure all that had happened. It was all a nightmare, all a dream sequence. Over and over in my brain I would say to myself “How the hell did this happen?” and honestly for the life of me, I can’t believe it did. However, it did and I was going to have to come to terms with it if I was ever going to move on. After every break up in my life I’ve always been optimistic, seeing the dream still out there that maybe somewhere I would find the right man for me. This time, I saw nothing. The dream was gone. I saw nothing but a black hole. I knew it wasn’t going to last forever or at least I hoped it didn’t, but it was a strange thing to feel. Like your dreams, the ones that you had dreamt your whole life, were in fact never going to come true. They couldn’t come true because you were never going to move from this moment. This is now who you are. A part of you that just saw a black hole. That was so sad to me. If it wasn’t happening to me I’d have been able to rally and support and give advice, since it was happening to me, all I could do was stare down the hole and hope to god there was a light at the end.

The truth was. I wasn’t really sure there was. What if the rest of my life never had love in it? What if this is what created me into a bitter, lonely woman who goes to family parties and drinks straight from the vodka bottle and smokes cigarettes in bad brown shoes and everyone is embarrassed of me? It’s possible and at this point probable. I was not liking the thought of living like this. I had to remind myself minute by minute that I was going to get through this. I was going to come out the other side. I was going to make it. And I would be ok. Even if there was a part of my soul, my heart, that stayed dark forever.