Hold this thread as I walk away…

* I have yet to add any disclaimers to these but consider this your warning.

We left twice in the span of a week or so, maybe, I don’t actually remember how long it was now. I do remember sobbing in the park behind the house, big fat ugly tears, on the phone between my mom, my dear friend willing to house my brood, including our dogs, and the school office as I prepped to pull the monkeys out before dismissal. Earlier in the day he had trashed my office, my sanctuary space where I practiced yoga and fostered my connection to the world though business. There was the crashing of furniture, the throwing of books, glass vases shattering and bamboo cracking, and lots of pushing, shoving and screaming.

We were not going back. Not with him there.

My voicemail quickly filled and the texts were never ending. I can’t believe you would do this to me CLICK I love you so much, I can’t live without you, I am so so sorry CLICK You NEED to come home or I will (insert threat) CLICK I am so weak, I need your help CLICK You will NEVER make it without me CLICK No one will ever want you CLICK Don’t worry, I am leaving, I’ll give you what you want CLICK You hate me CLICK You’ll never have to see me again CLICK

It was a familiar soundtrack, it had played often over the last few years, on repeat, sometimes with a skip or two here or there like an old warped record. And like a nostalgic old fool I still have a few of those songs, for what reason I could not say, but the time is coming to permanently archive them, of that I am quite certain.

He did leave and we went home to drop off the dog that amidst the chaos had thrown up all over the car, to survey the damage, which he had carefully cleaned, he was always good at covering his tracks, and pack enough for a few days respite.

I should have stayed away. Maybe it would have been different, ended in some other way, maybe I wouldn’t have had to be between that last rock and a hard place. It was another week before we would leave that second time, I think, it gets a little fuzzy here. I couldn’t tell you how or why it started, like usual it was inexplicable and following a lot of restarting and promising to do better this time. It was the longest day ever, I know that for sure. I packed up laundry baskets between the arguments, so it didn’t look suspicious. I defended myself when I should have saved my breath and reserved my energy. I would have if I had known about the marathon of pleading coached phone calls, where are yous and we just want to help yous, standing in the freezing rain telling and retelling the story of that night and all the outbursts on any and all of the nights preceding it, until we were sure we were safe that was to come. The days following would be long, I would need to be photographed by detectives, I would wait in the courthouse for paperwork, I would try to plan for the future without knowing what was coming.

I had hoped to leave fairly quietly but at some point that was no longer an option. As I hurried the kids to the car he started with the threats. If you leave I will…the barrage was endless…until it was the biggest one of all…I will hurt myself. You will have to live with that. I will kill myself and it will be your fault.

It felt like a power play at first, it was, after all, the only card he had left to use, the others were long gone and spent. And then it got serious and I got on the phone. He won’t do it and at least he will get the help he needs this time, I thought or I hoped or I prayed.

Post retirement we became immersed in hunting culture, after military life many find it to be a therapeutic outlet including us, and of course the military is synonmous with gun culture too, so the sounds of artillery and gun fire were nothing new. I had even shot a hog on a beautiful ranch in Florida once and owned my own pistol, but there is something about that first shot when you aren’t expecting it. It’s jarring. Even more so when your back is turned and you’re on the phone explaining what is happening while you try to get your kids frantically in the car. I will never know if he missed accidentally or on purpose, or what we would have witnessed if he had chosen a less conspicuous firearm that night, all I do know is that bird shot will travel through ceiling, sub floor, the bottom of a fiberglass shower and lodge itself quite neatly in the ceiling a floor overhead. It sticks incredibly well and over the course of the next few weeks it would rain down only occasionally, bit by bit, little pings to remind me of what had happened here.

Its hard to explain what it felt like that night, another complicated day in the life that was so rife with complicated emotions that it was quite normal to feel sad and angry and fearful and relieved all in the same breath. Mostly that night I felt the weight of my choices to stay all this time, to try to support him rather than put us first, to allow the walking dead to rule over the living once more. Sometimes I think maybe PTSD is the real Zombie Apocalypse. We are raising up an army of walking dead, except this army looks normal, seems functional, healthy even, but deep inside they are often pulled elsewhere. I got good at seeing it happen, a glazed over quality to the eyes, a distance that told me he was in the desert with the ghosts and not on the playground with the kids or at the table with us or participating in this moment in time. You try and you try to draw them back, sometimes it works, but sometimes the senses have already been too dulled for them to hear you despite your increasing volume, animation, and pleas. Sometimes you can only walk away and close the door to save yourself even for just a minute.

As I drove away, trying to simultaneously comfort the hysterical kids in the back seat, and hear reassurance from the 911 dispatcher, through a combination of freezing rain and blinked back tears I questioned myself over and over again. I was mostly angry, why the hell had I allowed them to experience that. Me, my choices, they showed them that, if I had only…

If I had only, but it was so damn complicated. Up to that point that night I felt I had failed three people, four if I count the way I spoke to myself about what we had endured. As the caretaker of house Rogers I had lost the battle, maybe even the war. I was broken and defeated and so tired. I had forgiven a lot in the name of someone else’s healing, a healing that never came to fruition and all my best efforts, my planting and weeding, watering and feeding, had for the last time bore no fruit. I was ready to burn the orchard down.

The next morning when I called the detective to tell him I knew where he had slept that night, it was the easiest of those phone calls I had ever made. I was not angry, I was clear, I was weary but I still hoped that somehow this time would be the bottom, that he would find the help he desperately needed, and the kids and I would get a fresh start on our terms this time.

Except in the end he took that away from me too. He had unraveled, but I felt undone, and in a few days I would become the one left to make the really hard choices that none of us ever wants to make. Like one more test of my will, would I write the ending with cruelty or grace?