“ If you love me, you’ll forgive her.”
I remember that very moment. I just looked at him, really looked. Quietly documenting the degrees of denial he coated himself in.
What a horrible person he had become; my parent. My person – someone I couldn’t trust anymore. My measuring glass of right and wrong, now compromised. Ruined.
The shards of his decisions cutting into me. And when I tried to pull them out and push him away, I would bleed everywhere.
A thought that kept running around in my head was that I was terrified that one day my kids would look at me the way I looked at him. And so I delete another email without reading. And another and another.
Why?
Because I was on survival mode and he was trying to destroy me.
I saw his familiar blue eyes faded as one day he turns up on my doorstep and my kids ask me who that man is. And all I can do is tuck them behind me as he begs to see them and I can only manage to shake my head and close the door.
Terrified he’ll ruin them in the way a child tries to crack an egg but breaks the shell with it’s fingers.
He’ll hurt them by making them as confused about love as he is.
Distorting its shape, clipping the edges. Forgetting to highlight love’s selflessness. It’s kindness. It’s respect, by placing a child in a house with domestic-violence and thinking that would have no effect.
So what’s left to do once the question of why doesn’t solve anything?
Extraction ~ a selfless act.
A gift of kindness in incidents like these.
In Domestic-violence or any relationship, leaving can double as an act of love when the term has lost its meaning.
Beyond-curious 