Just a Journal

OMG! These last few days the first thing I do when my eyes open is check the weather on my phone. This morning it says -40C with a windchill of -50!! Exposed skin will freeze in under two minutes.

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Days like this make me question my sanity. I've been on baby watch since Christmas Eve, with about 6 goats that are due to have babies any day. I have no choice but to quickly run outside and make sure there are no frozen newborns. Thank God everybody seems to be okay, hopefully, they'll all hang on for a couple of more days.

This is beyond ridiculous!

I'm glad I took a little extra time last night to make sure everyone had extra food and water, and that all of my lights are working to keep things thawed.

I'm just praying everything goes smoothly today. This is the kind of weather that makes things break for no other reason than the fact that it is just too damn cold.

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I guess it's a good thing that we don't really have to go anywhere. I'm glad I stocked up on groceries right before Christmas. Even though the holiday is over, I'm thinking it would be a good day to fire up the oven and do some baking. It will help to keep the house toasty and warm.

I don't know that I'll get that far though. 2021 seems to have been the year of procrastinating.

I spend this last few days of the year, every year, reflecting on the things that have happened and things that need to be tweaked for the year ahead. Since my accident in 2018, there are a lot of things that have been shoved to the back burner.

This year has been emotionally crippling. I spent a lot of my time paralyzed by overwhelming depression. Feeling lonely and misunderstood. I'm so glad that it seems to be lifting, even if just a little bit.

In my time reflecting I'm realizing that a lot of it is my own damn fault. I haven't let people know what I needed, and I certainly haven't been taking care of myself either. It's mostly because I don't really know. I haven't wanted to think about it.

Two people from my past died this year. It brought back a swarm of memories and emotions. They were both extremely abusive. I felt guilty for thinking first that the world is better off having erased that evil.

The last one just died on December 2nd. I almost feel partly responsible. I had come across a few items hidden away in a box in a closet while cleaning just a few weeks before. It was just days before a full moon, so I prepared and performed a cleansing ceremony. I even wrote a poem, as a prayer of sorts to release that energy from my home and my spirit. Six weeks later, he died.

I had loved him once. I think part of me still does, even though the thought of him brings terror to the point of nausea.

We'd met in childhood and he wanted to be my knight in shining armor back then. He'd witnessed some of the abuse I'd been going through and wanted to steal me away from it all, but I wouldn't go. I was only nine or maybe ten years old and he was fourteen. I was at least smart enough to know that we'd have never made it by striking out on our own. He left town without me.

Twenty years ago he came back. Sparks flew the moment I laid eyes on him. When he told me he had returned to make amends with his family after the doctor had told him he only had three months to live, my heart broke. I promised to love him until the day he died. With no time to waste we got married.

The doctors did keep telling us that he could die at any moment, especially if he didn't take care of himself. As an alcoholic and an addict with FASD, he, of course, didn't take care of himself and would lose his shit if I tried to. He just kept drinking and telling me that there was no point in stopping since the damage was already done.

The night I left, he'd threatened to kill me. He'd been out drinking with his buddy for days and when he wrecked my car on the way home, he blamed me. He said he'd blacked out and thought he may have even killed somebody, if he did, he said it was my fault. I had made him come home because I needed my car for work in the morning.

He grabbed me by the throat and pinned me to the wall. He told me that if I ever tried that again he'd kill me and feed me to the neighbor's pigs. Nobody would even know I was gone.

Once he passed out, I packed up my two kids and fled in the middle of the night. I went into hiding. When I called the cops to get a restraining order, they told me it wouldn't do any good. They wouldn't tell me exactly what was on his record, but they said he was a dangerous man and that a piece of paper wouldn't stop him from killing me if he wanted to.

He'd stalked me at work for those first few weeks so I quit my job. I stayed home until I heard he had left town.

He'd call me every once in a while, out of the blue. Always wanting to be assured that I still loved him. I did, but I couldn't risk my life or the lives of my children to be with him. I understood that the violence was rooted in his illness, it wasn't who he really was. He just chose not to fight it. He always let it take over.

The last time he called, he said he'd just gotten out of jail. He'd done six years for killing two people. He said he'd been asked to go back to British Columbia. They'd found DNA on his carving tools that linked him to the Robert Pickton case.

If I would just profess my love to him, he would do the right thing. I told him that he couldn't put that responsibility on me.

I'm sorry now, that those families will never get their answers. I'm not sorry that the world has been purged of that evil. I had no idea how much all of that had weighed on me until his mother called to tell me he had died. I didn't even realize that I have spent the last twenty years looking over my shoulder or waiting for the phone to ring.

One good thing did come out of that relationship. It's solely because of him that I had a base understanding of FASD before my granddaughter was diagnosed. I had seen the fallout of trauma on someone with brain damage first hand. I knew the importance of stability, security, love, acceptance and nurturing, regardless of behavior that is out of their control.

It's because of him that I know I can't try to make my granddaughter fit 'inside the box'. It's because of him that I know we need to make accomodations to work with her and understand how her brain works or doesn't work. It's because of him there is hope for her future.

The New Year holds hope for me, now that I can go forward without fear.