It Takes But A Second

I was spending a quiet Saturday morning lounging on my bed, nurturing an injury and letting the week of busyness fall from my shoulders. Mindlessly scrolling Facebook, while deciding what my day should look like.

Then, unexpectedly, my breath whooshed from my lungs in shock. An unbelievable instance in time that warped the minutes into a kaleidoscope of pain, memories, disbelief, denial and the tiniest pinch of hope.

Could it be? Could it really be?

I laid and stared for a long second, stared at the face peering at me from the screen of my iPad; I struggled to believe.

I climbed from my bed, mindlessly went about my chores, always glancing back at my iPad on my bed, like it was a time bomb quietly ticking.

Could I?

I shook my head, still unbelieving.

I wandered over to the shower block and took a leisurely shower, all the time trying to tame my racing heart, tone down my frantic mind.

Could I?

I laid back down on my bed and stared some more, then slowly closed my eyes and squinted them slightly open again. Terrified it’d be gone, but no that face still stared back at me.

A hysterical laugh slipped from my lips as my lungs sucked in mountains of air, begging me to breathe again.

And I decided! Damn right, I could!

For there, in front of me, sat the face of my missing husband. A man I had tried endlessly to find over the last 21.5 years.

A man I’d dug through every nook and cranny I could find in this world, that may just hold the slightest chance of him hiding — with failure the end result of every search. 21.5 devastating years where I begged for assistance, begged for a reprieve, begged to be free of this man that was tied to me by marriage.

A man that had abandoned me 21.5 years ago, while I was away for a few days he packed everything he owned, and some of my belongings, and walked out of our marriage, while mind you, texting me each day making out he was sitting at home missing me.

The shock of walking in after my trip away to find an empty house, was not how I would expect a marriage ending to be announced, but it was my reality.

For the next 21.5 years I diligently searched to no avail.

Ironically, it was only three weeks prior to this monumental moment that I gave up my search, accepted my fate, destroyed all the evidence I had against him for the heartbreak and trauma he’d subjected me too.

Three weeks! Three weeks of finally accepting that I would never be given absolution, gain my freedom or regain my individuality. Three weeks of crushing belief that I was always going to be somebody’s wife, somebody who’d destroyed me 21.5 years before and I finally accepted that to be my fate for the rest of my life.

It was a tough bone to pick. That acceptance cementing what I believed was my future. My hope that lived in the back of my mind for over two decades slowly diminished, until the flame quietly fluttered one last time before burning out.

It is what it is and like it or not, it was how it was always going to be.

Until, the day I was lounging on my bed, nursing an injury — and there he was.

That never to be forgotten face, those eyes that haunt my dreams, that missing link, that destroyer of future hope.

Just seconds in the grand scheme of time and it changed everything!

It changed who I could be in my defining years of old age. It gave me just the tiniest glimpse of possible freedom and a smile began to bloom upon my face.

I had been given a gift and I fully intended to run with it. To make the most of the preciousness being offered to me from the screen in front of me.

The time was mine!

He’d taken 21.5 years of my freedom and I was now here to retrieve my future.

With a click of a button, a carefully worded hello and patience, I waited. Within seconds I was rewarded with a response.

My heart almost stopped beating.

Fingers flew over my keyboard, conversations ensued and contact established.

Over the next 2.5 months, careful words were exchanged; careful on my part, often abusive on his part, but I bided my time.

I needed to be so careful to ensure that he didn’t run again. After everything else, I could not accept another year as his wife, let alone another twenty years.

I needed to be patient, to take it slowly, to gain what I needed to reach for freedom.

Gently, carefully, I drew out the information I desperately needed. Like pulling a splinter from a raw and bloody wound, I extracted his address, his telephone number, his ire and his attitude.

Screenshot it all so it’d eternally live within the stored files of my lawyers documentation, destined for the divorce decree so highly coveted all these years.

With much anticipation and a degree of regret, the divorce application was drawn, gingerly signed and lodged.

Freedom just a step away, my future smile tied to that document.

It was time!

I waited on hot coals, waited for the fall out and I wasn’t disappointed, the papers had finally been served.

The end result of that one second of a face peering at me from my screen, that one second that stopped my world and changed my entire life’s direction, that one second that gifted me the possibility of freedom, come about with the serving of the divorce papers at a carefully extracted address, on a man that thought he’d always own me.

With the papers served and court date set, I am just a few months from becoming my own woman once more, after 21.5 years.

Sometimes, it takes but a second.

The full story of the devastating end to my marriage can be read here :