A Shelf with No Name

A Shelf with No Name

How long can you live off the excuses you make for others?

The thought passed through her mind as she held the duffle bag in one hand, the strap cradled in loose fingers. She stood between the wall and her bed, gaping out into the yard through the window. The yard where her dogs chased each other around, yapping and sneezing as they fought, tails wagging, drool flying. Their snarls and sneezes were a comfort and a dagger to her soul.

Methodically and slowly she began to move about her bedroom, their bedroom, picking up random items that somewhere in her brain was instructing her to grab. A hairbrush, a can of hairspray, her small makeup bag, a handful of scrunchies. She stuffed them into her duffle bag and reached for her journal.

Where all the abuse was documented.

Where the excuses wove from her hands and onto the page, intertwining hope with reality. Lies she fed herself. Lies she digested.

Her fingertip slid over the leather cover, she fingered the rough pages and traced her hand down to the ribbon bookmark inside. She opened up to the last entry she had scribbled;

All my life I thought: not me. I would watch the movies as a child and see the films where a woman, battered and disheveled, beaten by her husband, would continue to stay.

Why didn’t she leave, I’d ask. Why would she stay? He’s abusive. He’s a jerk. She can do better. She’s gorgeous. This is dumb. Just leave. Stand up for yourself. HIT HIM BACK.

She didn’t know how. No one told her, no one taught her what to do when the man she loved with all her soul and heart turned out to be the villain in the story.

No one told her she’d cling to good days and stretch those days out for weeks, as far as she could. No one told her she’d make excuses. No one told her she’d cancel plans with friends, hide the pain with a shake of the head and a small frown, ‘It’s ok. I’m ok. Really.’

So many excuses. So many lies.

He didn’t feel well, he had had a hard day at work, he’s going through a lot. She needs to support him, she needs to be there for him. This isn’t about her, don’t take it personally.

Marriage is hard. It’s work. It will get better.

In high school, when they rammed college down our throats and filled our minds with math and mandatory classes, you couldn’t have added a class on verbal abuse? On relationships and what to look for?

Don’t you think you owed that to us? I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO! HOW DO I LEAVE HIM…... When after it all, I still love him.

I’m a dumb woman. A stupid, stupid woman.

She laid the ribbon gently into the crease and shut the journal, she fell in a daze. She felt like sitting on the edge of her bed, staring off into nothingness. Letting the hours of the day slip past her as she sat letting heartbreak paralyze her. She had often heard stories of elderly couples dying from heartbreak when their spouses passed away.

She wasn’t old and her spouse wasn’t dead. Her heart was broken though.

She had heard it smash the night before. She had felt the love for him, that she had nestled tightly on a shelf inside her mind, jostled free, and fell to the floor.

Her body had jerked as the love made impact with the floor, exploding into a myriad of shards and sharp pieces. A breathless gasp escaped her lips. She stared up at him, he who was lost in his stupor of rage and hurt. He clawed at her with his emotional outbursts and manic tirades, his talons shearing her soul.

She bled hopelessness and despair.

The iron taste of heartache filled her mouth and spooled over her chin.

Who were they, as they stood in their small kitchen under the flickering fluorescent light, frothing at the mouth, spewing with anger. This was not who they were and yet for so long, they had been here. Standing in the tundra of their lost love, strangers stuck in a house, roommates passing by with lowered eyes and mumbled regrets.

This is who they were now. The road they traveled was more a slope, coded in ice. There was never a chance to climb to flat land.

A dark yelp. The play had gone too far. She jumps and blinks, she’s back in her room with the half-filled duffle bag in her hand. She shoves the journal in the bag, followed by clothes and undergarments, a sweater and tank tops and shorts and jeans and she keeps shoving and shoving. She’s punching the contents of the duffle bag to zip it up.

She grabs her keys from the bedside table. She opens the bedroom door and flies through the living room and to the front door. Opening it she lets the dogs crash inside, licks and tail wag, and yellow teeth smile. She hugs each one and steps out the door and to her car.

She sits in her car for a moment before turning the ignition and backing out and pulling into the street.

She doesn’t have a destination. It might be her sister’s. It might be her Mother’s. It could very well be the beach.

But she knows one thing, the love she had nestled for him, shoved tightly onto the shelf, snuggled in between her Self Respect and Self Worth, had no place being there. The love didn’t fit in the first place but she shoved it, forced it in there as an impatient does with a puzzle piece.

She’d clean up the pieces of his broken love and for the meantime, she’d place it on a shelf, by itself, one that had no name