Welcome back?!

I admit it wholeheartedly:

I’ve been in a writer’s hell, a wordless purgatory for far too long.

Not quite five years ago this Friday, I lied to the most dangerous person I’ve ever known when I told him I would see him in a few short months as I crawled down the hallway on hands and knees before I crutched down the stairs and into the garage to my car, where I said goodbye to my abuser, hoping and praying never to see him again (but absolutely terrified he would know that or that I would). I wrote leading up to that and in the following months, trying to process my experiences.

Not quite three years ago, I finally was terrified enough to report him for the horrifying things I’d endured and shortly after began a silence of necessity and safety in order to support the Federal investigation against him. The silence was deafening for me and although I tried to exercise those muscles with prompts and whatnot, I couldn’t… Not really. It was like sitting and tapping the toes when what one really wants is to run a marathon.

Not quite one year ago, a hearing (not a criminal trial, a simple hearing) finally took place, but I have still felt gagged. Silenced. Between threats to my safety and promises to call congress about me (yeah… cause congress is going to, what, write a bill about my testimony because it hurt his feelings to have the truth known?!), and watching the trial between Depp and Heard over the domestic violence in their relationship while the world weighed in, everyone claiming to be an expert and claiming to know what happened knowing that is exactly what everyone would be saying about my own story.

I don’t know how many times I’ve sat down to put words down only to fail in my attempts. Too many to count. I couldn’t find any words that tasted right, that sounded comprehensible. Or I couldn’t find a way to share anything about how I felt or what I thought or what inspired me…

And that ultimately was the point of those threats, though, wasn’t it? To keep me silent.

It was the point of every abusive threat, spoken or not, too, wasn’t it? To keep me from speaking up.

The good news, no, wait, the great news is that I have a friend who can remind me of who I am and what I love when I have forgotten and he recently started nudging me back in the direction of writing. So here’s to another attempt at doing this thing again with regularity.