Part III · Exposure

2024

The Year I Realized the Line Was Gone The year didn’t start with renewal. It started with fractures. Too deep to ignore, too familiar to fix. By April, everything began unraveling again. You stormed out after a fight and said you were going to kill yourself. Then you tried to run me over. You left me with the kids, no word if you were coming back. I called the police—not out of spite, but because I was terrified you meant it. They found you. You were placed in the psych ward for four days. When you came home, you blamed me for the hold. Said I had escalated it. Said I made you look unstable. But you were the one who left. The one who said goodbye to our children before disap- pearing. The one who drove off with a death threat still ringing in my ears. A few weeks later, we moved. Hoping, maybe, that new walls could absorb what the old ones couldn’t. One week in, you slapped L. across the face for not getting to the bathroom fast enough. I said I’d call the police. You shattered your phone with a hammer and dared me to try. I didn’t. I called your dad. Your best friend. I begged someone else to step in. You went back on Lamictal. Said it helped. That you felt more like yourself. Then you stopped. Said it made you numb. Said staying on it would lead to cheating again. Like betrayal was chemical. Like you had no say in your own destruction. You kept saying the kids were too much. That you felt trapped. That you weren’t meant to be a mother. But I was the one rocking B. to sleep. The one paying rent. The one trying to hold it all together while you bolted the minute I walked through the door. The fights escalated. Screaming. Slamming. Hitting. You called me manipulative. Abusive. Cruel. And I said nothing. I walked away before anything broke, before I did. But nothing prepared me for November. That was the night you put your hands around my neck. Not figuratively. You strangled me. I remember the silence. I remember the weight of your body. The pressure. The stillness. And I remember thinking: “She finally crossed the line.” Then realizing: we had crossed it long ago. By December, I wasn’t surviving anymore. I was dissolving. Shrinking into the corners of my own life. Because that was the year I stopped waiting for the line to be crossed. It was already behind us