Insights

November 8, 2020

Five years, three months, and twelve days. Three broken ribs and a fractured eye socket later, I was finally free. The longest years of my life. It felt like they had taken at least twenty years off my life. One of the casualties of an abusive relationship I suppose. Looking back, everything was as clear as day. The break down, isolating me from friends and family, creating an insecure shell of a woman. That’s one of the things that sticks with me. It’s not the words or the scars, it’s all the mental stuff. All the things that you can’t see. All of the words that swirl around my head in the dead of night. Taunting and teasing me. Describing, in what seems to be painful “accuracy”, all of the ways I am unlovable. All of the reason why I will forever be a prisoner of my own body. Cast out of the heavens, condemned to a life of mediocrity, disappointment, and heartbreak. I can never seem to maintain that these hateful and deceitful thoughts hold no value. Logically I know that they are not true. Try as I might, I always seem to lose those battles. But I know that they are just that, battles. The war has yet to be won, but I know that I will I succeed. Because I am armed with the enemy’s playbook. Armed with the knowledge that the core of my being is so great that there are those who will come after me to try and steal the very essence of what makes me great. Those who try and pass off words coated in poison as my own thoughts.

Eris Foulkes