My life was terrible, and scary, and sad until I decided I could not live one more day of a terrible, scary, sad life.  I called one of my two best friends and said, “please come get me and don’t ask any questions.”  Awakening Anniversary is what I sometimes call it, my own version of A.A.  On June 1st every year I say “prayers” of sorts…I give thanks to that friend who came with no questions, but knew to bring her husband’s pick-up truck, and I give thanks to “god,” or the universe or whatever/whoever helped me to gather the strength I needed to finally ask for help, and I give thanks to my parents who opened their door to me, and I give thanks to me for finally accepting that my life was terrible, scary, and sad, and I did not want any sort of life like that for me or my 17 month-old big bald baby girl.

I have known people who say that their AA saved their lives, and my A.A. saved mine too.  31 years is a long time ago, but my phone call that day freed me from so much awfulness that I remember it like it was last week.  Three decades and a year is a long time to remember a bad time, but I think it is important to remember some bad things because those things make one much more grateful for all that is good.  I feel like if only one woman reads this blog and understands that she does not have to hide her secret anymore, and should ask somebody to help her, it will be a very positive blog.  This day used to choke me up, and I would find myself crying at some random point during the day but now I feel so blessed and happy and thankful, that the tears that may come out of nowhere later, will be tears of joy.

I finished a book last night with a character in it who behaved much like the man who made my life terrible and scary and sad; and when I finished the book I thought how funny it was that it was on the EVE of my A.A., and how I totally related with the wife of said character in that book…The wife in the book kept telling her daughter, “he loves us he is sorry” and the man in the book kept crying after each rage filled night of violence and said “I am so sorry, you know how I get, it won’t happen again I promise” and I realized that my greatest gift to MY daughter might be that I got away in time…before she ever saw her mother’s head bash into the wall behind her, or hold a cold washcloth to her forehead to keep the swelling down, or had to wear a long-sleeved t-shirt on a hot May day to cover the bruises on the top of her arm…the daughter in the book looked at her mother with pity and I am so glad, so grateful, that my daughter never saw any of that kind of life.

If I had not had that friend who came without question because she loved me and wanted me to be happy, if I had not had parents who loved me and forgave me for being so stupid and making such dreadful choices, if I had not loved that sweet 17 month-old big bald baby girl so much maybe I would not have had the courage to finally “tell.”  Each year I think about how embarrassing it was; when you hide a secret for a long time and the only one who suffers is you, you finally realize that it’s a stupid secret to hide.

If anybody had told me that morning, the hours before I made the call, that 31 years later I would be living in a house I designed and built, right next door to my grown-up daughter and her daughters, with a handsome drummer whose smile makes my knees weak, and that I would be happy every day, and find joy in every day, I would have thought they were insane…BUT all of it, all of the glorious bits of good that are my life really did happen, and I think that my life would have been very much different had I not had the strength to say, “please help me.”  The anniversary of my awakening is a very special day for me and I am crying now, as I finish typing, looking for a last line, and none is coming to me, as it is just sometimes impossible to imagine this is real…this real life filled with so much goodness and how much love I have in my life now, knowing how little love there was, then, but remembering the discovering… that I loved myself enough to ask for help was the first step, all the steps that came after, only came from taking the first…