Dancing With the Devil: How I Came to Be in My Current State of Existence pt. 6

^{You might be a bit lost if you haven't read parts 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5}

^{I wonder who that could be?}

So there I was, just about to embark on the journey to find my way in the world when my sun burned out. She had been my light, my life, the center of my solar system for twenty years. I remember hearing Dad’s Wife try and explain to people how close we’d been. No, there’s close with your mom, and then five levels up is what they were. Close didn’t even begin to describe the relationship that we had.

Not only did I lose my Lady but, D man went to live with an Aunt on his father’s side. I didn’t lose him, he’s still my boy, he still even at 14 tugs my hair sometimes (that was always his thing, any time he could get his hands on it he was playing with my hair)… but… I went from being with him and caring for him four days a week to family functions and events. The whole reason I’d decided to change my life, to go to school, to do all of these things, was to be able to take care of him so that he could come live with me. He wound up in a good place, he’s turned out a good boy, and eventually his father got situated and took him back. I love D man’s father, he’s really a truly good guy. I wouldn’t want anyone to think that he’d abandoned his son from reading these, he was a kid getting his life together to be the best father he could be. At this point D man had a baby brother, Bug. At this point my little Boo had a daughter, my Cupcake.

Anyway, I threw myself into school as a distraction from my pain. I got that 3.85 GPA I’d promised Lady. I got my license. I got a job. Then I got another. I hit a point where for a good amount of time I worked eighty hours a week while going to school. I had a short-term relationship, I moved out and back to my Dad’s a couple of times. I got a beautiful baby sister, she loved her some tickles and Eskimo kisses, and she was OCD out of the womb. I was writing food articles for fun on a blog site, I was tutoring, I was developing a newspaper for the Culinary department with a staff member at the school, I could have walked out of that school into any job in my area or to the best Culinary schools in the country with glowing recommendations from any teacher that I’d encountered.

Maybe I should have listened to the English teachers, philosophy teacher, psychology teacher, when they tried to convince me to switch to their respective majors.

Instead two whirlwind years later… I met Ex.

^{Is that..?}

We had a class or two together see, he was the quiet guy with tattoos and a mohawk. We never spoke, but, when over break it came time to recruit for the newspaper I messaged just about everyone I had come across in my classes. I remember a typo transforming the conversation into a faux deep dive about how hard life was to be half plug-in air freshener with all the prejudice still prevalent in the world. We wound up meeting up.

We met up about once a week for the rest of the summer, into the school year. We were together for less than five months when I found out I was pregnant. When I told Dad he started to get agitated, when Wife informed him that I was on birth control, a very good birth control and it was one of those random failures he calmed. He took a breath, got up, hugged me and said “Congratulations, you know you can’t live here anymore, right?” I don’t fault him for it, and if I know my father (and I reckon I do) he probably blames himself and circles through guilt enough all by himself so there’d be no point in being upset with him even if I wanted to be. He couldn’t have known what was to come for me… he still doesn’t know, not really.

Now, this is the part where I want to get raw. This is the part where I want to expose my deepest vulnerabilities and my ugliest truths. I want to recant every detail that I can remember and move you, dear Steemians, to tears with my story. As I type I can feel it all pushing back up, choking me. I connect myself to my love simply, a foot touching a foot as we go about our separate activities, he has no idea of the storm this is brewing inside of me. He usually doesn’t as I much prefer it that way, witnessing one full PTSD attack is enough for a couple of years, I think. I hope anyway. If you’ve read my past work you know well that hiding my emotions is a fine tuned skill of mine, and while I’m much more open and work freely with my entire range of feeling than before, hiding is still something that I practice daily.

^{It is!}

I don’t want to hide my past from anyone, ever. My silence has nearly killed me more times than I care to count. However, to write and publish the happenings of my dark night of the soul seems to be too much of a betrayal. I don’t care to protect Ex, I don’t care to protect myself, but to put it out to the world before Rose is old enough to understand what went on in her earliest years and form her own feelings and opinions on it, to maybe stumble across the start of her story someday… shared with strangers before she even knew it… doesn’t feel right to me.

I can tell you this…

He got me. That dastardly Devil tightened his grip and dragged me straight down to hell. I spent nearly three years enduring things I wouldn’t wish upon my worst enemies, doing terrible things to survive. My soul was lost in the River Styx wailing in torment with eons of others drowning but never dying in a collective pool of pain and misery. Trapped for an eternal moment of self-loathing, regret, and anguish.

When it’s too quiet (or something badly triggers it) I can still feel it all like shadows on my skin, raised, jagged scars on my soul. I had lost all hope of escaping. I was condemned to Hell for time without end. Every bit and piece of my humanity was stripped away leaving nothing but a pulsing gelatinous mass in its wake, an unthinking and unfeeling creature that wriggled and squirmed on reflex giving nothing but the putrid smell of decay. I was lost in every way one can be.

^{It's Devil @accio!}

Somehow as my new Angel of Light grew, my anger grew with her. Her smile kept me breathing, her love filled me with wrath. Her glow guided my way as the embers of rage stirred inside of the horrific creature I had become. Each new torment threw kindling on those embers and eventually the fire became hot enough to give me the strength to fight. I began to struggle against the current, to join the brawl of wrathful souls. They clawed, and bit, and tried to drag me down but every moment of every day I followed that glow. It gave me hatred that grew, and grew, and grew, consuming everything in its path and fueling my resistance. Without knowing what was happening my hand broke water. My fingers clung to moist earth, pushing dirt into my nails I didn’t let go.

“You know I’m not taking you back there, right?”
I looked at Ski sitting in the passenger seat of a minivan her new boyfriend was driving before I looked behind me to >see the now familiar streets of a once strange place pass us by.
I’m going to die…
What if I don’t?
I think I’ll take my chances with death.
“I know.”

^{With some great friends engaged in a project to express ourselves through art, naturally I chose to wrestle my demons...}

I dug in deeper to solidify my hold. The demons of the deep weren’t ready to let me go. Their talons burrowed into my bones pulling and ripping my muscles, shredding my skin. The force of it all nearly killed me. The toll on my physical body was extreme. I was very lucky to have Aunt Red and Uncle Green there to care for me; to clean the vomit, to run the bath, to help me walk when I couldn’t, to nurse me back to a functional state. I can never repay them for the kindness and love that saw me through nearly two months of debilitating sickness. I never once took my eyes off that glow as I pulled myself inch by inch onto solid ground. Not once as I, covered in mud, sweat and blood, slowly stood on shaky legs did I cease. Not once as I pulled back my shoulders, raised my head, walked into the fire and strode right past the Devil himself with a satisfied smile on my dirty face did I waver. My Angel, my Rose, gave me the power to free myself. I knew that the road ahead would be perilous (the Devil doesn’t like it much when they get away), but I wasn’t afraid. I had escaped the River Styx. I carried with me the Curse of Achilles and not even He could not harm me now.

^{By transforming into my greatest adversary.}
_{All of the showcased photographs were a major collaborative effort with a group of friends, including the incredible @seer, I don't know if the rest have Steemits or what their tags are if the do, so also thanks to Josh, Caren, Ochie, Will, Chris and anyone else that was there that night. @accio out, stay tuned!}