- Photo: Conner Baker on Unsplash
Her hand clasped the steering wheel and she fought against the tears that threatened to blur the road ahead.
The wheels whirred over miles and miles of black as the stars spread a rotating canopy over her car. A bug atop a line drawn in the sand, she was. A smidgen on the wide expanse of life under the heavens.
She won’t go back.
She could not allow it.
He had her squelched under his thumb for so long that she did not recognize her own face in the mirror. Her eyes had become a stranger’s.
“There are times,” her mother once said, “when a woman must believe herself. You may think yourself broken, but you will love again the stranger who was your self.”
She’d thought it cryptic at the time, melodramatic.
She understood now. “I’m coming home to myself at last, Mom.”
For the dVerse Prosery prompt: Love after Love in 144 words
Na'ama Yehuda 
Well done!
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Thank you, Linda! I’m glad you read and commented!
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Bravery at last. After years she listens to the advice of her mom.
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Indeed. May more women be given the advice and may more of them remember it was there … and that they take the choice to be themselves when it is possible …
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A poignant story of an abused woman finding the courage to love herself once more. Well written.
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Thank you, Beverly. All too many women and girls spend too long under the thumb of those who do not wish for them to spread their wings or be themselves. I hope more will find their voice, and the open road, and the way to love who they had always been inside.
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A heartening conclusion as she spoke aloud her decision and acknowledged her mother.
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Thank you … for one also wonders of the path her mother had taken – or wished to have taken – and about the realities of pain, repeating, through the generations of women who did not know they had a choice … or could not find a way to make it.
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❤ You are welcome.
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🙂
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So many persons in abusive relationships of any kind would do well to read this and heed the wisdom therein.
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Thank you, Victoria.
I hope those who are in abusive relationships will have someone — a neighbor, a friend, a co-worker, a family member, SOMEONE, who can help them know they are worth respect, and that they need not accept abuse. And may men, too, let women know they deserve respect. Fathers, brothers, brothers-in-law, teachers, cousins — they have a role in keeping women safe and raising girls to know they matter and that abuse is NEVER to be tolerated.
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excellent
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Thank you, Tim! 🙂
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Thankfully she was able to get out in time to refind herself.
Lovely write.
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Thank YOU, dear Dale. Yes, I’m glad she got out in time to find her own eyes in the mirror.
XOXO
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May all those women find the courage to leave.
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Amen to that, totally!
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Not all mothers give such good advice. She was lucky to have one who did, and it got her out of the abusive relationship. It’s never easy, I know from personal experience. I love the way you describe the feeling of helplessness as ‘a bug atop a line drawn in the sand… A smidgen on the wide expanse of life under the heavens’. And it’s true, the abuser in that kind of relationship twists a person until their eyes become a stranger’s.
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Yes, not all mothers give this advice — some are clueless, some are oppressed themselves and had misplaced their own eyes in the mirror.
I’m so sorry that you know the agonies of abusive relationships – too many do, and none should.
Thank you for the feedback and for highlighting the description you liked. 🙂 I think that driving under a big sky at night can make many feel insignificant, not the least of it those who already were diminished in others eyes and perhaps had internalized it some. I hope she – and any in a harmful relationship – finds her core, her voice, her strength, and her eyes in the mirror, looking back.
Na’ama
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a sad indictment of the suppression of women, glad she worked out the conundrum 🙂
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Yes, a peek into the reality of too many relationships … and, hopefully, to the possibility of finding one’s center and making oneself whole and safe …
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It takes great courage to come back home!
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Yes, it does, and shame keeps many from trying, while it ought not.
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This is such an important tale, to find yourself back is sometimes the only way to get out of the prison you’ve built with the “help” of others.
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So very true! Thank you for this most excellent comment! 🙂
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