Under the Stars and the Moons

This weekend was somewhat difficult for me. I survived it, but I feel like it is not over yet. For starters, I was still recuperating from my intense EMDR session on Wednesday. This basically meant that my emotions were still relatively raw. Piled on top of that was the fact that my mother-in-law arrived this weekend for an almost week-long visit and that my husband has become an octopus and cannot seem to keep his hands off me.

Really I don't know where to go with this post, but perhaps I should start with a couple of things that gave me some sense of strength this weekend. I feel the need to celebrate myself.

First of all, there are my sleeping arrangements while my mother-in-law is visiting. As some of you know, I have been sleeping in my son's old room which is also my guest room. After considering different areas of the house where I could sleep, I decided that the safest and most comfortable place for me would be in my daughters' room between the two of them with their two twin beds pushed together. I decided I would not announce these arrangements until bedtime the first night.

...and so it was. At bedtime, my daughters excitedly exclaimed, "Mommy is sleeping with us tonight!!" To which my husband reacted completely surprised. His look was of genuine surprise, and he even asked me why I would be sleeping with the kids that night. REALLY?!! I wanted to say. Did he really have to ask why? What exactly did he expect? Did he forget the part when I told that I would never sleep with him again? I meant that literally. Did he really expect that a woman whom he forced into sex would ever lay in a bed with him? He truly was making plans for this. I think he thought I had no other option...I would have slept in a gutter first.

Because my children were in the room, my reply to his question was that I was sleeping in the kids' room because his room gave me nightmares. It is a response that I later had to explain further to my youngest, as she understood that I said that Daddy gives me nightmares (imagine that). At any rate, I slept soundly in my girls' little nook under the Unicorn's light show of stars and moons.

I suppose the triumph for me here was giving myself another option...an out. In another place and time, I would have felt trapped in this situation and may have unwillingly put myself in a vulnerable position. I will no longer treat myself that way. I chose safety and was strong enough to, not only voice my decision and my reasons for it, but to follow through with my plans to protect myself and keep myself safe.

As I mentioned earlier, the repercussions from this weekend are hardly over for me, but I needed to take this moment to celebrate and recognize my own courage, for a change.


This post is to be continued when I have more time...