A Convergence of Creativity: The Power of Artistic Collaboration

When members of the Lufkin Art Guild and the Lufkin Limners unite, the result is a unique fusion of visual storytelling and literary art. This collaboration pairs one writer with one artist, blending their talents to create a multidimensional narrative. Through shared inspiration and diverse perspectives, they bring to life stories that resonate deeply. "Sign of Hope" emerges as a testament to the transformative power of creativity, illustrating how artistic partnerships can craft evocative and meaningful experiences.

Sign of Hope

by Diana Meade

With courage and determination, Ellie transforms a simple street sign into a powerful symbol of her struggle to break free and reclaim her life.

“It’s my way or the highway, Baby.”  He bent to upright the kitchen chair I had tried to put between us when I saw what was coming.  “You know that.”

Yeah, I knew that. If he’d said it once, he’d said it a hundred times. Like that was the end of it. Like what rolled out of his mouth was a royal decree and as his loyal subject, I was supposed to bow and scrape. If he’d really given me the choice, I’d have picked the highway.

I bowed my head like the subservient little house slave I was. He didn’t hit me, but he grabbed me tight on my upper arms and squeezed hard till I cried out.

“You’re hurting me.” It didn’t matter. He didn’t stop.

“I’ve got to get your attention some way, Ellie. It’s your own fault.”

It was always my fault. My fault when he’d had a bad day. My fault when the air conditioner went out. My fault when he’d gained weight. I kept trying to wrap my head around his suggestion that I had all this power to ruin his day when I spent the better part of my time and effort making his life run smoothly and efficiently. 

He had my attention alright. I winced and cried out, “Bert, that hurts. You’re making bruises.”  He dropped his hands to his side, puffed up his chest. “Oh, you don’t want that.  You wear something sleeveless everyone will see what a bad girl you’ve been.”  He put his fist in my hair and jerked my head up, “Look at me when I’m talking to you.”

I swallowed hard, afraid of what might come next.

“You’re not taking that job offer. Tell Daren Whitehead he can pick somebody else. You’re not driving all over nine counties just to make him more money. I don’t care what excuse you tell him but tell him no. Am I clear?”

I looked directly into his eyes and made the nod I could make while he had me crushed against him with my head painfully pulled back.

“Now, what’s for supper? I’m hungry and I don’t see nothing cooking over there on the stove.” He growled out the next words, slow and measured, as if I were too dense to understand his meaning if he spoke normally. “See, this is what would happen if you started traveling in your job. I’d be the one to suffer.”

He let go of me, turned and ambled out of the room like we’d been discussing the weather, not whether I would accept the job offer that I really wanted. I allowed myself one long sigh of relief before I walked over to the freezer and pulled out a rock-hard entrée, kept frozen for midweek meals when I was too tired to make something from scratch. For a moment I fantasized bashing his head in with his dinner, but instead, I placed the package against my upper arms until they were so cold I couldn’t stand it anymore.

***

The morning came after a long night of sulking by Bert and tiptoeing around by me. He watched crap television, and I had my stitching while listening to an audio book out loud on my phone. This allowed me to be in the other room so not to disturb him and it gave me time to think, listening to the voices in my head talk trash.  

“Damn woman, you went about this all wrong. It’s better to ask forgiveness than permission. You could have apologized later, after you had already accepted the job, and it was too late to change it.

Not helpful. You know the price of forgiveness from Bert is too high.”

This kind of dialogue continued as I dragged myself out of bed, feeling miserable, hung over, not from liquor, but from defeat, unable to shut off the prattle in my brain. I was supposed to give Mr. Whitehead my answer on Friday. The tears I knew better than cry last night came while I was in the shower, though I didn’t have to hide them from Bert because he met a group of men for breakfast on weekdays. Meetings that were set in stone, I came to learn, albeit the hard way.

I had come to resent those breakfasts he had with friends and his good old boy business associates. At first, I was glad that I didn’t have to cook yet another meal that underwent scrutiny until one day I totaled up what he spent on just those restaurant meals over the period of a month. I thought if I told him how much money we could save if I made breakfast at home, he’d want to use that money to pay bills.

I stupidly decided to get up early and start breakfast one Monday morning before Bert was ready to leave the house. 

He entered the kitchen and asked me, “Just who are you cooking this for, your back-door man?” 

“No silly, I don’t have a back door man, and you know it. I just want to cook your breakfast so we can save the money you spend at Charlie’s. We need to get that credit card bill down a bit, because the interest on it is nuts.”

“You let me worry about Mastercard.”

I couldn’t help but be reminded of our balance every time I looked at the Rolex watch he wore so proudly on his tanned wrist. Who in the world charges a Rolex watch? I mean if you don’t have the money to pay cash for one, how does charging one at twenty-two percent interest make you feel good about wearing one?

“It’s because he is a show-off. He wants to prove to everybody he’s a big fat cat, like those jerks he hangs out with.” I cringed. Did I say that out loud? Did that come out of my mouth, or did I just hear it loud and clear in my head? 

I tried to shut it up by making a huge mistake, opening my mouth for real, “Bert, those breakfasts add up to a lot every month, besides all that bacon and sausage is probably bad for you.”

“You must have forgotten something, Ellie. You continue to remind me just how stupid you are. I’m the boss here. Not you. If I want to eat out every meal, I will. From now on you’re gonna brown bag your lunch to save the money for the Mastercard. See. I’m the smart one. You’re the one who burns her hand trying to make me breakfast.”

In the blink of an eye, he grabbed my hand and pushed my palm directly onto the skillet that was warming up waiting for the eggs I had just mixed in a bowl to scramble. When I thought about it, after a trip to Urgent Doc, I realized that the skillet could have been much hotter.  I could have been frying bacon. It wouldn’t have mattered to Bert. My left hand was such a mess, I probably no longer had fingerprints.

I screamed and flailed, jerking my injured hand hard enough to keep it from the now exposed burner.  I howled in pain, a guttural sound that seemed to annoy him enough to want to get away from the noise. He pushed me to the floor, the hot skillet flying onto my exposed leg, melted butter splashing hot all over my clothes, leaving another reminder of how dangerous Bert is when I’ve made a mistake.

“Now clean up this mess and get to work. You can’t afford to miss a payment on the Mastercard. That interest adds up.” He tweaked his watchband, making sure I saw him through my sobs. I was still in agony when he left the house.

“Get your phone. Hurry. In case he comes back. Take pictures of all of this. Do it now. Show your face. Show the skillet. Show your hand. Show your leg,” my internal voice who was occasionally wiser than me told me what to do.

I plucked several pieces of aloe vera plant from the kitchen window and spread the gel over the worst parts until I had sense enough to get to the medicine cabinet for some ointment. The blisters were already forming. When I could move enough to get my phone, I did as I was told. I seemed to be good at that. I took pictures. I made a video and explained everything to my invisible audience. I told the date and the time and the name of the horrible man who did this to me, my pillar of the community husband, Bert Hanson. 

By the time I drove myself to the emergency center, fear had overtaken me, and shock had set in. The voice of sanity that told me to document the burns was overcome by the voice that warned me about what would happen to me if I told the truth or if Bert ever saw those pictures and that video, so I lied to the staff who bandaged me up, prescribed some pain meds and sent me home. However, I knew I had to do something with the ticking bomb that was on my phone. If Bert saw what I had done, it would blow up in my face and I’d be splatters on a wall somewhere. While I waited at the pharmacy, I created a new email address, a new cloud account and uploaded the pictures, then deleted them from my phone.

That day, I became two people: Automaton Ellie and Planner Ellie. The Automaton had no choice but to become even more dutiful and compliant until Planner Ellie could implement some kind of plan. I would flip flop back and forth, forgetting about the existence of the other until another incident would happen, and the two sides of me would once again be competing for some kind of outcome where I lived a peaceful life, and Bert didn’t hurt me anymore. This continued internal conflict was becoming harder to ignore and increasingly stressful.

When I was home, I was Ellie, the docile domestic. I learned to anticipate Bert’s moods and planned my life accordingly. Besides, the church told me to obey my husband and that seemed to be the part that kept me locked in to, well, obeying. I thought this was what I was supposed to do: keep my marriage together and stop trying to figure a way out of it.

However, Automaton Ellie was starting to glitch. My pre-programmed, obedient-wife setting was starting to slip. This regimented life, the one where I was the problem, where I did all the compromising, was becoming increasingly difficult to maintain. Until now, I used my job to help the gears continue to turn. 

Work allowed me to ignore what I couldn’t seem to change at home. I was lucky to work with good people, a good boss, doing good in the world. I wanted the opportunity to do training in our satellite offices. I wanted the increase in salary, the company car, more benefits and if I admitted it to myself, time away from Bert. 

I didn’t have time to think about that last part, because I had to get to the office.  It was a race to get to work before the best parking spots were taken up, otherwise you had to walk what seemed like a mile through a maze of construction in the brutal Texas heat. I worked in a building that overlooked the overhaul of our downtown space.

By the time I climbed the stairs to the second story office, I was regretting the extra time I had spent feeling sorry for myself while getting ready. The main thoroughfare was fenced off so that the construction crew could turn Main Street into a manicured cityscape. My office window overlooked all the action and while I was on hold on the phone, I would watch ringside the progress of the workers as they labored under the hot summer sun, but what I zeroed in on, what garnered my attention the most, was a street sign that had yet to be taken down. The two-word sign spoke volumes to me. “One Way” was printed in black letters on a white background. A simple thing; direct; an arrow pointing in the direction the traveler was supposed to go.

I was living my life one way; the way that another person demanded that I live it. One way felt claustrophobic, untenable. Slowly, as time went on, the sign began to change in my mind. What if I thought about one way as a way out? I felt like I had few choices, I could not think of a thousand ways to escape, but what if I could find at least one way out?

One way became my mantra.

Over time, the construction downtown on the street became a metaphor for the journey I was taking now. The torn-up asphalt was such a shock the first time I saw it. I grew up in this town so seeing this particular street destroyed by cracks and fissures was unnerving and it did not look like progress to me, but because I came by here every day and stared out at it from my window, I became accustomed to the upheaval, just like I had become accustomed to the upheaval in my home life. On the day that Bert said I couldn’t accept the job opportunity that I wanted more than anything, I was afraid that my path might never be repaired, and my “one way” would always be Bert’s way. 

However, Planning Ellie was busy doing what she does best. Since I brown-bagged my lunch, I had plenty of time to run errands and get things done without Bert breathing down my neck. One of my co-workers, Beverly, had inherited her parent’s home place and was slowly cleaning it out trying to get rid of a lifetime of belongings. I had volunteered to help her on several occasions. Beverly told me that the job of sorting and deciding what to keep and what to let go of seemed to go faster with a second opinion. It was nice to have my opinion count for something even if it was which sorting box a worn-out Fedora went into.

She allowed me to store some clothes and shoes I began to buy at the thrift store. She even gave me a suitcase and showed me where she hid the extra key. Her help didn’t come without questions. She was a gifted inquisitor, and I was so exhausted trying to keep the truth hidden that I finally admitted everything. I even showed her the videos and photos I had uploaded to the cloud which had become quite the cache. 

After the most recent video reached its conclusion, I couldn’t look at her. I had never watched them until now, and it shamed me somehow to see myself unable to stop what was being done to me. Why was I so weak that I couldn’t make it stop? Why did I keep making mistakes that resulted in being punished? Why had I shown Beverly this carnage?

I was lost in this self-flagellation until I realized Beverly had been speaking for a while, “I can only see one way this is going to end. He’s going kill you if you stay.”  One way?

What had Beverly said? One way what?  

Only one way this is going to end, He’s going kill you if you stay.

“You don’t think I’m stupid for staying?”

“You’re not stupid. You’re scared. You have every right to be!” She jumped up and began to pace around the room. “I knew I didn’t like Bert. Now I know what the vibe is I pick up every time I’m around him. He is so holy and righteous. Devoted family man. Loves the Lord but hates women.” She shivered even in the heat of the evening,

Beverly’s reaction jolted me into a reality I hadn’t wanted to consider. Bert would never let me leave him on amicable terms. I was afraid of what would happen if he ever found out I was doing anything out of the ordinary. Talking to Beverly made me realize that I had created a false illusion of choice; as if I were in a sane relationship, but I was just bad at it. I could no longer fantasize that I could just say I wanted a divorce over dinner, and he would agree. I was now certain; I wouldn’t live past dessert.

Telling the truth to myself and to another person was the best thing I could have done. Beverly’s Planner hooked up with Planning Ellie and we went to work. Beverly’s helped keep me focused when the overwhelm of what I was trying to do set in and threatened to paralyze me into inaction.

She bought a refurbished phone and a burner one from her Amazon account and allowed me to pay her back a little bit at a time. I was certain Bert had a GPS tracker installed on mine so he could always keep up with my whereabouts and be privy to my texts. My current phone would have to be abandoned even though I left it where he thought I was supposed to be while I ran errands, I didn’t want him to know about. 

I signed up for a bargain phone service and paid for it out of my secret Venmo account which knocked it back to about $200. Two hundred dollars would pay for one night at a cheap hotel room, some gas for the car and maybe enough left over for one of those rotisserie hot dogs they sold at the service station that nobody bought. Maybe I could get the runaway discount. It wasn’t enough. Thinking I needed more money before I left was a trap that I was stuck in for a long time. 

I used the phone at work to call the National Hotline for Domestic Violence. I might have saved myself some agonizing second guessing if I had called sooner. They told me that most shelters provide services at no cost to the survivor since they rely on donations and government funding to operate. Many shelters offer programs for job training and job placement to help residents regain financial independence. My muddled brain kept me thinking that I had to figure out everything myself. I have always been lousy at asking for help until the voice on the other end of the phone helped me see that there were people who could and would help me create a safety plan and an escape route.

I couldn’t decide where I wanted to move. I had a cousin in Washington State, but even if I could get there, I didn’t want to put her at risk by having Bert show up in a rage at her house looking for me and finding me. It would be better if she was never involved. I doubt Bert would even remember her last name, but it made me think about deleting her from my contacts.

Beverly and I discussed my escape plan until I finally decided that I would stay at a shelter in a big city for a while and make that decision later. I talked with several shelters and found one that most fit my situation. The voice on the other end of the phone knew exactly what I was going through. The counselor was so kind and helpful, but the clincher for me was when she said, “Oh and just so you know, the entrance is intentionally nondescript, and it is on a one-way street. If you miss the driveway you will have to circle around the block and come back down the one-way street again.”

I was beginning to feel a tiny bit hopeful. Maybe my one way would be the way out.

There was a twenty-year-old four-door Chevy in the garage at Beverly’s that had belonged to her elderly father that had low milage and a battery that just needed charging. Beverly had a mechanic friend who checked it out, called it a plumb of a used car and offered to buy it on the spot. She saved it for me and filled it with a tank of gas. When she gave me the keys, we were both in a hurry to get to our respective homes. I had to get dinner made so I put them on my key chain, the very one I left on the entry hall table in a pottery bowl at my house, right next to Bert’s keys.  

I became my version of the Frugal Gourmet using all my tricks to stretch a buck out of my grocery money. No more trips for a fancy latte on the way to work. I bought everything I could on sale and cooked that. I added twenty dollars cash back to each trip to the store and put it in my stash. Tonight, we were having canned soup that I added some leftovers that Bert would never have touched if he’d known, dumped it in the crock pot and let it cook all day like it was homemade. I was getting good at making something out of nothing. 

I was setting the table when I heard Bert’s truck turn into the driveway. I loved these pottery soup bowls, the ones we had bought in Santa Fe on a trip before all the bad stuff started happening. I would miss my things. 

Beverly’s family home was a treasure trove of used items that were destined for the landfill but suited me fine. We tried to anticipate what I would need, and we could store everything in the trunk of what we came to call, my get-away car. The pottery would have to stay here.

Oh my God, you left those keys in the bowl in the entry hall. Get them off now before he sees them.

The realization of what I had done struck me just as the back door opened. Bert’s towering silhouette filled the frame of the door and then he rushed past me, in a hurry about something. Was he dropping off his keys in the bowl beside mine?

My feet seemed to be welded to the floor. I couldn’t turn around to look. I tried to wipe the terror off my face as I waited for the inevitable barrage of questions I couldn’t answer.  I could feel the panic closing my throat and immobilizing my brain until Automaton Ellie showed up and said, “You’re just in time. Dinner’s ready.”

“I don’t have time for dinner. Some of us guys are going roll a few practice games.” He said this over his shoulder while he walked back out the door with his bowling bag in hand. “I’ll grab something at the alley. It’s Skinner’s time to pay for pizza anyway.”

The sound of the truck door shutting urged me into action. I must have sprinted the ten feet to the entry hall to grab my keys.

“Where you going, Ellie?” Bert said. He was so close; I could feel his breath on my neck. I was so startled; I gasped and dropped the keys between my feet.

“Gosh, Bert, you scared me.” I bent down to pick them up and stuck them in my pants pocket.

“I can see that.” He grinned, seeming pleased that he had that effect on me. “You not going back over to that Beverly woman’s house, are you?  I need to stop by there and see what you two are up to. Ya’ll should have that house cleaned up by now.”

I broke into a smile. “Would you, Bert? We need to move a piano and you could help us get it into the other room so that when she has the estate sale, she can close off the room it’s in now.”

“You’re kidding, right? I ain’t getting a hernia for nobody.” I knew this. Bert didn’t want to be roped into moving anything heavier than a bowling ball.

“You never answered my question. Where are you going?” 

“Oh, I think I left my cell phone in the car. I wanted to listen to my book while I ate dinner.”

He stared at me for a minute, narrowing his eyes and then looked regrettably at his watch. I could see the wheels turning. If he’d had the time, this discussion would have gone on much longer.

“I gotta go,” he said, as he pulled off his Rolex and handed it to me. “I forgot to take this off.

Can’t risk this little baby getting hurt. Put it in the drawer for me.”

I swallowed, my mouth so dry I could hardly speak, “Sure thing, Bert.” 

“And Ellie, keep up with it better than you keep up with your phone.” He shook his head in disgust.

I smiled a weak smile. Then he left without seeing my phone on the counter, a dish towel haphazardly thrown over it.

I waited until Bert’s truck was out of the driveway and down the street before I took the set of keys off my keyring. My hands were shaking so much, I almost couldn’t manage it. I looked wildly around for some place to put them. I irrationally considered swallowing them. I should have left them in the garage at Beverly’s. I should have had better sense. Bert was good at making me feel stupid, but I was an even better expert at it. I began to shake all over. My legs wouldn’t hold me up. I sank into a puddle in the entry hall, gasping for breath. The fear of what could have happened coming over me like a fast fog rolling in. 

When my breath finally returned, I could hear the tiny tick tock of the watch speak in the silence of the house in a measured beat that seemed to say: give-up, give-up. I listened to that for a while and then the planning part of me, the one who wanted out, changed the beat to: get-up, get-up. It took me a while, but I got up. Eventually I buried the keys inside a small moisturizer jar that went into my makeup bag that I carried in my purse. I would get them out of the house and into a safe place. 

I then thanked the bowling gods, for well, bowling. Bert bowled in a league twice a week, bowled in tournaments and watched boring bowling on television. I was grateful for the sport. If I ever wrote my autobiography, I would have to name it, “How Bowling Saved my Life”. It allowed Planning Ellie to figure things out and gave Automaton Ellie a much-needed break. The day I was supposed to tell my boss that I couldn’t accept my promotion was the beginning of a tournament. 

It was also the day I got caught.

***

Mr. Whitehead, my boss and I climbed the stairs to the office at the same time. We were both complaining and sweating from the long walk in from the parking lot. It was only 8 a.m. in the morning and the temperature was already nighty-six degrees. I was dreading the conversation we were about to have when I forgot about my arms and pulled off the jacket I was wearing to get some relief from the heat.

He was standing right behind me when I heard him, murmur, “Oh my, Ellie.” 

I looked around when I realized what he was talking about. There in full glory were the bruises in the shape of Bert’s hands on my upper arms, just where he had left them. I quickly put my jacket back on and retreated to my desk. Mr. Whitehead watched me as I put away my things and said pleasantly, “Ellie when you get settled, come see me.”

“Tell me about the bruises you have on your arms?” was the first thing he said to me as he closed his office door and motioned for me to sit down in the chair across from his desk. Getting caught with Bert’s handprints tattooed for everyone to see originally filled me with shame. I doubt I would have been truthful about why I was turning the job down if Mr. Whitehead hadn’t seen the proof of Bert’s abuse and confronted me gently about what was going on.

I was accustomed to being interrogated by Bert, but never by Mr. Whitehead. Maybe because it was automatic for me to respond for fear of retribution that I spilled it all. Once I started talking, I couldn’t shut up. He listened to me. He asked me questions about how I was going to get out of this situation. I told him that Beverly was helping me and so he called her into the office and by the end of the day, I had a solid plan. Mr. Whitehead even recommended a lawyer who came to see me at the office, helped me with a restraining order and divorce proceedings. I was exhausted by the end of the day, but I had the hope of a new job in a city far away and the possibility that I could have a different life. 

The view was somewhat different from Mr. Whiteheads office, but the little one-way sign was still there. He noticed me staring out the window at it, making the comment that tomorrow that sign would be taken down because they were coming in to pour concrete for the new roadway. “I’m sorry you won’t be here to enjoy the new city space, but maybe you’ll enjoy where you’re going even more.”

On Saturday morning, after Bert left for his tournament at the bowling alley, I took the necessities I wanted from the house, but I left my cell phone at home, so Bert could use his tracker to verify that I was doing my weekend chores while he played super bowler. Beverly and I were meeting so we could hide the car deep in the woods down an unused logging road. If Bert came after me, he’d be looking for my car not the old Chevy Beverly let me use.

Before I met Beverly, I had two stops to make. Since I was the Master of the Mastercard now, I found out how much cash I could get on the card and how much my bank would let me withdraw daily from its ATM. I had withdrawn the daily maximum yesterday and would again this morning. This would be my last banking transaction in my hometown, but it would be a tidy little sum. After the bank, I drove to my office.

I could hear the cement trucks before I saw them downtown as I pulled up into the closest available parking lot. I got out of the car and could see that the safety fences had been taken down so the workers could do their job. I walked for the last time to the spot where the one-way sign had stood. There was a deep hole where the concrete that originally held up the sign was. I looked around to see if anyone was looking, but nobody was paying attention to a woman who was grinning manically as she happily dropped a valuable Rolex watch into what I chose to call a one-way hole.

On Monday morning, I paced the pleasant room at the Women’s Advocate Shelter in Houston, waiting for a call from my lawyer. Just saying “from my lawyer” in my head gave me strength. Yes, I was in a place that Bert didn’t know about. Yes, I was hopeful, but Bert was about to get news that I hadn’t just run away, but that I was defying him in a potentially public way. The knot in my gut was huge. I just hoped Bert was about to have one too.

Bert was in his usual place at Charlie’s for breakfast. My lawyer, who sat at a table armed with my loaded burner phone, had a good view of his face. He reported that he didn’t look like a concerned man whose wife was missing. He dominated the conversation by regaling his comrades with his tournament win. Just as Bert was getting to the punchline of yet another long-winded story, my lawyer hit the send button. Bert interrupted himself when his cell phone signaled a text message from an unknown caller. He often liked to call the spammers back and give them a piece of his mind as he had done on many occasions with this audience. The video seemed to stun him, my lawyer said. He stood up, scooting his chair back to keep the men on either side from seeing what he was seeing.

A slick, well-made video documenting his abusive transgressions with a voice over by his wife, who he neglected to mention was missing, threatened him with the disclosure of its contents to the community and law enforcement if he tried to follow me, find me or contest the divorce and restraining order that a peace officer was about to serve him with. He finally managed to turn down the volume, but probably not before some of his companions heard the gist of it.

He cursed out loud, calling me names, where he stood causing the whole room to go silent. His companions began to ask questions, which he ignored right up until the deputy whose timing had been prearranged served him with papers. Bert accepted the envelope, finally realized everyone was witnessing an example of his true self and sort of crumpled back into his chair. My lawyer made his exit and called me from his car to tell me about Bert’s reaction. I could breathe again.

Later, I would learn from Beverly that Bert had come to the office, looking for me, demanding to know where I had gone. Mr. Whitehead said he didn’t know where I was, only that I had left town to get away from him. Bert began to argue until Mr. Whitehead said, “Bert, I saw your handprints on Ellie’s arms. She didn’t ask me to, but I will testify to that in court if it comes to that. Now get out of my office before I call the police.” 

He did not go quietly, until he became aware that the whole office had stopped what they were doing and were staring openly while he had what Beverly called a shit fit. The threat of revealing the video of the abuse seemed to have the desired effect, but after explosive reactions from Bert at Charlie’s and at my old job plus my own sudden disappearance fueled the smalltown gossip mill which probably had a much bigger impact on his behavior. My divorce went through without a hitch.

If it sounds like I knew what I was doing, I did not. Fear can be both energizing and paralyzing. I was so accustomed to anticipating Bert’s moods and triggers, I don’t know if I could have ever sent that video from my burner phone myself. I might have rationalized that I was safely away and if Bert ever did find me, he would be extremely explosive about the photos of his handywork on my body. What others helped me see was that I was never ever going to please Bert or make him less of an abusive bully. Talking to other people who I could trust helped me out of wrong thinking and offered me a reality check that I may have never seen myself. Connecting with other women who had experiences like mine were life affirming and helped me to not feel so alone after being isolated for so long.

After a while, the anxiety of thinking about Bert and what he could do to me subsided, although I learned from my counselor that my plan to disappear was sound and necessary. It took me a long time to stop obsessively looking over my shoulder, not trusting that Bert wasn’t waiting for me where I least expected. I’ve graduated to just being hypervigilant. However, rebuilding my life step by baby step has helped me believe that I am going to be alright and that I have a chance to have a different kind of life.

From time to time, I will see another one-way sign, and it will bolster me, lift me up, reminding me that one-way can be my way, the one way that matters to me.

If you or someone you know needs help due to domestic abuse here are some resources that can help you find your own one way out.

National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-SAFE.

National Runaway Safe line (1-800-RUNAWAY) 

National Runaway Switchboard (800-621-4000)