The Moment You Knew You Were Free

[sun seeker]

For anyone who has been in an ongoing traumatic situation, is there one moment you can point to after it ended when you realized you were free? Not that the memories and effects of the situation weren't still with you, but that it was over and your life was yours again?

For me, there was such a moment many years ago, a few months after leaving my abusive partner. My daughter, then three, and I were sitting at a table in a restaurant over my coffee and her bagel, completely at peace, the sun streaming in through the window, and it suddenly struck me that it was over and there was triumph in just being able to sit there together so calmly, no physical or emotional violence in our lives, no one trying to take her away from me. No one would have understood at the time how profound that moment was, but oh, it was sweet.

Was there such a moment for anyone else?

 

[Chava]

I ran away from home. It was f*cking amazing.

 

[KwanYingirl]

My friend found on the Internet that my stalker now lives in Florida-far away. Life has been so much better since. No more suspicious white pickup trucks lurking nearby. I don't even look for them now!!!

 

[illusionist]

I was thrown out but willing went at 18....freedom!

 

[Deleted member 28986]

I left at 16. I felt such a relief to be out of it. I haven't seen them again. That alone is an accomplishment.

The realization came in bursts. The first burst I remember, I was driving to get out of there. I didn't "have" to go anywhere, and that was a strange feeling. Never before had I had zero obligation. Felt like a whole new life.

But I had no idea how much was yet to come back from the past. :(

 

[NicG]

I broke up with my abuser, he tried to call me to cry and crawl his way back, but I just rejected the call. I'd never been brave enough to do that before.

I thought "wait. I never have to speak to him again!"

 

[Tinyflame]

I think the moments I have peace, & freedom from worry, because I know there are no guarantees. But those moments are internal, even during traumas. Times I feel hope or not alone.

 

[Kintsugi]

I think I had this in stages with one of my abusers.

I saw his power taken away three times. Each time was like opening my own personal set of wings just a little bit more.

The last time this happened, he took me by the throat and slammed me against a brick wall. He told me to tell him I loved him.

I wasn't afraid of him. I looked him dead in the eyes and said I didn't. And it was like he evaporated right there, and I was free.

 

[Friday]

Sitting on a white sand beach, drinking a beer. I was discharged. I was wearing civvies. It was a Tuesday morning at 10am or some such, and here I was with nothing to do. I wasn't on Leave, or Liberty. I was out. I was sort of stunned. Well! That's it! And watch the tide hiss through the sands.

It was honestly several more years. I did manage a few weeks of being a civilian before I packed myself back up and went back to war zones.

There were a lot of times after that I found myself alive when I didn't expect to be. The feeling was sort of similar. A few times when I've looked up and realized my life looks nothing like it did just a moment ago (Wait. What? How exactly did I get here? Not amnesia of any kind, a byproduct of living too much in the moment and going with the flow.). Which was always curiously provocative. A paradigm shift. Similar in a different way.

But that's the only time I have ever really felt everything was over and my life was my own.

 

[jaccat]

My parents divorced when I was 11, but it wasn't until the death of my mother, 6 years later, when I felt that weight lift off me. I didn't know it was there until it was gone.

Something similar happened with my depression. I had been seeing a therapist to deal with it. One summer's day I went for a walk. It was beautiful, warm, peaceful. I ended up sitting in a field by a river, in long grass. I went into a kind of trance state. I don't know how long I sat there, but when I came back there was a large spider perched on my knee. I was so relaxed I just gently asked it to move on. That's when I realised I wasn't getting depressed any more, hadn't been for a while. I hadn't even noticed.

 

[Momofthree]

My moment of freedom was the first morning in my new house. I had left my abuser 9 months earlier but I had been living with my parents and therefore, living with my abusive mother (and realizing for the first time how abusive she really was during my childhood) but I was able to save up and get my own place. Finally, that first morning when I woke up, walked out of my bedroom, past my sleeping children, into the kitchen and poured myself a cup of coffee. I sat down on the couch starred out my window and thought "There is no yelling, no worry about upsetting anyone, no eggshells! I'm free!!"

 

[Beachlife09]

Still waiting to feel that moment.