The Descent VI

Let’s be clear about something. Everything I went through, everything I’ve written about, felt real at the time, but looking back it started to feel like something else. Like a story I had been inside of. A painful story, sometimes a ridiculous one, but still just that. A story.

And yet I was still in it.

By that point, my children were mostly happy, and that was about the only thing I could say that felt stable. Everything else wasn’t. I was moving through life the way everyone else seemed to be, but I didn’t feel part of it anymore. In a way, neither did my kids. We were outside of something, even while still living inside it.

The practical problem was simple. My children were still young, and I couldn’t function without help. I couldn’t find anyone willing to watch them the way I believed they should be watched—free, safe, not controlled. So we did what we had to do to survive. We adapted just enough to avoid being completely rejected by the system, but internally I was already disconnected from it.

I had all but given up on school for them. But I was still haunted by the possibility that I was the one who was wrong. That I was the crazy one seeing abuse where no one else did. And when you have children, that thought becomes unbearable. It’s one thing to be wrong for yourself. It’s another to risk their lives on it.

So we stayed in between worlds.

Eventually we were back at my mother’s house again. She agreed, for the moment, to let me homeschool them. That bought me time. I didn’t have to work, and I could stay with them, keep them safe.

Then something strange happened.

One night, almost casually, I looked up an event. A talk happening in Washington, D.C. by someone whose work I had read before. I had no money. No plan. No way to make it happen.

And yet, I said out loud that I was going.

It made no sense.

Even more strange, my mother—who had never supported anything I did—suddenly agreed to pay for it. No hesitation. No argument. Completely out of character. She handed me her credit card and told me to buy the best seat I could.

I didn’t question it. I moved fast, like I knew something would change if I didn’t act immediately.

Within hours, everything was booked.

The trip itself felt unreal. The timing worked. The travel worked. I arrived without problems. I walked through the city like everything was exactly as it should be. When I sat down for the talk, I could feel something happening, something I couldn’t describe, but I recognized it.

It was the same thing I had felt during those two weeks years before.

For a few hours, I was back there.

Everything was okay.

Then it ended.

And just like before, it faded.

I went back home. Nothing had changed. Not really. I was still the same person, in the same life, dealing with the same conditions.

If anything, things got worse.

My mother’s behavior escalated. The pressure increased. The arguments intensified. One night it broke completely. She was drunk, screaming, trying to break into our room while my children and I sat together in silence waiting for it to stop.

That was the end.

The next day, I wrote an honest message to the people I had met at the event. I didn’t hold anything back. I told them exactly what my life was like.

What came back made no sense.

They had arranged for me to leave. A place to stay. Free. Food provided. Support waiting. It was so far outside anything I had experienced that it didn’t feel real.

I packed quietly. When the time came, I left. This time for good. The drive was long. Exhausting. Uncertain. But we made it. And when we arrived, everything was there.

A home. Food. People who helped without hesitation.

For the first time, life started to stabilize.

One of them was a practicing psychologist. Not someone retired, not someone removed from the world. Someone still working, still seeing clients, still fully inside that system. That’s what made it even stranger. People like that don’t usually step into your life. They don’t hand you a house to live in for six weeks. They don’t get personally involved. And yet, that’s exactly what happened. When Christmas rolled around we spent it at their house. They got my children toys and me? I got a beautiful hand spun meditation shawl. I still have it.

Later, there was money too. A thousand dollars, just given, no expectation attached to it. Enough to keep us out of a shelter for a while longer.

None of it fit anything I understood about how life worked.

But it kept happening.

For the first time, life started to stabilize.

I found work again. Not great at first, but enough. Then better. Then much better. Things started falling into place in ways they never had before. Money improved. Living conditions improved. Opportunities appeared.

From the outside, it looked like everything was finally working.

But something didn’t match.

Even with everything improving, the same feeling was still there. That something wasn’t right. That none of it was actually resolving anything. The external situation had changed, but whatever I was dealing with hadn’t.

If anything, it had become more obvious.

Because now there was nothing left to blame.

Life was working.

And I still wasn’t.