I am thankful I woke up today. I am thankful I am still alive. I am thankful for the people in my life who I can trust to see me and know that absolute hell is being rained down upon me and has been for a very long time. I am thankful that he was not successful in killing me or breaking me down until I couldn’t get up. I’m glad I always got up. I’m glad I never gave up. I’m glad I never gave him the satisfaction. I’m glad for my strength. I’m glad that I still have my voice in spite of the fact that he picked me up and threw me into a desk, trying to make me lose mine after I had surgery.

I have been straight-up struggling. I am worn out, done with this fucking guy, and verging on shouting out what is going on with a megaphone. Or really, just parking myself at the appropriate distance from Ucf, so as not to be violating any orders, and handing out QR codes for the evidence, the story, photos, and a petition. Then there’s the other side of me that’s having a hard time getting out of bed every day. That second part is the hard one of the two.

Yes. The louder I speak the worse the punishment becomes for me and my children. It’s been at fever-pitch for so long I’ve forgotten what anything else feels like. That’s why I haven’t been able to escape for twenty years. I always back down. Not this time. If you are supporting my abuser, you are supporting a man who would rather us be dead, than be able to have a realities and the abuse we suffered validated and known. I’ve validate that abuse for myself and my children, even as he tries to blackmail me in writing to get me to say otherwise.

I’ve started a whole self-care routine to help myself get through what is constantly brewing in my surroundings. It’s been a long time since I felt the absolute need to do so it has also been a very long time since I have been able to take care of the basic things that I used to take for granted. He won’t afford us that time. Instead he drags us through the court system to dare us to speak up over what he has done and what he is doing to a mother, the mother of his two children.

And after abusing us physically and psychologically and sexually, and after acting like a complete lunatic in our home so that my kids and I had to escape to hotels and friends houses, he is trying to drive me straight into bankruptcy and homelessness, and take full custody of our kids so that I cannot certainly then stop his abuse. He wants to keep getting away with it. If you are supporting my abuser, you are letting him get away with it. He just took 8k more from me so now I am $13,000 indebted to him after losing all but $40,000 of my equitable distribution while he sits on 600 K. He wants to put me back where he got me, in the homeless category. Destitute. He pulled me in when I was in that position as his student and he knew I did not have any means to escape him, and now as I continue to try to escape him, he continues to try to drive me and our children into the ground and use us to torment each other because he harms us so that we are sad for each other and flaunts in our faces that he’s been able to get away with it because the people who can help us believe him and not us.