life sentence

i can’t remember if i wrote about my ex’s prison sentence.

he was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison and is now in a prison in Oklahoma somewhere.

and for him, 20 years will likely be a life sentence. not because he is old, but because he is not strong enough to survive.

he’ll die there.

and that’s what should happen.

he has nothing left. everyone that used to hope he could change his life has given up on him.

there is nothing left in this life for him.

i have never given up hope on someone before. no matter how bad it got. i always believe that people have a chance.

but not this time.

he needs to be put out of his misery. i am just grateful that the women and people he victimized can rest easy for the next 20 years. it’s the the most free i have felt in a long time.

there was always that lingering fear that he was lurking somewhere around a corner waiting to pounce when he had the chance.

i don’t have to worry about that anymore. finally he is paying for what he did.

finally he will not charm the court system into going easy on him by making a bunch of empty promises.

i am not sure if he has tried to call. i have had a few missed calls from numbers i didn’t recognize, so who knows.

i write about him now with a distance that is completely detatched. when i once wrote in this very journal with extreme and intense emotional and psychological investment in my circumstances as they related to him, i now feel as though i am telling someone else’s story.

relaying a message.

and that feels right. and good. because for a while, all i believed i was was a victim. i was his victim. and that idea had been beaten into me so many times literally and figuratively that i had forgotten about everything else i was.

now i don’t even recognize the person i was then. it’s hard to imagine, at this distance…that i was ever even in that situation. at times it feels so vague and blurry that it seems more a figment of my imagination than anything.

i haven’t forgotten so much as to have lost the character i developed during that time, however. i will remain forever a changed person (for the better) as a result.

but it’s about moving from the victim to the survivor.

the enabler to the fighter.

my time under his reign is now a faded memory. and now my fear of his ressurgence has subsided.

i am free because he is not.