Pulling the Trigger

At 43 years old, with two children and a life built on years of survival, I finally found the courage to walk away from a 17-year marriage marked by control, emotional manipulation, and physical violence.

Now what?

That was the million-dollar question: Now what?

I had pulled the trigger; and once you do that, there’s no going back.

And I did. I pulled it at 43, with two children looking to me for stability and hope.

I had never felt so many things at once: empowered, free, terrified, uncertain, hopeful, doubtful. I was filled with questions about everything: my children’s future, my own identity, my path forward.

Who am I, really?

What comes next?

It hit me: for most of my life, I hadn’t been making choices; I had just been going along with what was handed to me. That’s how I ended up in the U.S., how I got married, how I worked in daycare, then as a controller for my husband’s business, and eventually opened my own accounting firm after his company was sold.

But none of those things were truly mine. I didn’t choose them. I accepted them. I adapted to them.

And in doing so, I slowly lost myself.

That kind of quiet self-abandonment kills you from the inside out, little by little.

But now: now it’s time to be reborn.

I’m in the process of figuring out who I am and, more importantly, what I choose to do from here.

I know this process won’t be easy. It will take time, strength, and an enormous amount of faith. It will hurt; because in order to be reborn, I need to dig deep into my beliefs, my feelings, my most hidden thoughts. I’ll have to face the monsters, the fears, the torment.

I’ll have to feel the pain in my soul as I let go of what’s false and outdated within me.

But only then, only by shedding the old, can I discover who I am becoming.

This time, I will build a life rooted in truth.

This time, I will choose.