For my unexpected muse...

She's probably one of the most beautiful women I've ever had the pleasure of knowing.

Soft features contrast her true nature.

She represents many stories, an unplanned blog, unexpected healing...

Simple words grouped together, describing the most complex form of art my mind has ever developed.


Creative therapy.


No woman ever plans to marry an abusive man, a life only for the broken spirit.

Strong women don't have that problem.

Strong women wouldn't allow someone to waltz in and take over their life.
Strong women laugh at the thought.

Until they fall for a fucking psychopath.

Of course the tell tale signs aren't always evident at first. For the most part anybody can pass for a genuinely compassionate individual, as long as there's an audience, and when the audience is a strong woman, the show could go on for months. Until one day the audience isn't as much of a challenge, until the audience is a real life person with thoughts and feelings of their own.

Until that audience requires more from the performer than just a show.

Suddenly the performer becomes the director, the narrator, and the crew. Before she realizes the show has taken a drastic turn, she's alone, a captive audience?

For the most part I count myself lucky. I got away quickly, with the help of some angels...a few audience members themselves. No longer captives. Wiser women, who saw what was happening and offered up advice, guided me through the guise of a fucking mastermind.

My freedom angels.

As I'm not inherently religious, I still thank whomever for their presence, for the AppleBees off of Western Boulevard in Jacksonville, North Carolina.

The months following my escape aren't ones I'm proud of, normally I wouldn't admit to anything until that woman possessing such contrasting beauty wrote me a very compelling message. She opened up her life to me. I scrolled down the page on my phone at 5:00 AM reading only what I could describe as my potential story had those aforementioned angels not intervened.

I was the lucky one.

She described those following months as self medication. Only aiding in further self hatred, breaking a spirit once whole.

My heart ached. The lump inside my throat grew larger and I cried out, "You're not! Those things he told you..."

She never shared.

I knew so well the words he spilled on her like acid, because I too had felt the sting of a hateful love.

She spoke of her first love since she left.

She described him as just what she needed, "However it works out."

I could feel the hope she has inside of her, to see her child bond with the heart of a good man, perhaps not the right man, but a really good man.


I didn't want to tell her how it may turn out, how much she'd put on him, how no man could ever carry that burden and how ultimately the only peace she'd find after all of this is within herself.


I couldn't tell her because I'm still searching for that peace. I don't know if I'll ever find it. Perhaps I'm not meant to.


Perhaps I've still got some more writing to do.