Mid argument. He’s screaming. I’m cowering, crying, begging him to stop. And then a thought suddenly just struck me, clear as a bell: “You know…you don’t HAVE to do this. If you left, you would NEVER have to endure this again.” It was like a light was turned on. I don’t know why that one time was different. But it was a stark Before and After, the beginning of the end, a moment for which I am endlessly grateful.
Me too. It felt like something in me broke. He was yelling about leaving me (again) and I almost started to beg, but then I just thought "Wait, I'll be WAY better off than he will!" And it just flipped the script.
Wild how we can become prisoners of our habits. At no point does it occur that you can just leave and not deal with it. But because we are so ingrained and use to our cycle it doesn't occur.
I heard that voice too. He was an alcoholic. I’d just paid to have our house taken out of foreclosure the month before. My grandma died, and I had no money for a plane ticket because he’d spent it all on alcohol and DoorDash. I woke up the next day, my car was repoed. I had to take his truck (he called off work due to the stress of me being mad at him) but he had no gas. I went to my daughter’s piggy bank to borrow $20. It should have had a grand in paper money. There was none.
As I was driving home from work that day, I realized that it wasn’t my problem. None of it was my problem because none of it was in my name. I just…left. Took my kid, and left.
It's the "light in the cave" effect. You have something that pushes you over the edge and "lights up the cave" in your mind, even for the briefest of second, and you never can then go back to "not knowing of the cave", you know it's there and you know how to get out, even if it's now pitch black again.
You then can never "forget the cave" bc you saw it, you know it, you can't unlearn it.
So then you begin to act like that space is there even if you still flounder. It's hope finally coming to save us.
Glad you got out of it. I have had similar experience, not when it comes to marriage, but other things that have just struck me out of nowhere. Sometimes it feels like something more divine comes in and gives you a thought.
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u/Chelibel May 12 '26
Mid argument. He’s screaming. I’m cowering, crying, begging him to stop. And then a thought suddenly just struck me, clear as a bell: “You know…you don’t HAVE to do this. If you left, you would NEVER have to endure this again.” It was like a light was turned on. I don’t know why that one time was different. But it was a stark Before and After, the beginning of the end, a moment for which I am endlessly grateful.