An Open Letter To My Abuser, the title of the previously unpublished draft I had let sit in my folder for a little over three years. Every time I logged in it asked me to look again. I didn’t want to, though I’ve needed to. I think for a long time we were scared of what you could take from us if we said anything more.

Five years though, damn. Five years is a long time don’t you think? Time enough for you to have become a lot smaller than any one of us remembers honestly.

Much of the story where your life and mine intersected remains publicly untold even after the entries I wrote acknowledging our abuse and parenting their traumas. Why bother revisiting it now? Because it matters to those of us recovering still from the ways you hurt us. It matters because you have repeatedly crafted lies that allow you to look like the victim, the same story we were told to cosign all those years of before for our own “safety.”

You should know I’m no longer bitter, I’m hardly even angry. What I am is strong and awake, protective; that’s where this is coming from. It’s for your cousins who call to ask me if they’re being abused too. It’s for the beloved clients of mine asking if they will recover from people like you. It’s for my daughter, my sons.

And because my voice is no longer silenced by you, it’s for me too.

It’s sometimes hard to believe five years have passed since that fateful night in September when our lives changed. In the short time it took for her to press those three numbers into the phone? We divided from you.

9-1-1 what is your emergency?

My daughter dialed it. I made her hand me the phone. Did you know that? I wanted my voice recorded not hers. My trauma to bear not hers. I didn’t want the haunting of having to make that call be on her.

In hindsight I’m not sure how much it mattered. Your harm in our lives was complete.

I know you haven’t told the truth about that day nor any day before or after either; it’s okay I no longer expect you to. Those who want to believe you fully reject those of us who know what happened. Tell your stories, tell your lies, you can’t reach us and we don’t want you to.

Five years. The amount of time it takes a child to solidify their personality, an adolescent to complete high school, a young adult to start and finish college. Time enough for an entirely different life.

The amount of time it’s been us, me and my children without you.

Five years. I realized recently that I don’t hate you. I nothing you and I’m certain that is scarier. In the lives of myself and my children you only exist as the thing we compare the richness of our new lives against. Whatever memory there is left of you, whatever imprint you had left serves only as a point in time against which we can measure the ease and happiness of our lives after. You are the darkness we know to watch for as we choose a life opposite of all you taught us.

You tried to take our lives, but you couldn’t. You try still to take our livelihood, but you aren’t succeeding there either.

My biggest regret is giving them you as their father. They deserved better than this. We all did.

When the divorce was happening I genuinely thought that it was about just you and me, but mostly me and my failings as a human just as you taught me. The child part inside of me still asks those questions. Hers is the voice I nurture now, hers is the one I soothe.

I met your new wife less than a year after you were taken out of this house; the house I’ve made a home for the children you don’t know. I had thought you would coparent after your no contact order expired, but she didn’t know about any of that. You let her believe it was me. She doesn’t know the details of what happened still. How cunning you are. You had it all erased, didn’t you? We have pictures though, we have receipts. Case numbers, jury summons, files that can’t be burned that detail what you did to us.

I wonder if the memory of us is harder to erase in the quiet of your mind.

Five years as a sole parent. Despite the half truths you peddle to feel better about yourself, my precious young adults have chosen no contact with you. They are better for it.

You missed it. You missed the best of them. You’re missing the best of them now. You’ll miss all of the bests still coming. You couldn’t tell the truth about yourself and you lost them entirely. The saddest part? We would’ve followed you anywhere. You had us but it was easier for you to stay cold and cruel.

They will tell their stories in their own time, in their own way. Not you.

Five years. I’ve learned a lot about true love during that time. More so as a solo wanderer than as your “wife.” It’s in the messages sent by my people, heaps. It’s in the simplicity of coming close to the tears of my trusted beloveds. It’s in the ridiculous story of the matching tattoo she and I got on a whim. It’s in the silly memes shared in our family chat.

It’s in the way my children call me momma, still.

Sometimes I watch the comings and goings of others in relationships and wonder how it all works.

Five years.

We’re better without you. We’re softer with one another. You missed all of it, thankfully.