I Have the Courage to Face Their Retaliation

My vision is flawed, my perception is skewed. The past week I’ve let fear creep back in. This fear clouds my view and causes me to question my judgement.

I worry that something is going to happen with my ex and his wife. I am afraid that they are going to retaliate. This is how they operate.

When I was going through my divorce my ex found out I used $50 to open a bank account in just my name, so he took over $10,000 from our savings, money meant to pay taxes and insurance on the two houses we owned at the time.

When I do something they don’t like I expect them to respond with something dramatic. They are not ones to tolerate my noncompliance with their desires.

This past weekend my daughters were sick. On Monday my youngest stayed home from school. Their stepmother wanted me to keep the kids at my house so her toddler wouldn’t be exposed and she was furious when I told her that she already had been, since they were just at her house.

And so she retaliated.

Apparently my book has caused quite a stir at their house. I have heard that they are angry by the things I’ve said in it. When I was writing it I didn’t think I said much about my ex, and based on word count any reference to him is a tiny fraction of what I had to say. I barely touched on the things that happened. There is so much I left out. The only reason I included any of it was so that people would realize I’ve struggled, that I had serious problems.

And now I’m worried they’re going to retaliate. They are putting my oldest daughter in the middle and I’m afraid what this will do to her. I’m concerned they might be planning something bigger.

Because of this fear, I’m questioning whether writing the book was the right thing to do. It felt so right in the moment but fear is causing me to doubt.

This week I talked to someone who has started reading my book. A stranger who heard about it through the Meetup group I belong to. I saw him on Tuesday. He had read through the first section, the introduction, and wanted to explain to me how motivating he found it. He told me it had him seriously considering making a drastic change in his life. And he hadn’t even gotten to the good part yet.

This is why I wrote the book. I did it to give people hope. I did it to change the way they are thinking so that they can change their lives the way I did.

I didn’t get here by letting fear get in the way. I didn’t achieve all I have accomplished by cowering in a corner. I have become brave. I am not fearless, but I am brave enough to face this challenge. I need to refocus on the present and not the future. I can neither predict nor prevent what might happen and so I will enjoy today.

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This post is in response to the daily writing prompt Skewed