Sunday I felt the sting of a 16-year old mortification-friend-rejection again in Costco. Jared is right: there are people who cannot handle me in my more fragile states, and this person was one more of those. It doesn’t hurt any less, though. Jared assures me that I am not crazy but knowing there are people in the world who have rejected me due to my mental health does not exactly engender confidence in that area.
My life has taken twists and turns due to various mental health episodes, some more public than others. It’s affected every aspect of my life, but especially friendships and employment prospects.
And I’m nursing my ego wound by plunging my energy back into jute bag making. I’m over halfway done with the current one though it means figuring out the invisible join again because one spool of 6-ply jute is not quite enough to make two bags and this is the second bag I have made with the original spool.
On the topic of bags, I am sad because my original sourcing for the leather straps has inflated their prices, I am 100% certain due to the unfortunate tariff situation in this country. I found an alternative but it will mean the bags need to be smaller to accommodate the strap.
I confessed to Jared that this morning it was awfully hard to not bite the bullet and buy a Fuji X-H2….the old compulsion to spend to make myself feel better. It won’t solve one little thing and will only create other problems, so it is not happening at all, of course. Thankfully I have developed the discipline to say no to myself.
At any rate, this morning I found myself wallowing in the bed, texting Jared to say that I am worthless, that nobody wants to be my friend.
Which is of course objectively not true: I have a wide circle of wonderful friends.
It doesn’t make the stinging tears of shame over broken relationships due to the past any less painful at all, though.
25 years ago today, I survived psychological torture and likely real physical danger.
And the particulars don’t matter anymore; I am safe in February 10, 2026, not February 10, 2001.
But I have to wonder what my neighbors of the time thought. They had to hear the screams; I screamed for my life that night. No one responded. It was a 55+ community probably not used to domestic violence issues.
I don’t have to wonder about why it took that precise incident for me to decide to have the boyfriend of the time move out. It took precisely that sequence of events to upend our lives like that.
And I don’t have to wonder because I know: I reclaimed his old room as my own, and rechristened the energy of that space the very day my Mommy came to clean up the trashed apartment he left in his wake on the last day of February when he moved out.
My Mommy brought my baby cat Cricket to live with me that day, and Cricket and I went on to live there a good while longer.
And that day, that lowest of lows, was a turning point. It was the day I decided no man was worth my safety. No man, no matter how long I’d known him, was worth giving up my self-respect.
I was done settling after that night.
Thankfully, mostly good men followed that purging of my life.
I am so grateful that I got to marry the best one.
Jared is the one who has tolerated living in the light 24 hours a day for years on end.
Jared is the one who answers the ghosts that aren’t there when I hear noises in the night.
And Jared is the one who wants nothing from me other than my happiness. He doesn’t ask me to be anything other than real, he doesn’t ask me to perform for him.
He only asks me to accept his love as a gift. And that it is: a gift.
And 25 years on: I know for a fact karma is real, as sad as that is to say in this particular instance.
Tonight I will go to bed safe, having worked on a new jute bag for most of the day.
And I will go to bed grateful for the new lease on life I got in 2001.
For most of the past 19 years or so, I have low-key resented all the boy blankets in the house.
They messed with my decor sensibilities. Themed blankets that made little boys so very happy: Mario Bros., Spider-Man, Batman, Superman….. those blanket don’t very well go with a well-put together house.
Still, little boys love that sort of thing, so I said not. a. single. word.
But when given options for blankets in the main parts of the house, I’d choose other blankets every. last. time. for family activities, for pictures, for anything else that I could possibly think of an excuse for.
Themed little boy blankets were for boys’ beds. That was pretty much it. Or if they dragged them to the main living areas themselves for some reason.
But now, our boys don’t have themed blankets on their beds anymore. They prefer dark, stripes or basic slight plaid patterns.
They prefer big boy bedding these days.
So now, we have a supply of Spiderman and Mario Bros. blankets that don’t see a lot of love.
Except when Jared ends up on the couch to sleep, which is often for reasons not related to our marriage one little bit.
And Jared goes for the Mario Bros. blanket. Or the Spiderman blanket.
And I’m not sure if he does it because it’s on the top of the pile, or if he does it because it reminds him of the little arms that used to reach up for him to pick up.
And more and more lately, he leaves blankets, like this bunched up Mario Bros. Blanket in the photo, on the couch, for Abby or Trixie to lay on, saying “they were so comfy.”
These blankets in no way, shape, or form fit to my decor sensibilities anymore in 2026 than they did in 2012.
But you know what? I more and more say not one word about the out-of-place blankets left around.
In fact, my very own pile of 5-6 blankets that I pile on top of my self in bed every night currently includes a Spiderman comforter.
Because you know why? I’m aware that the little boy years are gone.
Those years are gone, forever, for the Price household.
And I am grateful for what brilliant, kind, hilarious, and gentle young men my children are growing up into.
But now, keeping these blankets– using them while they are still fit to use– reminds me that those frantic, stressful, hilarious, fun, sleepy, beautiful years– those years mattered. Deeply.
And I don’t know about Jared, but for myself– I sleep a little more soundly right now when a Spiderman blanket is keeping me warm.
Trigger Warning: effects of extreme domestic violence discussed
You know, it’s only been in about the last year and a half that I realized that that version of me, in that picture below, had actually saved someone’s life, in realtime, about a year and a half or so prior to this photograph.
Just like November’s are hard, February’s are hard for an entirely different reason.
I had an awful dream last night. I dreamed that someone I love very much wanted to kill me, and had already killed someone else I love. I spent a good deal of that dream attempting to hide, always to be found. I woke up before anything actually happened to me.
And I thought it was an odd dream to have, and then I realized that today is February 2.
The body keeps score. My subconscious knew exactly what time of year this is.
And the reality is, I lead a remarkably privileged life. We have a nice home, we can pay our bills, Jared has a phenomenal job, my children are getting world-class educations. I have great friends and even as an adult I am still spoiled rotten by my family.
And still….. the body keeps score.
Tomorrow February 3, will be the 25th anniversary of one of the most horrific days of my life.
In the journal in the photo below, there is a gap between January 4, 2001 and March 26, 2001.
I’m sure I didn’t think much about why I wasn’t writing at the time.
And it wasn’t until about a year ago that I really started to shuffle through that old journal of mine with a different kind of analysis than I’d ever done before, to see exactly what was going through my mind, looking at my brain as a young 20-something through the eyes of my mid-40’s self.
I bought that journal with the boyfriend of the time’s encouragement. He knew I had kept journals throughout my childhood and into high school, and he took me to Borders and probably paid for it.
There are only 2-3 entries before that January to March gap.
But, those entries held just enough information to tell him, when he probably read it, exactly where he was standing in my headspace despite the fact that we lived together at the time.
I’ve always been a very transparent writer. It’s just who I am; it’s how I process the world.
And so, when I decided I wanted to go out on a date with someone else on February 3, 2001, I knew for a fact it was going to be a messy thing. I knew the man I lived with— the man who had claimed me as his own for six years at that point— the man who had known all along that I’d long been involved with some guy who was now an attorney in another state for over two years at that point— I knew he wouldn’t take it well; I knew that I was beholden to him for half the rent of our two-bedroom apartment in a very nice neighborhood in Toco Hills.
I knew I had to break up with him for the millionth time.
I had zero, zero idea that the breakup would stick this go-round for very different reasons than it ever had before.
As traumatic as my college years were on a variety of fronts, there is only one week to which I am aware of in which my actual life was in danger, and that was the week between Saturday, February 3, 2001 and Saturday, February 10, 2001: the week between a blade and a door locked in the dark.
And the police were involved, and the officer told the boyfriend that no judge would take my word for anything if the other party decided to press charges against the boyfriend.
Which is why, when something arguably more sinister— a psychiatrist called it psychological torture in 2022— when something more sinister happened a week later, it didn’t even occur to me to contact the authorities. I was sure I was going to die that night of February 10, 2001, but the gravity of what exactly occurred didn’t occur to me at all until years and years later.
I just called my parents the next day, while the boyfriend was at work, and told them I needed the rest of the rent money; that I wanted to see other people and the boyfriend was being “unreasonable.”
So yeah, that dream from last night didn’t make a great deal of sense until I stopped to really think, and remembered, “oh yes, it is February.”
The body keeps score. My brain— this brain of mine that ruminates so very much, still processing probably three lifetime’s worth of trauma, keeps score.
And I write. To this day; I am terrified of this individual. Much like another individual I faced in the last year, I faced this person in person first probably 13 or so years ago as a tolerance exercise. I have solid reasons to know in my brain I am likely safe from him for a variety of reasons due to his likely current circumstances. But on some level I am always afraid he’ll show up at my house. I sleep with the lights off out of a type of forced exposure therapy now but for so much of our married lives, Jared and I have slept with the lights on such that our children grew up sleeping with the lights on even. He is not the only reason I am afraid of every man I meet, but he’s one of the bigger reasons.
And today, my puppy Abby is getting her mouth, probably long overdue, seen about. And Jared, upon hearing what anniversary it is, and, taking pity on me for my poor toe that seems to not want to heal yet, came home in the middle of this morning to take the trash to the street for me.
And I dragged my camera out of my bag— this camera I have been avoiding for weeks because I do that when I am hiding, and I found the photo of myself from probably late 2002, taken probably by this really great guy I dated for a while before Jared came along. And I found the journal only for the photo but this is not the time of year for dissecting it, just now.
And today’s agenda is to work on the jute bag I started, and to hold my camera even though I don’t feel much like taking pictures, and to remember that today is 2026, not 2001.
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