And Then...

It has been hard. I tried to write this post while I was on the train...but it was all too fresh. I was a total mess. I could barely speak in whole sentences. 

What happened, why I was on the train rather than enjoying a road trip across the country...I still find it hard to speak in complete sentences about. 

We were going to leave on Tuesday morning. I found this out when Karen decided that we would go spend our last night in Washington with our friend Julie. I heard Karen on the phone telling Julie. She would never give me a date. The dates I had were all about when they would deliver and pick up the pod. I wrote about my frustration surrounding the pod in several posts here.

They came to pick up the pod bright and early on Monday, the 17th. Karen was awake to great them. Not everything that she wanted in the pod got packed and placed there. But Karen had a beloved angel trumpet tree that the guy who picked up the pod helped her move in. When she told me this, she was happy. But immediately after, she turned sour and got violent. It happened so fast that it rattled me..

I woke up around 8:30 to help with whatever needed to happen. I knew that Karen had Carley coming over to do more cleaning. Karen told me about the angel trumpet and then started yelling at me that I was the reason her things remained unpacked. After throwing parties, going out with friends and having the girls spend 3 nights with us, she felt she bore no responsibility to see that her things were packed by an extended deadline. I was shocked. And I angrily told her that packing her things was her responsibility. She claimed that after I had packed as much of her things as I could, securing her televisions and carrying a majority of it out to the pod myself, that I had sat on my ass. I was reminding her of all that I had done, and she yelled at me to shut up, but I was not going to be silenced. Then she yelled at me to get out and threw a chair at me. When I looked up from where the chair had landed, I saw her coming at me, fists raised. I picked up the chair she had just thrown at me and chased her into the hall with it. That rattled her and she left for about an hour. 

In the hour that she was gone I reached out to my children. I had no one else to turn too. My son Venmoed  me money and told me to come stay with him. I booked a train and an Uber to take me to the station and was walking out the door when Karen came back with Carley to finish cleaning. 

The look on her face was utter shock when she saw me leaving. She has not reached out to me at all since I left. Ken and I have texted a few times. 

This is not the first time that Karen has gotten abusive to me. I haven't written about them, mostly out of shame. It is part of the reason that I have had trouble writing for the past few years. Nobody wants to be the victim. There is a lot to it, and I am not in a place where I can talk about it. I don't know if that would be a good idea even if I were in a better place for it. I need to talk to a therapist before I can decide that.

The train across the country was long and hard. My mind squirrel caged on what had transpired. I could not stop thinking about it. I arrived at my son's a week ago.  He says that I can stay as long as I need. But this is not an ideal situation. I am crowding them. My son talks of wanting me to stay. I don't yet know what to do. I am still raw and broken. In the course of a few minutes, my home was snatched from me. I don't know how this will work. For now, all I can do is exist. 

There is more I should say. I just can't right now.