FROM THE NORM TO THE MARGIN

Facing up to it

I have really exceptional children. Maybe because they are my own. Maybe because they prove it every day.They are torn between anger at having been torn from their world and gratitude at having escaped their torture.To think that they still love me!I am the luckiest person on earth.I have to prove to them that they are right to believe in me.My last two do not accept the fact that I have decided to leave everything they know even though they understand that we again have no other sensible choice.How could I do otherwise after what I have learned?And yes, when you hit rock bottom, you can go even lower. People around us keep telling us that we were a model family.But when the door of the house closed, we each returned to our ordeal in silence. Not for a moment did we suspect that the others were going through the same hell.Leaving the house opened the floodgates of speech. My children tell me about their daily lives, not necessarily to me.Just as I have come to understand (thanks to my children) that I lived through years of rape and violence of all kinds, they reveal what their father did to them. They always thought it was normal. They don't know anything else.I thought I had protected them from brutality. I didn't imagine that they were going through worse.Becoming aware of what we have experienced is a shock of unbelievable violence. We realise that despite all their efforts the people who love us cannot really understand us. Even among the six of us, we suffer for each other and we remain alone in our torment.I can't save my children from pain and now the rest of my family is in pain.What did I do? I am responsible for all this grief.It is explained to me over and over again that "the other" was holding my head under water. That I couldn't look around on the rare occasions when I could catch my breath. That I am not the only one in this situation. That every day women die at the hands of their partners. That I finally did what I had to do to save my children.How can you say that? Look at what happened to my children and tell me that I had absolutely nothing to do with it. It can't be.A parent must protect his children. Even that I missed. They tell me that they don't blame me, that I must forgive myself as they have forgiven me.To think that they are the ones who keep me from sinking.My children are all I have. They are my treasures.

I have to react. I must not think. I have to move on for them. They only have me. 

This time I want to be a real mother.