And finally, the ankle broke.

“The path is always right beneath your feet.”

Issan Dorsey

You may have read the story about the kitchen garbage bag titled ‘The Beginning’. I chose that title as that day was the beginning of a new life. A free life. But since that post, I have had a few people ask me what happened the night before. I will tell you that the night before was like most other nights. Another fight. Another night of all the things I did wrong and all the ways I fell short. Another sleepless night. Like so many others. But it was my last. I was done.

So what I think you are really asking is ‘what was the end?’. The end happened on December 7, 2014. This was the day he broke his ankle.

This was not a good marriage up to this point to begin with. I think that goes without saying but I will say it anyways. But this particular winter I had a lot to look forward too. We were going to travel to Saskatchewan to visit my family for Christmas which usually happened about once every 7-8 years. I did not get to see my family nearly as often as I would have liked so I was very excited. Shortly after we were to arrive home from Saskatchewan we were going on a vacation to Las Vegas and San Diego, finally using our time share that we had purchased about 7 years back. To top off the exciting adventures, we accepted an invitation to a friends Christmas party. That last one may not seem like much to most people but we did not have much of a social life so it was just the cherry on the top. I planned my outfit two weeks prior. As I said, I didn’t get out much.

The Christmas party was on December 6th. He broke his ankle trying to walk home from the party in the early hours of the next day.

That ended the exciting adventures. Home for Christmas. Vacation. Gone. I had finally had something to look forward to and it was all gone. I walked out of the hospital the day the surgeon told him he didn’t advise traveling and I broke down in the parking lot and I cried. I felt embarrassed. When people walk out of a hospital crying, it is because they have, or are worried of, losing someone they love. I cried my heart out because I lost a Christmas with my family. I felt pathetic. But as dark as this moment felt, this wasn’t the end.

The end was what followed. The recovery time. I have never in my life felt so emotionally abused. So low. So broken down. So alone. Nothing I did was right. Nothing I did was enough. These were the real dark moments. But in those dark moments I realized that this time, he would recover. This time, there would be an end. I realized that if this had been something worse than a broken ankle, something that he would not recover from, that this would be my life. For the rest of my life. And then I realized something else. I realized that no one has to live this way. No one DESERVES to live this way. For better or worse does not cover this. I realized that I deserved better. I realized that I had to leave.

That was the end.