DeJaVu

I’ve recently joined a support group facilitated by an old therapist of mine. (Read more: Therapy- Igniting a Spark Within – The Rose Miller Story ) She put together a group of women to help us navigate what comes post-divorce and how to rebuild self-confidence. She branched off on her own and opened a private practice and I was going to a new setting I’d never seen her in.

During the first session, she asked us how we felt and I said like Dejavu. I thought it was because I had worked with her before or because I’d done groups like this, little did I know that a memory would come up that was pretty intense and I’ve actually been there before.

The second time we met I was running a bit late because I had a family party an hour away and no one wanted to leave. Anyone who knows me knows I don’t like to be late, I dropped off the kids and sped to the meeting. When I pulled into the parking lot for the second time I got an overwhelming feeling of Dejavu mixed with sheer panic and I couldn’t pinpoint it until an ambulance siren passed me and it all came flooding back.

In 2018, in the heart of chaos before I managed to leave my abuser (Read more: My Ticket Out – The Rose Miller Story) I was planning to go to Mom for the weekend and told the kids to get into the car after another intense fight. When I came down to the car I found that he had blocked my car in with his, and I couldn’t back out of the driveway. Every time this happened I would return upstairs defeated and wait for him to have an emergency call (he was a first responder) and be forced to move his car.

Not this time, I needed to get out of there. Things were escalating and I wasn’t going to stick around. I called my therapist and when she didn’t answer I drove across the lawn, made a U-turn on the property, and drove down the grass and onto the street. I watched him through the rearview mirror chase me down the street screaming that I was kidnapping his kids.

I sped down the main road and heard sirens. I thought I’d be pulled over for speeding but cars were moving out of the way and naturally, I moved too. Just then my therapist called me back and instead of turning left to the highway I turned right into a parking lot to take the call and saw him whiz by thinking he’d catch up to me on my way to Mom. How crazy of him to abuse lights and sirens to abuse me and people moving out of the way completely clueless.

I paced the parking lot trying to decide if I should risk going to Mom or turn around and go home. We talked through it and after remembering that he took my oldest daughter to my in-laws to live without my consent I decided that I could go to Mom without his. (Read more: Mother’s Day – The Rose Miller Story )

I park in the same parking lot now, it hosts my support group. The feeling of Dejavu I felt wasn’t because I knew my therapist or because I’ve done support groups before. I was pulled back in time to a scary time when I was in this exact spot when I was running for my life. I’m so grateful that I’m not running anymore, those days are long behind me.

Years have passed and it’s time to work through what I’ve been through and what an interesting turn of events. A traumatic moment in a parking lot can once again be a safe space for me. I was frantic on the phone with my therapist then and now I can work with her on the healing and once again he doesn’t win.