The link to part one can be found here: https://medium.com/@katharos27

Trigger Warning: this open letter contains graphic, personal stories regarding domestic violence and rape.

Every morning I wake up from a dream of you holding me underwater. Is that a dream or a memory?

The distinct beginning of Hayley Williams song, Dead Horse, echoes across my entire being as I begin to unbox the destruction that you wrecked upon me.

Multiple times, I woke up being smothered, held down (sometimes with a pillow), nose and mouth covered… Drowned in a pillow by the hands of my own husband…

Is that a dream or a memory? Hayley wistfully sings this line, begging my own memories to tell me that they were untrue. Oh, how I wish it were not true.

I bet you thought this was the end of me. I remember the day that you looked me in the eye and told me that I would never find anyone better than you. Liar. Coward. I remember looking into your eyes as if they were a mirror. I fucking hated the reflection. My reflection. At that moment in time, I did not hate you. I hated myself.

You were wrong by the way. I never found anyone better than you because I kept finding worse. And once I decided I was done finding worse, I found myself. The ending of you (us) led to the awakening of a woman called to greatness. I am the piece of me that was missing the whole time.

I have fought the deep, dark parts of me since we parted ways in 2019. I have battled the demons over and over until my bloodied hands were all that was left of their presence in my life. And still I see echoes of you everywhere you go. I wish you would leave me and my peace alone.

HARD STOP for my readers: this is your final trigger warning. I am not mincing my words. This is MY naked truth.

For years, I re-lived my worst nightmare of you every time I closed my eyes to sleep. It was a slow morning in our household that day. I was putting the pieces of my day together before I had to go to work. I started climbing the ladder that led to the loft where we slept to grab a book I needed. You stood up from the couch suddenly, turned to me on the ladder, and yanked me down to the floor. In seconds, my clothes and my thoughts were in disarray. There was no time to scream, no time to fight, and no time to decide if this was right or wrong. A singular thought raced across my brain: No, not again. Fuck. Not again? Not AGAIN?! Same moment; different person. Fuck. After ramming yourself inside of me, I gave my best Oscar-winning performance until you were satisfied. Until YOU were satisfied. Your temporary satisfaction in that moment is long-standing destruction for me.

It hurt me. It scared me. It froze me. The fact that you knew my history of being raped and still forced yourself upon me… I am more broken from marital rape than I am from martial attempted murder. Fucking coward. Was that thought directed to me or to you?

Is your new wife ok? I don’t know why I care. All I can hope is that you treat her better than you treated me. When I saw you were getting married to the general manager of your workplace, my former “friend,” all the emotions hit at once.

How dare you.

How dare she.

I don’t care.

Fuck you.

Fuck.

Fuck.

FUCK.

FUCK YOU.

I kept your last name.

It’s mine now.

I decided to keep your last name long before our divorce was finalized in 2019. I wear it as a badge of honor. I wear it proudly because I stand behind what I have done with that name. Rawls is MY last name now.

A universal naked truth is that we choose our most compatible match. Whether by love or by trauma, we often find ourselves with people who reflect some semblance of familiarity. You and I were bonded by similar traumas. Our jagged pasts and timelines melded together to create a fucked up present. I hope you know that I don’t hate you for your own trauma and baggage. I also hope you have chosen a path of healing — a path where you do no deliberate harm.

Memories and traumatic moments rear their uncouth heads once in a while as I heal myself. Egodeath latched on fiercely in this last season, which forces me to either release or drown. Right now, I am healing from the pain that you were a fantasy that I forced into a dream… a dream that is now a nightmare from which I am healing. And just because a “dream” came true, does not mean I still have to keep holding onto it.

Every morning I wake up from a dream of you holding me underwater. Is that a dream or a memory?

I will let the ache move me.

I will let the grief move me.

I will let the anger move me.

I will let myself be moved.

And with the movement of growth, I am one step closer to the echoes of you being just a piece of my history.

So weary of the climb.

I rip myself wide open,

To not be worth your time.

I’m weary,

Of never being enough

Or being too much of something

Or too sweet, too loud, or too tough.

I’m weary,

Of thinking I’m done every time.

But here I am bleeding my heart out

In each line of this jaded rhyme.

I’m so weary.

I don’t want to start all over.

I don’t want to tell my story anew.

I don’t want to try again.

I wanted it to work with you.

I don’t want to start all over.

I don’t even want to try.

What the fuck is the point in trying,

When you end up being a lie.

I’m weary,

Of thinking something’s wrong

There’s no point of even trying

To act like I’m that strong.

I’m weary,

Of letting my hope get so high

There’s nothing worse than dreaming

Only to watch them all die

I’m so weary.

When we set out on this journey of marriage, I was excited to have someone to grow with, to fight for me and with me through the years; however, I feel like your true colors were revealed on the honeymoon in October, while my true colors continued to be buried. It was like Jekyll and Hyde came to life on our honeymoon. I don’t remember a day I didn’t cry as you screamed at me for something I don’t even remember doing (or not doing). And from that moment on, my life became holding my breath from one bad situation to another, waiting for the hammer to drop, for the anger to blow. It soon became a cycle of tension building, explosion happening, and a spell of calm before the storm, and then on again. Rinse, lather, repeat.

I kept telling myself it was okay because you hadn’t hit me yet. I kept telling myself to stay because it was the right thing to do; we could work it out. That’s just the thing, isn’t it? There is only a “we” if the other person chooses to be a part of it. That’s the fucked-up mantra of purity culture: marriage is hard. Stay. Make it work at all costs, even at the expense of losing who you are.

And so life went on: unfinished projects piled up, words were left unsaid, and soon, I became a shell of who I once was. All of the essence of a marriage portrayed on social media was a giant joke. I loved you, but I was not in love with you. In fact, I was scared of you.

I remember in seering, painful detail the time when I was in a good mood. I felt particularly accomplished that day as I picked you up from work. The laundry was done, the house was clean, the pets were all taken care of, and the errands had been run. You got into the car; I was blasting Linkin Park and happily singing along. Partway through the drive home, you threw something on the floor of the passenger seat and proceeded to 1) roll the window down, and 2) turn up the music to an obnoxiously loud volume. I paused the music and turned to glance at you. “What’s wrong?” I asked with great confusion in my voice.

“No one likes the cover better than the original, Kayla!” You snarled at me. The breath in my lungs started to feel like the crunch of autumn leaves, and tears began to well up. I swallowed hard and stared straight ahead at the road, hands gripped around the steering wheel as if my life depended on it. Because in a way, my life did depend on it.

There were a few defining moments in our marriage where I knew how it would end.

The first was when I found the used condom that hadn’t been used on me. This was about a few months into our marriage. I addressed it with you, and you had the gall to say you’d been masturbating with it. Jokes on you because my bed smelled like warm vanilla sugar, and we all know my scent is sage, coconut and cedarwood.

The second was when you killed two of my animals. Rosie, my precious ball python, happened due to lack of care while I was still on bed rest from two knee surgeries. Her stench filled our entire house for weeks after, which led me to believe that you didn’t actually check on her at all. Which then begs the question: where were you and who were you actually with for the decay of a snake to happen so intensely? The second incident resulting in a death of one of my precious animals, was in a fit of unreasonable rage when you deliberately threw your shoe at my turkey and broke his leg. He had to be put down because of the way that his leg broke. In a way, I have yet to forgive you for this incident. You also shot at my sister’s dog with your pistol. You stated that your intentions were to scare him, and “you know I would never purposefully shoot a dog, right?” I didn’t know; I nodded yes anyways. Your threats to kill my cat, Delta Queen, stayed in the back of my head as I watched you kick her across the porch one day. My only thought that kept beating on my skull was, “Am I next?”

The third defining moment was in November when we were headed to my friend’s wedding. I was a groomswoman and quite excited for the nuptials. As you drove my car, someone cut you off. You became irate to the point of having a case of road rage where I not only feared for my car, but also feared for my life. I remember you yelling at me, “You’re fine!” as I sobbed and begged you to stop. It was in that moment where I knew deep down I had to leave you for my own well-being.

The final defining moment should have been all those nights that you tried kill me by smothering me in my sleep. Instead, I allowed that behavior to continue for months and dealt with the repercussions of that trauma later.

And so finally, the fourth happened while I was housesitting for some good friends in March. Basically, the nail on the coffin of our marriage had already been set, but I just needed something to tip me over the edge and pound it in. You had decided not to come with me for the housesitting gig, even though you had in the past. And you texted me one day:

While it may seem cute and nice and trivial without context, I read those words and realized how much you did not actually want me or care about ME. Your words showed that you only wanted me around for the things I could do for you. And that is not a marriage at all. That’s not even a friendship. It’s more of an indentured servitude.

There is so much still left unsaid. So many hopes, angry words, stories, reasons why/why not, well-wishes, and desires. All this time I was waiting for you to show up… but my self worth did instead. Who knew you’d be so easy to replace?

​I’m done with the typical revival, the usual altar call filled with manufactured tears and frenzied prayers. I’m tired of majestic cathedrals and churches, dead on the inside. I’ve grown weary of the screams of praying in tongues with no love behind them, nothing to back them up.

​Give me the mountain cathedral, decorated with the glory of moss and ferns, with audiences of trees. Give me the revival of the tide as it washes the shore, renewing the beaches with new treasure everyday. Give me the screams of mountain lions, the howls of wolves, and the frenzied cries of the birds. Give me the unforgiving love of the wilderness that beckons me to learn from her depths. I need to be baptized by the waterfall, washed in the salvation of the creek. Let me sit in the sermon of the songbirds I need the holiness ((wholly-ness)) of Mother Nature.

​Give me the crowds of a concert, packed with people who are alive because the music. I need the unified screams of familiar lyrics. The raised fists of rebels in community… the tears when the beat of songs wash over the faces of those who feel forgotten. Give me the magic of music.

​Give me the streets owned by a slum lord. Crowded with people who need the love of a listening ear. I need the broken houses, full of broken people… somehow making each other whole.

I need an unorthodox revival

My blood type is made of ink.

With stories forged in life’s fire and fury,

A journey now preserved on my skin.

Let me read to you from my pages

Poetry from hell and back.

Fragmented art on my body

Mirroring the brokenness inside.

From the depths of who I am,

My skin is what cries out,

For all I want is to be known and to be loved.

Because if I let down my walls

To show you my night

Will you point out my stars?

And if you honor my darkness,

I’ll show you my light.

My blood type is made of ink.