Poppy

I feel guilty, you know?”

The girl that was speaking couldn’t be any older than sixteen. She was fairly new to the group meetings, but every time she spoke we all went quiet and listened intently. She seemed so strong, so much tougher than I was. Her father had hurt her in unimaginable ways, and when she tried to tell her mother, the woman had accused her of lying and trying to break up the family. As a result the girl had run away from home and had spent the last several years living on the streets. The things she did to survive, the way people took advantage of such an innocent soul, made me so angry. Someone should have been there to keep her safe, just like someone should have been there to keep me and Salem safe from my father’s tyrannical rule. Just like someone should have kept me safe from Oliver and his ruin. That was the entire purpose of these group meetings: to help us all realize that we weren’t alone, that our stories were shared by women across all walks of life. We were there to keep each other safe. The thing that tied us all together was that we were still here, we survived, and that made us bigger and better than the people that had done their very best to destroy us.

I was watching her so closely and she must have felt my stare because her eyes landed on mine and held as she kept talking. “I feel like I don’t deserve a nice house and nice clothes for school. I feel like having all these friends and being popular is all just a scam that I’m pulling on everyone. I feel like I’m in the wrong life.” She gave a bitter laugh and lifted a hand to wipe away a lone tear that trailed down her cheek. “Why should I still be here planning on going to prom with a really nice guy that treats me like I’m something special when so many of the girls I met while I was on the run don’t get a shot at the same thing? What makes me special? Why did I get a chance and not one of them?”

It was a common theme that she described. Guilt about moving on and finding peace after living a nightmare for so long. Apparently her aunt had gotten suspicious when her mother wasn’t able to offer up an explanation as to where her daughter had gone. The girl’s extended family had launched an all-out manhunt to find her, and when they did they were appalled by what they found. They knew all along her father was abusive and dangerous. They’d been trying to get her out of the house for years until her mother and father had gone on the run to protect their dirty little secret. She’d had people in her corner that loved her, but wasn’t allowed access to them, kind of like the way my parents did their best to keep me and Salem apart after Salem left home. Under my dad’s thumb and surrounded by my mother’s passive agreement, I never had a chance to let the idea of rebellion take root. I only wished I could have been as brave as this young woman.

“Eventually that guilt will lessen and you’ll appreciate the fact that you get to have a chance at all the things you deserved from the beginning. It’s part of the conditioning you were subjected to for so long for you to think you aren’t worthy of the good things that are going to come your way, but you are, all of you are.” The woman that ran the group was a survivor herself. She always spoke to us in a calm, even tone and it was apparent to all of us that she took our healing and progress very personally. This wasn’t a job for her: helping women that had been abused live beyond the damage done by their abusers was her life’s calling, her passion. I admired her so much for turning her pain and experience into something that was beneficial for others to learn from. “Good things will find you if you are open to them.”

Without thinking I blurted out, “How do you know that something or someone is actually good? I think it’s safe to say we’ve all been fooled by something that seemed to be good but turned out to be really, really bad.”

When Oliver first started courting me after I moved home after my disastrous first year at college, he seemed nice enough. He was really into me and treated me like a total gentleman. He courted me like the preacher’s daughter that I was and never pushed for anything I wasn’t ready to give. He handled me like I was something delicate and he never, not one time, brought up the supposedly shameful reason I’d had to run back to my less than understanding family with my tail tucked between my legs. That had been reason enough for me to give him a shot after I told myself I was swearing off men forever. I felt broken but he assured me over and over again that what had happened wasn’t my fault.

I should have known … like always … that it was a front. Any man my father practically handpicked for me, a man that was active in my father’s church, and believed the fire and brimstone my dad spouted nonstop, couldn’t be okay with what had happened to me and the choices I’d made.

On our wedding night Oliver called me a whore and yelled at me for an hour about not being a virgin and saving myself for him … even though he knew the nightmare behind why I wasn’t untouched and inexperienced. From there the abuse spiraled and worsened until I was having to hide bruises and marks all over my body. Sometimes the words hurt worse than his fists did and all I could do was question how I let myself end up in a situation that was a thousand times more horrible than the one I’d run from.

Both the teen and the counselor turned their attention to me and I realized that everyone in the small group was watching me. Typically I didn’t say much, I listened and learned. It helped me feel not so alone and less like a fool to know I wasn’t the only one that should have known better. This was probably the first time I’d ever actually spoken up when it wasn’t my turn to add something to the conversation.

The group didn’t use names, to protect anonymity, so the counselor motioned to me with a soft smile. “Well, you can’t ever be absolutely certain something or someone is good because things can change on a dime. Even the happiest and healthiest of relationships can collapse over time and even the best of circumstances are prone to experiencing a rainy day. All you can do is listen to your gut, pay attention to any warning signs and any red flags that are presented. It’s up to you to determine if the good outweighs the bad in whatever you face from here on out. You have the tools. You have earned them by surviving everything life has thrown at you.”

I bit my lip and cocked my head to look at her questioningly. “But my judgment has led to the worst experiences in my life. What if I can’t tell if the good outweighs the bad?” Unwittingly my thoughts turned to Wheeler. He was the first person I had let slip past the iron guards I had put in place since enduring Oliver’s torture. I refused to let anyone close, emotionally or physically, because if I had enough room to run, then there was no possible way I could be hurt again. I kept a wall up between me and the rest of the world, and so far, it had served its purpose, but now I was wondering if it was keeping all the good out as well as the bad.