Sometimes, Abused Women Inspire Me Like Nobody Else...
My old address, a domestic violence survivor, and my treasury check meet.
Yesterday was very weird for me. I exposed myself to a little more threat than I typically like to do. There is a sensitive nature to the work that I do, some of you know, that requires me to watch my ass carefully.
So, imagine my surprise when a young lady asked me on a post on AABF, Facebook, if my former address on Lemon was, indeed, my former address. Shit. Combine that with the night prior, and I immediately went to the monitors and started rolling back the footage before I answered.
Seeing nothing more sinister than that trifling tramp across the way in all of her drunken glory (dear, sweet Mother of Jesus, wait til y’all hear about that), I check and see that the young woman, Sasha, has already attempted to connect with me on messenger.
Hmmmm. I’ll bite.
I say, essentially, kennyhepya? As I don’t want to seem unbitchy, in case I need to very quickly threaten the life of whomever is trying to track down myself, a dog I have taken from an unsavory dog fighter, or someone I have helped to leave their personal hell.
It’s a young mother who lives in my old house. She says, I’m sorry, my kids opened some mail, and it’s a check for you, can you come and pick it up?
I’m going to interject, this young woman is a mother who had a substance abuse problem, is now clean and healthy, raising children, and is in this house because she was brave enough to leave an abuser. (My former landlord is a fucking saint. I love you to pieces, Steve).
Let me say, there are a lot of people who would not have gone through the trouble of finding me on social media, messaging me, making it through my weird security questions, then apologizing for their kids being overzealous with opening letters.
So, if you were not already aware, domestic violence victims are sometimes better people than the rest of us. I might have written return to sender on a letter and shoved it back in the mailbox, with some tape on the envelope, then called it a day. Depends on the day. I’ll openly tell you, I’m not always that awesome of a person.
Yet, in the midst of rebuilding her own life and raising her kids, this young woman had the mindset that her children had made a mistake, and she was going to go above and beyond to make sure I knew I had a little check there, and please come get my money and her kids don’t read the To: line.
She instantly won a little bit of my heart, because with all of the things that she could have been, she isn’t. She is just a really good person who met some really bad circumstances and had some really rough challenges. Today, she’s just being the best person and mom she can be.
I am taking some inspiration from her today and asking of myself; do a little bit more today. Take that extra step today. Really do something today. I think that emulating her a little bit today might do me some good.
It might do y’all some good, too.
Sasha T., I think you’re an excellent human being. There should be 50 more of you.