Kate Didd

Day:108

Today is not a good day.

It’s worse than yesterday, and I can feel it trying to crawl into my head, set up camp, make itself comfortable.

I don’t know if it’s the injury, the stitches, the way the body remembers pain even when you try to convince it you’re fine. Or if it’s something deeper, something heavier circling me.

Maybe it’s what I saw online.

There’s a story circulating about a woman. Thirty-three years old. Found living in a house described as deplorable conditions, with sixteen of her children still alive inside it, eighteen pregnancies total.

That’s the kind of headline people read and immediately decide what kind of monster she must be.

But I don’t see a monster.

I see something else.

And it’s hitting closer to home than I expected.

I don’t think I realized how bad my abuse was until I had been out of it for a couple of years.

When I say my father tried to kill me and my children, I say it casually. Too casually. Like it’s just a sentence in a story that doesn’t belong to me anymore.

But when I say it out loud, people freeze.
They look at me like, what do you mean?

And I’m just standing there like, yeah… I had to get my kids out. I didn’t want them thinking that was normal.

Because for me, it was normal.

My entire existence was built around surviving a man who threatened my life. Over and over again. And I didn’t flinch, not because I was strong, but because I didn’t know anything else.

It wasn’t until I had children of my own that something shifted.

They gave me a reason to see it differently.
They gave me a reason to walk away.

And by then, I had something else too, I had my own power. He wasn’t financially responsible for me anymore. He didn’t have the same control. So when I went no contact, it was almost… easy.

All I had to do was let him set the boundary.

And then I held him to it.

That was his Achilles’ heel. Predictability. Control only works when someone plays along, and I stopped playing.

To this day, my brothers still come to me asking about his patterns.
“What is it this time?”
“What am I missing?”

And I tell them.

And every time, they come back with the same quiet realization:
You were right.

Now, years later, people are circling back.

Apologies.
Understanding.
Clarity that didn’t exist when I was in it.

They say things like,
“I’m so sorry we didn’t see it.”
“That situation was worse than we understood.”
“You were dealing with more than one monster.”

And that’s the part that still feels surreal.

Because I was.

My father.
My first husband.

One broke me.
The other groomed what was already broken.

And somehow, I made it out.

But here’s the truth that’s been sitting heavy on my chest today:

I got out before children became a weapon used against me.

For me, my kids were the way out.

For this woman… her children look like they were the anchor.

And that difference?

That’s everything.

When I look at her story, I don’t feel judgment.

I feel recognition.

I see a version of life that I was dangerously close to living.

Because there is a level of abuse, especially the kind that wraps itself around your body, your choices, your autonomy, that doesn’t just hurt you.

It rewires you.

It turns you feral.

And I remember being feral.

I remember what it felt like to see peace for the first time and be terrified of it.
To be so used to chaos that calm felt like a threat.
To come out swinging because that’s the only way I knew how to survive.

When all you’ve ever known is a nightmare, peace feels like a trick.

So you fight it.

Or you become part of the nightmare just to survive it.

That’s why there’s nothing in this world that could convince me she isn’t a victim.

Nothing.

Because I know what it takes to survive something like that.
I know the choices that don’t feel like choices.
I know the things you do just to make it through one more day.

And I know the kind of regret that waits for you on the other side.

The kind that forces you to look in the mirror and reconcile who you had to become… just to stay alive.

I don’t know her.

I’m not special.

But I feel connected to her in a way I can’t explain.

Maybe it’s because I can see the version of me that could’ve been.
The life I almost lived.
The line I barely didn’t cross.

And I keep asking myself

What was her hope?

What tiny, fragile thing inside her kept her going?

Because I had glimpses of love.
Small ones. Slivers. Enough to remind me there was something different out there.

Enough to help me find my way out.

So what did she have?

I’m so grateful someone saved her.

And I’m so grateful I was able to save myself.

But getting out isn’t the end.

It’s the beginning of something harder.

Because now comes the part where you have to live with what survival required of you.

And that part?

That part will break you open all over again.

But here’s the truth I wish more people understood:

It does get better.

Not all at once.
Not in some clean, cinematic way.

Some days you will beg the universe to take you back into the darkness because at least it was familiar.
At least you knew how to exist there.

Peace will feel foreign.
Uncomfortable.
Too quiet.

But if you stay, if you keep choosing to stay…

Something shifts.

And one day, without even realizing it, you’re not just surviving anymore.

You’re living.

Maybe not the life you should’ve had.
But a life you fought like hell to build anyway.

And eventually…

You learn to be okay with that.