Kate Didd

Day 119

I’m going to say something that’s going to sit wrong in people’s mouths.

I’m not special.
I’ve never been special.
I’m just a fucked up girl who learned how to survive in a fucked up world and if anything I’m about to say feels too sharp, too honest, too much… it’s because it is.

I’ve been watching Yellowstone.
Rip and Beth.

Everyone romanticizes it. The chaos, the loyalty, the violence wrapped up in devotion. But I hit that scene, season two, episode seven, where they start picking the family apart, one by one, and something in my chest didn’t flutter.

It recognized.

Because I know what it costs to be tied to something dangerous. I know what it does to you when love isn’t soft, it’s survival.

And people will never understand my marriage.

They think I stay because I choose to.
Like it’s logical.
Like it’s optional.

It’s not.

There was a time I thought I could leave.
Convince myself I had a door out.
But the truth is uglier than that, deeper than that.

My husband isn’t just a man I love.
He is where everything in me goes quiet.

He is the place where the noise shuts off.
Where the screaming in my head doesn’t reach me.
Where my body, wired with a thousand locked doors of trauma, finally unclenches.

And that used to make me furious.

Because how do you explain that to people?
How do you explain loving someone who could terrify the world… but is the only place you feel safe inside it?

I see it in Rip.
That calm, controlled stillness that hides something lethal underneath.
People think it’s attractive.

They don’t understand what it feels like to need that.

Because I’ve lived in a world where fear wasn’t hypothetical.

I’ve been hurt more times than I should have ever allowed.
Put myself in situations I should have never survived.
Learned how to stand still while my body shook so no one could see it.

I don’t show fear.
Not because I don’t feel it but because I learned early that showing it doesn’t save you.

But he does.

Even when he’s not there, he is.
Always has been.

There has never been a moment in my life where that man couldn’t find me.

Even when I pushed him away.
Even when I told him to get the hell out of my life.
Even when I tried to burn the whole thing down just to prove I could walk away.

He stayed.

Not loud.
Not begging.

Just… there.

Like a shadow that never lost its shape.

And I laugh when I watch Beth run her mouth, telling Rip to fuck off, to leave, to go find someone else. Because I’ve said worse. I’ve meant it in the moment too.

But here’s the truth I don’t say out loud:

He’s the only person in this world I can’t actually leave.

There was a night, early on, a month into our marriage, where everything broke open.

Someone followed me home.
Beat me.
Left me outside like I was nothing.

I remember throwing my keys over the fence into the valley behind the house. I don’t even remember why. Shock, maybe. Survival. My brain trying to outrun my body.

I found them the next day.
I knew exactly where they’d land.

Because I’ve always known how to find my way back.

And I remember the nights after that.
The screaming.
The way sleep wouldn’t come.

Until it did.

And now the night is the only place I rest.

And through all of it, every version of me that was too much, too loud, too broken, too angry.

He loved me.

Not parts of me.
Not the easier versions.

All of it.

And I know what I am.

I am not easy to love.
I am not quiet.
I am not soft in the way people expect.

I am sharp edges and open wounds and a mouth that doesn’t know when to shut the fuck up.

And still.

There is no one else he would choose.

Twenty five years.
Ups and downs.
Doors slammed.
Him walking out.
Me pushing him out.
Both of us standing in the wreckage of things we didn’t know how to fix yet.

And every single time…

It was him.

It has always been him.

Since I was sixteen years old.
And if I’m being honest with myself.

It will be him until the day I die.

That kind of love doesn’t look healthy on paper.
It doesn’t fit in neat little boxes people can approve of.

But it’s real.

And if you’re anything like me, smart, mouthy, too aware, too much for most people to hold…

Just know this:

There is someone who won’t try to quiet you.
Someone who won’t run from your chaos.
Someone who will stand in it, unmoved, and say, I’m not going anywhere.

And me?

I’ve got bigger things in motion now.

Bigger plans.
Real estate, ironically. I hate it, but I see it. I understand it. And when I understand something, I build with it.

Because that’s what I do.

I survive.
I build.
I turn wreckage into something that stands.

But no matter how far I go, no matter what I create, there’s one truth that never changes.

He was never optional.

He was always home.