By. Alixandra Stiefel
RED… What does red make you think of?
Well, for me, RED means FREEDOM. Now, this might sound random… Why red?
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Read what I said about it November of 2020 before I was ready to share my whole story.
November is the month I celebrate the little things… the small decisions you aren’t allowed to make for your self when you’re in a controlling and abusive relationship/situation.
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Read how I finally shared my story last November.
This year, I almost didn’t post because I thought “I’ve already shared my story and I don’t want people to think I’m just telling the same victim story over and over.” But, then I remembered that I don’t write for what people think. I write for her… the girl who, like me, was told she wasn’t worth it, that no one would love her if she left him, that red didn’t look good on her and purple eye liner was just too flashy. I want her to know that she has a voice and her story matters. Don’t stand there and apologize for being yourself. Don’t let him take your light and your spirit. Don’t allow the pain in the name of love… that’s not love.
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Love is safety. Love is joy. Love is the happiest place you’ll ever be. You don’t have to talk yourself into love and you can’t talk yourself out of love. Love isn’t a choice. Love is an instant connection… a moment… a look. When you find it, you’ll know and it’s so worth the wait. I’m still waiting to see how my story ends, but I would much rather be here, single, waiting than to be with the guy who wanted me to believe that I didn’t deserve a love that made me the happiest I’d ever been.
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So, if you’re wondering whether you should stand up, or just stay quiet, trust me when I say, standing up is the best decision I ever made. Ask for help. Get out. Run if you have to and don’t look back. It’s worth breaking up with him now so that you don’t wake up one day and wonder how you got to this place. Abuse is hard to stand up to. Sometimes, we don’t even want to believe that we have even been through something like this. Or, we think that if we’ve been a survivor of something like this that it makes us damaged, but I’m here to tell you that it doesn’t. 95% of the people that meet me today have no idea how long it took me to be okay again. I used to think that I had to stay broken just so people would believe that he really was a bad guy. But, then I realized that the best ammunition I had was living. Not living halfway or going through the motions, but REALLY LIVING. Being 100% myself and being the trauma survivor that people say “no way, you went through that? I never would’ve known” because now, I get to tell the next girl that there’s hope. There’s a way out and someday, you’ll be yourself again. It looks dark now, but keep walking forward. Put one foot in front of the other and soon, you’ll see the light at the end of the dark tunnel and the colors will be so brilliant, they’ll take your breath away. In time, you’ll learn to trust again and then, when you least expect it, you’ll realize that you fell in love for real. All the pain will be small and it’ll be so far behind you that it will just be a blur in your rear view mirror as you drive towards your destiny.
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God wants the best for you. This isn’t his best. So, to her, the girl who feels broken and worthless, the girl who has survived trauma (big or small), you’re worth more than that. Take that first step… find a way to stand and don’t let him tell you not to share your story because it’s yours to tell. There is freedom when you finally have the courage to say, I was in an abusive romantic relationship in high school and that set me on the trajectory to end up being in an abusive power situation in college (non-romantic). I am a trauma survivor. I had anxiety and Pre-PTSD from this trauma. For a very long time, I couldn’t feel anything, but the best way to come to grips with my story is to share it so that maybe my accepting that this is my story, will help another girl accept her story too. Maybe I can help her know that it’s not her fault. She didn’t do this. She didn’t ask for this. She was in the wrong place at the wrong time and she was too nice to people that didn’t care for her at all. She couldn’t have seen this coming… they’re always sweet at the beginning. Trauma is hard. Trauma is painful. But, you don’t have to stay that broken forever. You can be okay again. When you think you’ll never trust again, you will. It doesn’t matter how your story looks or if it’s worse or not as bad as the next person’s story. It’s yours and you can’t compare trauma. Everyone’s trauma is different. Everyone handle things differently.
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So, this is a long way to say, HAPPY RED LIPSTICK MONTH! I hope you can find the thing that makes you realize that you’re free to be whoever you want to be without him. I said in 2021, “Me and my red lipstick love how he looks in our rear view mirror.” But, today, I’d like to say it this way… “Me and my red lipstick love how life looks now that we’ve realized that we can take the rearview mirror off and we don’t have to go back ever, ever again.”
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