The Navy Chance

With focus and planning, I escaped my abusive husband.

I ran away, far away. I came down to Miami. I used a fake name, pretending to be an illegal immigrant. This explained why I didn't have any 'papers'.

I got an exploitative job but it was a job. My need was to go from that abused wife, to the woman I wanted to be.

Each day on my walk to work I passed a Navy recruiting office. I began to consider that joining the Navy would be a great way to get a new life.

The day after I joined the Navy I pondered if this was stupidest thing I ever did, (outside of marriage).

I considered that if I had spent more time thinking of where to go, what to do, I'd of found something else, something that made sense.

However, considering the situation I was in, well it seemed to be a wise choice. I had felt my life about to become a cardboard box on the street so getting into something stable, like the Navy did seem the best idea.

I probably was the worst recruit ever, but I somehow got though basic training. What I'd experienced in Miami, between the cell I lived in and the slave factory where I had worked, was worse than boot camp.

Here, I had people around me, people like me. Here, food was prepared, and there were rules. Rules to be followed. Rules which were followed.

It took me six months to feel okay about myself.

Six months to stop crying, to stop feeling I was in the wrong place, doing the wrong thing. Six months to be able to accept my life and and my choices and start looking forward to tomorrow.

And I did.

It was almost exactly nine months after I left my husband I made the first hesitant calls to my past.

The first thing I did was to call my parents.
They didn't want to talk to me.

They had disowned me the day I married and the fact the marriage broke up didn't mean a thing to them.

Okay.

I had 'lost' them the day of my marriage, so they were already a 'write off'. Nothing to cry about. Close the chapter, cross their names off the list.

My next call was to she who had been my best friend. This conversation was warmer.

She told me how my husband thought she was hiding me in her basement and
would spend hours watching the house. As she was in her own abusive marriage couldn't talk long.

As the call ended I reflected that she ought have left her brute a long time ago. But she, unlike me, didn't have the courage. She was going to leave in a coffin.

I called a few more people, no one really missed me, or seemed that interested. I hadn't left anything behind. That was when I realized the Navy was the only family I had.

I recalled something I'd heard years ago about not being able to go back; and I realised it was the truest thing. For there was no back

Nine months after my escape, I was born.

My family was the Navy.
My address was the Navy.
I was the Navy.
There was nothing else out there.

I think it was knowing I had no 'back' to go to, that there was no life for me outside of the Navy which made me excel.

Me, who never excelled at anything before, suddenly was so into the Navy, the training, that I began my rise.

I moved up in the ranks, got further training, kept moving up, getting the best assignments.

I was strong and intelligent, capable and no one's punching bag.

It was two years, almost to the day that I felt ready to take the final steps of severing my past.

I hired a lawyer and began the process of divorcing my husband. Whether he had tried to divorce me, or had divorced me, I didn't know, but if he got the documents he'd know where I was and better, who I was.

And if it came to hand to hand... he'd lose.