This photo, as per its original caption, was taken after an afternoon of volleyball. However, what this caption and picture don’t depict is the morning and the week that preceded it.
That morning, I was at a police station telling the story of the scariest week of my life, before my brain and body could even process just how terrifying it was. Which I know now, was because a combo of shock and denial.
The week before this picture was taken started with a plan to go to Toronto for a comedy show with some friends, visit a girlfriend in Hamilton, and return in time to celebrate my 28th birthday with Andy and the kids.
But as many of you know, things that week did not go according to plan. Although I made it to the comedy show, I didn't make it to Hamilton, and I didn't make it home for my birthday. Instead, on my 28th birthday, I found myself on a missing persons poster.
After the comedy show having coffee with a friend, a got a call from a co-client from Bellwood who was angry and off the rails and adamant I come see him. He had a TBI, mental disorders, and a history of alcohol and drug abuse, but until that night, he had been compliant with his medication and doing relatively well. So, against my better judgment, I went over to see if I could help. That decision changed the course of my life forever.
When I got to the third-floor apartment, it was seconds before he had locked the door from the inside and had taken my phone from my bag. To say I was unprepared for everything that followed would be an understatement. Whether what I experienced that week was a full-blown psychotic break or the malicious agenda of a psychopath is up for debate, but nevertheless, it was scarring.
After seven days locked in the apartment, my week ended (two days after my 28th birthday) when the police showed up and dragged him out of the apartment with a hammer tape to his hand. The moment they left, and the sirens fell silent, an uncanny quiet settled over the apartment. The glow of the dim lights made everything look unreal, as if the hell that had just unfolded had been a dream. Almost nothing seemed out of place, and yet, everything was everywhere. The smell of lighter fluid hung in the air, the stench of my body that hadn’t showered in a week. Broken furniture, scattered papers, and the wreckage of the life I once knew lay before me, a silent witnesses to the chaos that had just ensued. It was as if the world had swallowed the week whole, leaving only a ghostly trace—a scar that was both immediate and permanent, an imprint that can’t be ignored.
I would like to say that it was shattering in some way, that my faith was somehow broken, but it wasn’t, at least not for me. I knew who I was under it all. It was a game for him, trying to pull out this mean part of me. I could see him bating me, hoping, begging for a mean streak, but I wouldn’t, because it’s not there. To me, it’s not needed. You can call me conditioned, or you can call me weak, and I’ll disagree. Being mean will never get you anywhere, and forcing something will never make it fit right. I know my rage, and it is sacred, and it is not a power to use on another.
If he was going to kill me (and he tried), he was going to have to do it knowing he’d kill something that would never fight back. And he couldn’t. What he wanted was to see his rage reflected back to him; he wanted to defeat that monster within himself, in the outside world. But that monster never existed; it was never there, because what I know better than most is that rage is just the smoke and mirrors for someone who’s hurt or afraid. It carries the weight of the generations before. Raging through your system, begging to be felt.
I don’t understand how we are supposed to blame someone for being hurt or afraid. I don’t understand how we are supposed to be angry at someone for being hurt or afraid.
So maybe it was shattering in the sense that it broke the shell open for me. It allowed me to be the person who didn’t understand. It allowed me to show the person who didn’t understand. But it wasn’t a shattering discovery for me because I always knew who I was.
The moments of that week remain like little ghosts, reminding me of the shell I used to wear. Reminding me of that part of all of us that’s hurt and afraid. Reminding me that sometimes anger will come my way, baiting me to fight back, all so it can feel a little less alone, a little less afraid. Rearing its head, to show me it’s still hurting. But my scars, as deep as they may seem to the ones who’ve seen them, I wear with pride. I don’t share my story out of shame, but out of understanding of the weight it holds. A weight I know not everyone is ready to carry.
My kids’ hearts were broken, probably even more than their trust in me. In that moment, I became the mom who didn’t come home for her birthday. Who, in their eyes, would rather spend it with her friends than with them. Despite them knowing the truth now, it doesn’t change what they felt that night. It doesn’t change the excitement, turned to confusion, turned to anxiety, turned to anger. All hiding their own hurt that mom doesn’t care and fear that she’s never coming home at all. A hurt that we’ve slowly unpacked over the years. A trust we are slowly building back.
Their world is the thing that truly shattered that week. The night I didn’t come home was that quiet moment when the world stopped feeling safe, when the edges of their childhood blurred and the first hard truth slipped in. Do you remember that moment, the instant you realize that life is bigger, harsher, and far less forgiving than the stories you were told? The colors seem dimmer, the laughter echoes differently, and a small, fragile part of you, the part that believed in fairytales and unbreakable trust, recedes. That was that moment for them. Don’t get me wrong, I know our naivety doesn’t vanish all at once; it leaves quietly, leaving behind a sharper, wiser shadow of yourself, but it was a moment I wasn’t ready for. I suppose we’re never ready for anything, and life always comes faster than we’d like, but it was the harsh sting after the initial blow.
It is how my story echoes through the next generation.
They say a picture says a thousand words, and this picture speaks to me. It reminds me of what came after.
A man who drove three hours in the middle of the night to come get me from that apartment. Took me to his home, let me shower, and gave me a clean pair of clothes.
The police and the victims who tried their best to make me feel safe and protected.
And strangers who played volleyball and laughed, and had fun, all because the world keeps turning.
In those moments when everything felt heavy and time felt frozen, like I didn’t know how to keep going, the world kept turning. The laughter kept ringing, the smiles kept blooming, and the sunlight crept its way through the cracks. The rhythm of life kept calling me forward. Day after day, step after step, I just kept going.
And now, I look back at that picture with a soft smile for the girl in that photo. She carried something so beautiful within her that she didn’t even realize it. I carry every scar as proof that nothing can hold me down, as a reminder that the sun may have set on that beach three years ago, but my light never went out.
