Yesterday was three years since I left.

I was already up, dressed, having my coffee, when I decided. Twenty minutes later I was out the door with everything I was taking.

I planned it all in silence, because leaving had never been something I was allowed to try.

What I didn't have was any idea where I was going.

By then I had been disappearing for a long time. I had been made to cut off my own family. There was no one I could call.

And even if I could have, I wasn't sure my friends or my family would believe me.

So I just drove.

I ended up at a police station. I walked in and told the officer, I just left an abusive marriage, and I don't know what to do.

That was the whole plan.

The officer called a shelter in Georgia.

They had room for me.

And they said I could bring Jaycee.

The first day I walked in, I hugged the woman at the shelter and broke down crying.

I had my own room. I was so grateful for that.

I went in, lay down on the bed, and cried.

Relief.

I was safe.

I had escaped my horror.

Jaycee couldn't stay in that room with me. She stayed in her crate in a space near the main building.

And she was so good.

She didn't bark. She didn't make a fuss. It was like she knew we were safe.

I visited her many times a day. We would run and play and take short walks.

Later, a shelter in Vermont gave me a place to land.

This is the two of us on my bed there.

Look at her face. Then look at mine.

A few weeks ago I wrote about what he told me once I said I wanted out. That I would end up living under a bridge. (If you missed that letter, you can read it here.)

I did leave with almost nothing.

And people who owed me nothing made room for me anyway.

They didn't need me to prove I deserved it.

On the anniversary, I took Jaycee out on the grass. She came running straight at me with both ears flying up in the air and her tongue hanging out, like every hard thing that ever happened to us had slipped her mind.

Three years ago she was in a crate in a place she had never seen.

Yesterday she was flying.

I'm not finished starting over.

I posted yesterday that I can get in my car and go where I want to go now, and that I'm still a little amazed by it.

That's true.

What I didn't say is why it matters so much.

For years I couldn't. He wouldn't let me go anywhere alone. Not anywhere.

So I stopped asking.

And here is the other part. Every time I get in and turn the key, I lock all the doors, because some part of me still thinks he might be there.

I lock the doors. And then I go anyway.

Watching her run across the grass, I didn't feel like someone with nowhere to go.

Jane & Jaycee 🐾