Everyone has those eye opening moments where the confusing game of life suddenly makes sense. Those times when you are awoken abruptly by a realization and sense of peace that you had not had until that point. Where it feels like you suddenly understand the Universe’s plan and the reasons behind why things have happened.
Paige had one of these moments and I am so lucky that I was there at the time to experience it through her. We were in Florence, Italy on an amazing study abroad trip having the time of our lives. Paige was truly a gem. She was always a little ray of sunshine with her bubbly dialect and over the top southern personality. However, there was something about Paige, this type of inner turmoil or anguish that one would rarely see, but if you looked hard enough you could occasionally catch a glimpse of the pain she held very deeply inside. I never questioned her. I know everyone has stories we know nothing about, and I was not going to demand that I know hers, but this dark past was evident behind her constant smile. While in Italy, I could see this deep burden appear a little more than it had in the past with every story she told us of the last time she was there. Little did I know what twist of fate was to come that would open my eyes to her and to life in general.
After a long morning of walking, we sat down alongside one of the Italian monuments when a random vendor approached us. Paige has a thing for elephants, she was always drawn to them and believed in the strength that they symbolized. I could tell she was submerged within her own head as this man walked up to us and handed her a red elephant figurine. As he placed it into her hand he stated “what goes around comes around, life is just a circle.” To me, I simply saw a vendor doing what he could to make a sale, but the way Paige’s eyes stared at the figurine – I could tell it meant a lot more to her.
The very next day after the odd encounter, we were walking in the palace gardens when Paige received a phone call. After letting her talk for a while we returned to her side and that is when I heard Paige’s story for the first time…
Through some hard tears she told us of her past. When she was younger she fell in love with a boy. One of those dreaded boys who tear you apart from the inside out, but she was hooked like so many of us have been. He and she consummated their relationship for the first time when they were both in Florence, Italy together and had an up and down relationship after that for three years with a lot of emotional abuse mixed in. She said she always knew she needed to cut the ropes that tied him to her, but like most manipulative abusers he knew just what to do to keep her around and each time she tried to wander, but would pull her back in, to her torment. And then she got pregnant. She said she had never felt so much fear in her life. She knew there was no way to escape him anymore. That, with the ties of this child, she would never be able to break free, and sadly he knew this as well.
She kept the pregnancy a secret from everyone except the father and God. She prayed every day that she would have the strength to get through this. With no support, she was ready to do what she could to raise a child in this dark life. Already the boy began to control her again, knowing she could not ignore the child he had put inside of her. After six weeks in fear, one night she awoke to a fatal stabbing pain inside her body. She had a natural miscarriage of the child. She told me that all she remembered was falling to her knees and crying from the sadness of losing her child, but also in relief because she had hope that she could change her fate. She saw that the Universe had given her another chance to escape this horrible reality and a chance that her child would not be raised in the midst of an abusive and unhealthy relationship. She told the father who lashed out in anger and put all the blame on her, as he could feel his control begin to loosen. Even still she held all the pain inside telling no one and using nothing as an outlet. She simply built up thick walls of steel hidden behind that adorable smile. And then she left. She signed up to study abroad to try to leave all that she had gone through behind her, along with him.
That day with me in Florence she had received a call from her mother. Her mother had called to tell her she knew what had happened. The boy she once loved tried to use whatever rope he could to still have some say in her life and told her parents what they had gone through and the result. Paige was terrified that her mother would judge her, but being a mom of unconditional love, she told her how she has wished she could have been there for her and that she would be sure to never allow that boy to come back into her life. People finally knew. Paige was finally free.
As she talked, every line she stated and memory that resurfaced I could see the initial lingering pain, but then eventual relief. She said it felt like she had been swimming for so long with anchors on her feet just struggling to stay afloat, but now she was no longer even in the water. Three years she had let this hold her back, but she said finally she felt like it was actually all over.
What had started in Italy finally had its end in the same place.
How many times have we not know why something is happening in our life? Or how many times have we wondered if we will always be broken after a heartbreak or trauma? Everyone has had those crippling times that seem to have no true end, but the hope is that you are living thing. You are still breathing and moving, and nobody can stay broken forever, because every living thing is in a constant state of renewal and repair. It may take three years, but eventually the Universe will give you the answers of relief that you have been longing for. No one is truly alone and no one is hopeless. The last thing Paige said on the matter was this, “You know how people say certain situations will bring you back down to earth, well I feel like I was below the earth and this brought me back up to where I should have been all along.” Remember, life is a circle.
*names have been changed for the privacy of the individuals