T
entatively, Rebekah* hands over a poem she wrote. She can’t express verbally the emotions she felt living with an abusive husband, but through the words of a poem, she pours out her heart: words of distrust and hurt, words of an entrapped life.
He picks me up with a gentle hand, Only to strike me down once again. His forked tongue is a double-edged sword. His words can be the balm to my soul and, Rip me apart blow by blow.
But living at Buckner Family Place in Conroe, Rebekah finds freedom. “When you basically live your life in a cage for four years, where you can’t smile at someone or brush your hair away from your face without being accused of things, it’s freeing. It’s an overwhelming
sense of freedom,” Rebekah says. Two years ago, Rebekah was trapped in her own home with her two young children. Her husband would go on alcohol and drug binges and disappear from the house, often locking the fence with chains so Rebekah wouldn’t leave. “I was basically locked into our yard. I had no phone. If something happened, I was a duck out of luck,” Rebekah says. Even still, she preferred him far from the house because when he was home, he was physically and verbally abusive to her, often in front of their children. She tried four times to leave, but she always came back. It’s hard to leave, Rebekah says, because on the one hand there would be kindness and sincerity, but on the other there was shame and hurt. Her husband often showed her both sides, keeping her unsettled and feeling hopeless.
SPRING 2015 ISSUE • Buckner Today 31
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