Bitter House

by Kiersten Modglin

proof she’s been given the privilege of aging, unlike my parents. I’ll never be able to look at aging as something to avoid or escape. For me, as I inch closer to the age my parents were when they died, I know every day is something to be grateful for.

“Perception versus reality,

Secrets are the most powerful thing a woman owns.

I promised her she’d be safe. I didn’t have to explain what that meant. We understood each other in a way only women who’ve experienced abuse can.

He wasn’t going to leave, not without his wife and son. That’s what he told me. As if they were his property. That’s the problem with men like that. They think the entire world belongs to them.

Women come to us through the secret network we’ve built—women who trust us and believe in us. Women who have no other options. It’s easy to assume they do have other options—that they must—but until you’ve lived it, you couldn’t possibly understand.

What sort of life is it to look over your shoulder constantly? To worry and stress, even if you get away, over when he’ll find you? How much longer you have until he comes back? The law doesn’t protect us. Not fast enough, not strongly enough. So we have to do it ourselves.

Silence of the good is the weapon of the wicked.

If I sit back and let this happen, let one bad man stop me from doing so much good, then he has won.

I am a god in my own right, making life better in the only way I can.