Life in Less Than 50 Pounds

Please note, the following story makes reference to domestic violence.

It finally happened. I have reached rock bottom. I don’t know why it took me so long to come to this conclusion, but it happened. I heave a shuddering sigh and look at myself in the bathroom mirror. My hair is a tangled mess, having been pulled from the ponytail it was in when Jake grabbed me by it and threw me to the ground. As I weave my fingers into my hair, I can feel a pretty big lump on the back of my head where it slammed into the concrete floor in the basement. I move my fingers to my lips and touch them. The bottom one is swollen and split open from Jake’s slap across my face. I cross my arms and run my hands up and down my arms. They’re sore and bruises are starting to show, but nothing hurts like it’s broken. Jake and I have been together for a year and a half, but married for only a year. It’s our anniversary. This is what happens when I don’t show the proper amount of appreciation for the small bouquet of flowers and the bracelet he gave me as a gift. Maybe my smile wasn’t wide enough. Maybe I didn’t run to kiss him quickly enough. Maybe he wanted a hug with the kiss. Maybe it wasn’t enough to say, “Thank you, it’s beautiful!” I don’t know. There always seems to be some transgression or omission I don’t realize. The first time he hit me was on our wedding night. We both got really drunk and when I told him I thought I was too drunk to consummate our marriage, he slapped me. To say I was shocked would be a gross understatement. He immediately apologized, promised it would never happen again, and chalked it up to his being drunk, too. But you can guess how the story goes because it’s not unique. That wasn’t the only time. It happened again. And again. And again. And yes, it always happened after he had booze. And yes, he always apologized. And yes, he always made the never again promise. But it didn’t matter. He kept hitting and I kept staying. It has been one year of this crap, and for whatever reason, I have now decided I am done. 

Jake is passed out in the basement – also typical of how these things always go. But tonight, he can stay passed out on the couch with his nearly empty bottle of whisky. I’m not going to eventually go down there and try to wake him up and help him come to bed with me just to show him I forgive him and still love him. Tonight, I am taking my life with me in one suitcase and leaving.

The thing is, how do you pack your life in one suitcase relatively quickly? I’m not sure how long I have because I always got Jake within an hour or two of getting slapped around and his passing out. So I’m fairly sure I can give myself as long as 2 hours. 

Okay, I’m going to start with the obvious things. I walk out of our bathroom and reach under the bed for my suitcase. It’s the same one I took on our honeymoon in Tulum, Mexico. It’s got a crack in it where I fell on it when Jake shoved me the second to last night we were in Tulum. That night I got pushed for coming up behind him and putting my arms around him. I apparently startled him. He shoved me backwards and I fell on my suitcase which was on the bed. I toss the suitcase on our bed here at home and open it. I grab 5 pair of underpants and 5 bras and 5 pair of socks. I snag a couple pair of pajama pants and a couple t-shirts to go with them. I’ve got on a pair of jeans and a nice sweater, so obviously I am taking those clothes. I pack one more pair of jeans and one more sweater. I’ve got on a pair of semi-dressy boots. I don’t give a damn about those so I kick them off and slip on a pair of gym shoes and grab one more pair of gym shoes and toss them in my suitcase. What else do I need for clothes? Anything? A jacket. I’ll grab that on the way out. I pause for a moment and look wistfully at my closet full of clothes and shoes. I wish I could take all of it, but my suitcase isn’t Hermione’s enchanted bag, so I can only bring the bare minimum needed and hope Jake will let me come for the rest later.

Stepping back from the closet, I stand in the middle of our room and look around. I’ve still got space in my suitcase, so I need to decide what else to bring. I walk over to my jewelry box and sift through everything in there, grabbing all the real stuff I have, including any real gold or silver jewelry Jake bought me. I’ve got my wedding set on. I don’t necessarily want any of this jewelry for sentimental purposes but for financial reasons: if I have to, I can sell some of this for cash. I take all the jewelry I decide on and put it in a little satin bag and put it in the suitcase. Everything else in that jewelry box is costume jewelry so I’m leaving it behind. 

My mind goes back to the idea of cash. I walk out of our room and to the kitchen where Jake’s wallet is in a corner on the counter. I open it and take out all the cash he has. $134. I shove it in my pocket. I stand in the kitchen and look around. There’s nothing I see in here that I want. Wait. My recipe box. I decide to grab that because some of the recipes in there are from my mom and grandma – things like my mom’s chocolate chip cookie recipe, my grandmother’s special glaze for holiday hams. I don’t want to lose those things, so I tuck the recipe box under my arm and walk into the family room.

I can’t bring the big things I paid for, like the TV or the coffee and end tables, but I don’t care. But I do care about some of the pictures I have in frames, so I grab those – the one of me and my parents at my college graduation, the picture of my brother and me when we were kids on vacation in Disney World, a group picture of me with all my sorority sisters, but I pause at the framed wedding photo of Jake and me. I brush my fingers across it and tear up a bit, wondering how everything went sour so quickly when that day seems like a lifetime ago. I decide to take the picture with me. Maybe someday I’ll be able to forgive him and remember being married to him with some fondness. I’m not hopeful, but who knows. I walk back to the bedroom and put the pictures in the suitcase.

I’m trying to think of what other sentimental items I may want to bring with me, when I think of the little Christmas ornaments my grandmother gave to me that used to decorate her Christmas tree each year. They’re the prettiest glass ornaments, things you don’t see anymore, all iridescent and glittery. I would love to take them, but they’re really fragile, and they’re in a box in the basement, and I don’t want to take a chance on waking Jake from his stupor. I hang my head for a moment and resign myself to leaving them behind. Maybe Jake won’t be a total ass and he will let me come back at some point to get those ornaments and the rest of my things instead of destroying them or just tossing them out.

It’s at this moment that I realize how grateful I am not to have any kids or pets. Those things would have complicated my leaving, probably making it almost impossible to get away. “Thank you,” I whisper under my breath to no one in particular. 

My mind goes back to the practical stuff. I grab things like the charger for my phone and watch. I grab my laptop and charging cord. And that reminds me about the few things I need to grab from the office, so I go down to the spare room we converted to an office space and open the little file cabinet. I dig around and find my passport and my social security card. I also find all the statements for my credit card. It's the one card I have that’s all mine. I got it when I was in college and never closed the account. The other credit cards in my wallet are joint cards with Jake, but this one is still in my name. I wonder how he let that slide. Maybe he just didn’t get the ultra-controlling point of his abuse yet, just the slapping around part. I probably don’t need the statements, but I take them anyway just so he doesn’t have anything to remind him that I have this card. It’s not out of the realm of possibility that he will cancel credit cards on me once he wakes up and figures out I’ve left, so I need to make sure I have a credit card I can use. I also make a mental note to go on the app later and change over to paperless billing so no more statements come to the house. I should also go on the banking app and change the password on my savings account so Jake can’t access that. We’ve got all these online accounts through one bank, so I need to figure out the best way to keep him out of the savings account that’s just mine, another holdover from college. I rifle through the drawer a bit more to see if there is anything else I should grab, but I don’t see anything so I close the file drawer and go back to my room and dump all the papers in the suitcase. 

I really don’t have much room left in the suitcase. Then I remember I need to grab a few things from the bathroom. I open the bottom drawer and grab my birth control pills, a box of cold medicine, and a bottle of ibuprofen. The birth control pills are a must, but I grab the other meds just as a precaution. I don’t plan on having sex with anyone anytime soon, but I also see no reason why I should stop taking the birth control. I then kind of growl out of exasperation – I need my glasses and contacts. How could I forget those things? Grr, my mind is just racing and I’m not being systematic enough. I grab the glasses out of the top drawer in the bathroom and the boxes of contact lenses out of the cabinet and put all the bathroom items in the suitcase. And that makes me think about toiletries. So back in the bathroom I go to grab my toothbrush, toothpaste, hairbrush, hair dryer, flat iron, and some travel sized shampoo bottles and soaps we snagged from hotels. One of the bars of soap has the logo for the resort we stayed at on our honeymoon. It seems that in escaping this marriage, I can’t escape this marriage. I walk into the kitchen, juggling all the little toiletries, set them down on the counter and grab a ziplock bag to throw them in, then go back in the room and toss that baggie into the suitcase. Now it’s full. 

That’s it. That’s all I’m taking. My life in one suitcase. I have to assume that because I can’t rely on Jake to let me ever come back to get anything else. I close up the suitcase and lug it off the bed but set it down quietly. I roll it as gently as I can out of the bedroom and into the kitchen. I grab my purse from the chair it’s hanging on and snag my car keys from the little hook hanging on the wall by the garage door.

I open the door to go into the garage and realize my bike is there. I love my bike. But I don’t have time to put the bike rack on my car and load up my bike, so that will have to stay behind. I do open the fridge in the garage, though, and grab all the cans of diet soda I find in there and toss them in the trunk next to my suitcase. I go back to the fridge and grab a bottle of water and bring that in the car with me. I worry for a moment about the sound of the garage door opening waking Jake, but I just have to hope that because he’s in the basement and drunk, even if he’s starting to wake up, he won’t hear it or the car, or he won’t be able to get upstairs fast enough to get to me.

I feel lucky and sad after I back out of the garage and drive away, not even sure where I’m going. It’s just me and my suitcase now, my life in the trunk of this car, on the way to start a whole new one. Maybe I’ll buy a new suitcase, too. One that isn’t from this old life and broken, one that is shiny and new and strong. Call it symbolism, if you want, but it’s all I’ve got.