A story

Once upon a time there was a beautiful girl.

And this beautiful girl had a terrible secret.
Her father was psychotic.
When the girl gave her life to God at her boarding house school, he beat her.
When the girl fell in love at 16, her father locked her up in her house and threated to kill her.
But love knows no bounds, and that girl climbed out of her fortress window, and ran away to be with her love.
This beautiful girl moved in with her older boyfriend and they both worked full-time to pay their bills.
Two years later, they were married.
Her husband announced they were moving to Canada. So she went, begrudgingly.
She got a job within the first two weeks as a greeting hostess. She sucked it up for two years.
She got another job, and another job and another job and another job.
Where was her happiness?
And where was her love?
Her husband had failed. Her husband had a dark secret.
He liked to drink.
And he like to hit her when he drank.
A lot.
She tried to escape.
He hit her.
She tried to kill herself.
She was sent to a shrink.
Eight years later she has two beautiful children, and he still drinks.

And as she talks to me, with quiet sad eyes, she asks why her life has amounted to nothing.
I can't tell her she has a husband who loves her. I tell her her life has amounted to two beautiful children. She wonders if she can keep them safe.

But she won't leave him. And she won't take the phone from me as I hot dial the interval house.
I show her a bedroom waiting for her and her family.
And then she goes home.

I can't do a damn thing until she lets me.
So instead, I just pray.
I pray for her.
And I pray for him.
And I pray for the clenching in my stomach to go away.