Stephanie S Rogers

There is Not a Card for Us Stephanie S Rogers

When he slammed his gun on the kitchen table, I knew that I had waited too long to leave. This was not a movie; there would be no sun kissed farm boy to save me as I moved into a new town to start again. This was not a greeting card; there were no beautifully woven words to assure me that the struggle we faced would lead to a deepening of our lives together as soul mates. There was only the terror of staying and the almost equally horrifying thought of leaving. There were sleepless nights and broken drywall. There was the fear of financial failure, uprooting my child, and of retaliation if my husband should spin too far out of control. In staying, there was the knowledge that the next explosion may be the one I would be unable to recover from. "There is Not a Card For Us" is a story of growth, pain, love, and survival. It is a story about the reasons we think that we are able to change those who harm us instead of recognizing we do not deserve the pain they cause. It is the story of the things we normalize in our own minds to get through the day, of the realizations that hit us when it is almost too late, and of the steps we take to finally find our peace. It is the story of being a wife, a mother, a single parent, a daughter, a friend, a partner, and all of the roles that make us who we are. These are the parts of us that give us the strength to swim back to the surface when we feel like we are drowning.