Here it is again, another free year.

This year has been one of self-discovery, violation, sadness, mistrust, self-trust and a handful of other adjectives that I just can’t think of at this hour.

This year I realized I didn’t like myself. I didn’t like where I was going, or more accurately, where I wasn’t going.

In October, I was granted the privilege of attending a conference with hundreds of formerly incarcerated women. I took this trip alone, my first trip alone since I have been free. For three days, I was surrounded by women who had it figured out, women who knew where they were going, what they wanted to accomplish and how to get it. Some have been free for decades, some only months, but their confidence rattled me. I didn’t have their confidence, their vision, nor did I have their support systems within the justice community. They all knew each other, organized together, supported each other’s purpose and visions. The trip was empowering and saddening all at once, I wasn’t there yet and I wanted to be.

I realized when I got home, I was unhappy, seriously unhappy, miserable.

When I was released, in the span of a year, I went from my parents, to living with my boyfriend and his daughter. I took no time for myself, for my independence. In the following two years, I had no friends of my own, I worked all the time, but I was always working for something, never towards something. We bought a house, got married, started trying to have a family. I worked constantly, I was always stressed, I lost all my babies. I started yelling, all the time. Every time I got us out of debt, another mountain would show up. What I thought was a partnership turned into me being a fixer and a parent. I begged for marriage counseling, I was losing it.

After the third time he lost his job, I lost my mind. I needed out, I needed to depend on me, and only me, for once. If everything went sideways, I would be the only one to blame. I needed to finally, after four years of freedom, be free.

We went to counseling for months, he knew how I felt, but he wouldn’t listen, he never listened, to anyone. Every time he told me how much he loved me, it was like a boa constrictor was wrapping tighter and tighter around my throat. In one session, the counselor told him, “what I hear Kellie saying is that if she doesn’t get her space, she’s going to take it.” She was right and that is exactly what I did. I found friends at work, I refused to merge my married life with the new personal life I was creating and that is when he lost it.

On Thanksgiving Day, after another endless barrage of questions about where I had been and who I had been with, I freaked out. How did he know where I had been, who I was with. I constantly texted him, but it was never enough. That’s when he confessed to me that he had low-jacked my phone. I was pissed, the next day I spent hundreds on a new phone plan and phone, I even changed my number. Then, after spending all of that money, that I didn’t have to spend in the first place, he told me he didn’t track my phone, that he was questioning me in my sleep and I was telling him where I had been. After 17 years of sleeping within feet of dozens of different cell mates, not ONE PERSON, ever said I talked in my sleep. It didn’t make sense. Plus, what kind of husband, what kind of person, questions someone in their SLEEP?

I couldn’t figure out what was really happening, I just knew I was more miserable than ever and that was when I asked for a separation.

The only way I could think to be happy was to be on my own, to do it for myself. My marriage wasn’t over and I wasn’t trying to get a divorce at this point, I just needed a break, a little space, my own life. But I couldn’t do it without money and after three years of putting everything I had into getting us the house and out of debt, I had nothing left. Everything was wrapped up in a house I now hated.

As a “felon,” I knew renting would be hard, but as a pit bull mom, I knew renting would be impossible and I refused to leave my dogs behind. He knew that, he knew the dogs would be my tie to the house. I asked for my portion of the house. I wanted to sell it, it was too big and too much for me to maintain on my own, but he refused. I lowballed my offer and after months of fighting and me moving into the upstairs bedroom, he finally agreed.

Then I found the GPS tracker in my car.

I couldn’t believe it had gotten to this point. The freedom and independence I was trying so hard to create was just an illusion, he was there at every turn.

After months of talking and negotiation he finally paid me part of what we agreed upon and I began to plan my escape. I started house hunting, I got preapproved for a mortgage, I saw a light at the end of the tunnel, freedom.

I was getting more frustrated with every passing day. I was smothered constantly, but I still needed time to get out and I still needed for him to give me the money for my portion of the house. I had to play nice and be tolerant, but it was damn near impossible and I lost my cool almost every day. With every round of endless questions and every guilt trip I felt like a trapped rat.

Then the unthinkable happened.

One night, I was home alone, I had no clue where he was and I didn’t care enough to track him like he did me. I got on the computer to look for tax paperwork for my mortagage lender.

He scanned everything to the desktop, so that’s where I looked first.

The desktop was open, so I begin to look through the files. I clicked on the file with our intitals and then on a sub folder labeled “house stuff,” and my world crashed.

In that folder was over a thousand pictures and videos of me, naked. He had been secretly filming me in our home, our bedroom, for months. I found footage as far back as when we were still in marriage counseling. There were cameras in our bedroom, cameras facing the bathroom and next to where I dressed.

As I clicked through the photos, I felt violated and betrayed. Every photo was me in various states of undress, I felt like I was in prison all over again, constantly being watched, violated, objectified.

I never hated my body more.

I called my mother bawling. I sent her screenshots of what I found. I couldn’t believe it, I loved him, I trusted him. He knew about everything I had been through and he chose to do this to me.

I found out more about him in those hours on the computer than I ever wanted to know. I had no idea who I was married to, I saw things I can never unsee. I was heartbroken and my marriage, in minutes, was over.

When confronted, he said he did nothing wrong. I kicked him out of the house, I screamed, I ranted, I had never been angrier or felt so much hate towards a person.

In the following days, I learned just how strong the last five years has made me. I took control, I confronted my fears and I went to the police with the evidence I had collected. Never in my life would I have thought I would voluntarily walk into a police station and ask for help, maybe he was counting on that, but he was wrong.

As I thought back to all the fights, the guilt trips, the questions, I began to internally boil as I realized I had been gaslighted and I have no idea for how long. All the times he told me he loved me in spite of my past or he didn’t care how “fucked up” I was, he loved me anyways. I felt terrible that I wanted out, it ate at me. At one point, I talked to my mom about just sucking it up and staying. However, during all those arguments, while I was having a crisis of conscience, he was filming me naked and cropping and cataloging those photos for god knows what purpose.

The night he came back, I had him arrested. The arresting officer told me that it was his house and I was his wife and, in Georgia, he could do what he wants. I stood before that cop and shook with anger. How dare he tell me that my body and my privacy could be violated like that just because we were married. I refused to believe what that backwards idiot told me and pushed forward. My case was transferred to Special Victims and I sat in that precinct as the detectives clicked through the pictures and felt violated all over again.

The arresting officer was wrong, so wrong. In Georgia, filming ANYBODY without their consent while nude is a FELONY.

No one, no matter the circumstances, deserves to be violated in this way.

I got a protection order, in it I agreed to let him have the house. I had three months, in the middle of a pandemic, to find a place for the dogs and I to live, while working 60 hours a week and risking COVID exposure. I worked my ass off, I searched for a home, an apartment, anything. No one would rent to me because of COVID and my unstable job situation. I put as much money together as I could to move and pay for my divorce. Finally, with a month to spare, I found a place. An amazing couple I worked with offered to rent me their house, they had no qualms about my dogs or my past, they just wanted me to have a safe place to live.

Tonight, from the couch, in MY home, is where I write. I’ve stayed silent for months, as I’ve struggled with my divorce and with questions about how I’m going to handle his prosecution, which will be a conversation for another blog.

I realize now, in the past five years, I have learned that I am no longer a victim. I have control over what happens to me and my body and I’m going to take anyone’s abuse, in any form.

No one, NO ONE, will use me without my consent.

No more being angry and frustrated over things I can’t control. No more waiting for the other shoe to drop, no more being violated in my own home, no more. This is my life and my freedom. This is my year five, and its just the beginning, its only going to get better from here.

I control what happens in my life from now on. I pay my bills, I control my debt, my home, my life. It’s all mine and it took being violated all over again to realize that, ITS MINE, and I can control the outcome. Starting over, again, hasn’t been easy, COVID sure as hell isn’t making it any easier, but I’m figuring it out.

I will always figure it out.

She believed she could, so she did, Dammit!