I took this photograph today.   I lived in this city most of my life and I’ve never been drawn to look at this sculpture before.

Justice.

This statue embodies exactly how my life feels at this moment.

Grey. Solemn.  Frozen in time.  An unknown, robed figure holds a sword over me, about to make decisions that will alter the course of my life and the lives of my family members.

I feel like one wrong move and the sword will pierce my heart and all will be lost.  I’m walking on a tight rope, on egg shells, on the edge of where the ocean meets the land, on a wire at a circus…fill in the metaphor or analogy of your choosing.  I’m barely breathing.

Justice for who?  How is this justice?  Years of my life spent trying to prove things that seem self evident.  Years of him being believed and me seen as crazy, or potentially crazy.  Years of my privacy being breached and shattered to the point I’m hardly sure what privacy means anymore, except to trust no one.  Is this justice?

Interpersonal violence doesn’t end the moment she walks out the door.

Domestic violence doesn’t end when she leaves.

Family violence doesn’t stop when the relationship is over.

She might be physically safe now, but she still looks over her shoulder.  She still watches herself.  She still fears that anything she says or does might get her or her children into trouble.  She lives in fear of SOMETHING happening, even though she doesn’t always know what that vague threat might be.  She rarely sees him, but he impacts almost every aspect of her life.  He calls her crazy.  He tells her kids she is crazy.  He tells anyone who will listen that she is crazy.

But if she is crazy, than every survivor is crazy.

I don’t think we are crazy.  I think the entire system is broken and set up for us to fail.  We don’t have a justice system, we have a legal system.

Wake up.  Justice doesn’t exist for women like me.