On a hot 🔥 summer evening 5 years ago today, a text book play on the softball field set in motion…a change in me. A strength I didn’t know I had. A strength I would need for the coming months and years ahead. It started growing inside me on impact. Preparing me…I just didn’t really know for what.. I am still wondering for how long..

In one split second life- changed. Forever. When I looked up and saw my now ex-husband with his hands on his hips shaking his head in disbelief saying “what have you done now” Upset his sleep had been disturbed undoubtedly. Not wanting to go to the hospital I requested because “I’d have to drop my trailer and all that” Not one ounce of empathy after I had just taken a 90mph softball between the eyes. I couldn’t even cry in that moment as the blood poured from my face because I knew. I knew it was somehow my fault, even if it was an accident.

I remember waiting alone in the emergency room, spitting up blood in the shirt given to me by a friend. I remember one of my friends coming in and finding a nurse to get me something to spit blood in. My ex mother-in-law and daughter showing up, the xrays, the CT, then…nothing. My mind goes completely blank.

I don’t remember going home. I remember food being brought in for days after. I remember my mom sleeping on the couch with me, sitting outside with me. Everything looked and felt different.

I was different. I was numb, I was sure my brain swelled or something but it hadn’t. I begged for no surgery but… July 5th, 2016 I had surgery anyway. Doctor said I was too young too just let my face cave in because all my bones had shattered in my face around my eye sockets and my nose was pushed to the right and bones shattered there too. Nothing to hold my face in place..

In those moments after surgery had never felt more alone. I remember looking on the camera at the shop and watching the guys drink beer and shoot the breeze and I couldn’t even get up to make me something to eat or get more ice without my head pounding. I crawed on my hands and knees to the bathroom. Then sat there and cried in the bathroom floor. Alone and lonely. Again.

I cried allot during those next 3 or 4 months. I cried for my daughter, for the family I knew one day I would leave, for the life I was living that felt like one big lie. It was. If it wasn’t I wouldn’t have made such bad choices all the time. Everything I did was wrong. Even if it wasn’t.

I posted #gameface on my Facebook page before taking the field that night. I’d never done that before.. it just seemed to fit what was coming. Game face. Thats what I’m missing these days.. my game face. My strength.

You see, being alone and being lonely are different. They hurt differently. However, a game face, that hides everything.