In a world where one woman’s evil actions set my world on fire, like a Phoenix I am finally starting to rise from the ashes. 

I truthfully do not want to spend the rest of my years writing Vizionz referring to the incident, but the incident has altered me in such a way that it is now imprinted on my DNA and is with me on a cellular level.

It’s impacted every decision I’ve made or tried to make over the past 3 years and will continue to do such.  I will live again and love again and prosper again but not unlike that girl I once was before I met The Man I cannot be the old Aphrodite.

In a sense this is a good thing, it certainly is not a bad thing.  She needed to make decisions and changes she was never going to do. She needed to live a different life and that was not going to happen. She was stuck in a vicious circle and she was not well.

It doesn’t reduce my anger though that I never got to make those decisions.  Those decisions – yes the ones I was not gonna make – were forced on me and violated me.

It doesn’t change what I did this winter.

The pain that comes with that choice – the one I DID make won’t ever leave me but I know how to live with pain.

I took a drive this afternoon to printout my new hire paperwork. Even though I used to be the girl who was always 15 minutes late for everything I learned how to be the girl who is 15 minutes early. Yep, I am capable of learning how to do new things.

I chose to do all of this today so I would not have to rush in the morning and leave myself at the mercy of area traffic which can be brutal.

I drove through the ‘countryside’ of this suburb area and when I stopped being annoyed at the farms and the animals and the lack of industry I allowed myself to admit that it’s a little pretty out here. Just a little. I still think asphalt is prettier. Look damn it I am a city girl and that is gonna remain even if my time out here tames my urban impulses some.

The location I had to go to was in Exton.  It’s literally been years since I was in Exton. Even though I still have that old address I didn’t suggest to the GPS that it take me up the road to West Chester.

I have not been back to that place since that court date so many years ago. I remember back then how I swore never again, and never turned into one more time. Usher came on the iTunes as I drove those winding roads without traffic lights and I finally reached a point that I thought would elude me until death – neutrality.

I did not feel anything one way or another honestly about being so close to those memories. They exist still, another thing which is imprinted on me, inside me.

For the first time in 3 years I am going to be making reasonable money.  Enough money that I won’t have to beg for overtime or extra shifts to do shit like buy food to eat. I am gonna work overtime though, they are offering unlimited overtime once trained. I’m gonna use it to dig myself out of the hole.

For the first time since October I will be out of the hole come Tuesday. All of my accounts will be in the black.  We all know how much I love black right? I have some next steps on my list of things to do, and for the first time in 3 years I am able to set some of them into motion.

I’m no longer living my life 3 months at a time. I’m not longer jumping through impossible hoops and falling and failing. It cost me a lot but I am going to own my life again. It’s not the life I thought I would have 18 years ago, but it’s the life that I have now. Nothing is the way I thought it would be 18 years ago though.

I am safe.  That means something because there were moments in the past 3 years when I was not.

I will not think too far into the future but I do have a vizion I am just not sharing it at the moment.

I will tough, you know me.

Aphrodite Brown