We were in the car driving around looking for a gas station. The thought occurred to us that maybe if we just kept driving they wouldn’t be able to catch us. We syphoned gas from a few cars in the neighborhood of the people we knew they’d gotten to already.

It seemed like there was no one around working anywhere and we were starting to get nervous that we’d run out of gas and quickly. As I thought it, the low fuel light came on but I didn’t say anything to anyone else. No need to alarm them while they seemed to be falling asleep.

We hadn't slept in days. Nights were spent hiding in the dark being as quiet as can be. Days were spent stocking up on provisions and making plans to get out of the area.

I realized I was daydreaming in my exhausted state and when I looked up there was a line of them across the road. They were waiting for a situation just like this knowing that we would try to flee. They started running at us and the car sputtered to a stop, out of gas and without anything left to give.

There was so much left of our family’s future. Plans of college, weddings, school dances, but it is all over now. They’re coming for us and there’s nothing left to do...or is there?

I was rejected for two other women. He thought it would break me, make me more needy, more like the other women because they couldn’t live without him. It never broke me. Never brought me down. Never gave me unable to live without him.

My strength and self importance only grew from it. I felt like I showed him, proved my strength to him, and showed him nothing that he contributed to my worth. He never noticed any of those things. Not once! He assumed that I kept getting where I was in life because of the new man in it. The new man empowered me, he gave me everything I had, and he made me who I was. He didn’t, I did.

I threatened him with a life without me if he didn’t get rid of the other women. Spent a year without speaking to him, kept my children from him, and showed my bitterness every chance I got. This didn’t get through to him.

It was then that I realized that I was more intellectual, more wise and overall just better than him. I let it go. Let him go on with his life the way he wanted but within my rules. Everything became my call and on my clock. This made him smaller and his importance in my life little.

Because he was so self involved, his women were so centered on him, his life was so important, he never got to know the real me. He missed out on the amazing woman I’d become post him. Didn’t want to see how much I could thrive in a world he had not created for me, a world where he wasn't the center, a growth I made all by myself. His loss.

Thankfully I had a strong female cohort who also had had him in her life. She gave me my worth. She cared for me unconditionally and put me above everyone else. She allowed me to be me and built me up. She taught me to fight, be strong, be who I am. She equipped me with everything he didn’t.

While she was building me up, she wasn't putting him down. He was her ex and yet she didn’t ever make him seem like the small person I grew to know confidently that he was. She too was above him. She didn’t need him like the other women to want her or make her important.

She is my mom. He is my father. I am their daughter. 

He is the one rejected by us.