A Week of Reckoning: Confronting the Wild Animal Inside Me

There are moments in life when everything builds, when years of tension, unspoken words, and deeply buried pain suddenly explode into the open. This past week has been one of those moments for me.

I have spent years walking the line between peace and rage, between understanding and frustration, between wanting to be heard and feeling silenced. I have fought to become a person of awareness, to step outside of my unconscious reactions and see the world through a different lens. But sometimes, no matter how much you grow, no matter how much self-awareness you develop, you can still find yourself caught in the old patterns—the same battles, the same wounds, the same exhaustion.

This week, I found myself standing in the wreckage of another fight, a fight that stripped me down to something raw and ugly, something I thought I had left behind.

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The Fight That Changed Everything

I had just had my tooth extracted. I was in pain, unable to smoke, unable to release the tension that had been building inside me for months. My husband had driven all the way down to see me, and I should have been grateful. But I wasn’t. Instead, something inside me cracked open, and everything came pouring out.

I hit him. I screamed words I never thought I’d say. I became the anger, the frustration, the years of feeling unheard and dismissed. And for a moment, I didn’t care what happened next. I just wanted him to feel the weight of everything I had been carrying.

And then he left.

And I stood there, watching him walk away, fully convinced that this was it—that this relationship, this investment of time and love and struggle, was over.

But was that what I really wanted?

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The Awakening in the Aftermath

For days, I sat in the silence. I deleted my Facebook. I withdrew from the noise of the world. And I realized that I had been drowning in it. I had been so busy fighting for my voice, for my space in the world, that I had let the fight consume me. I had become someone I didn’t recognize, someone angry and reactive, someone who felt like she had to battle just to exist.

And in the middle of that silence, my son said something to me that shook me to my core.

"... you’re a wild animal, and he’s trying to cage you."

I sat with those words for a long time. What did it mean to be a wild animal in this world?

Why did my son and I see it as a strength, while society, my husband, and so many others saw it as something that needed to be tamed?

The answer, because being a wild animal means living by instinct, by passion, by freedom. It means refusing to conform, refusing to shrink, refusing to be molded into something that makes other people more comfortable. It means knowing who you are and refusing to let anyone take that from you.

But it also means struggle. It means isolation. It means constant battles with those who fear what they cannot control.

And suddenly, I saw my entire relationship in that light. My husband wasn’t trying to hurt me. He was trying to make me fit into a world he understood, a world where emotions were controlled, where conflict was avoided, where love meant physical touch and not words of affirmation. He was trying to hold onto me in the only way he knew how, and I was fighting him because I needed to be held differently.

We were both speaking love in languages the other didn’t understand.

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The Decision to Try Again

I don’t know if this relationship will work.

I know I want it to, not just because it would be easier, not just because I am financially dependent, but because I have invested so much of my life into it. Because despite everything, I love him. And because I believe—maybe foolishly, maybe naively—that he is capable of growth.

So I made a plan.

Tomorrow, I will go to the laundromat and wash my comforters. I will get my tires checked and, if they are safe, I will drive to him.

I will bring my writing, my notebooks, my printed pages, and I will sit in that RV and give myself the space to reset. I will use that time to clear my mind, to structure my websites, to figure out what I want to say to the world. I will use it to separate what is my fight from what is my healing.

And when he comes home from work, we will talk.

Not yell. Not fight. Not turn it into a battle of who is right and who is wrong.

We will talk.

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The Truth I Need Him to Hear

I sent him a message today, trying to put into words what I need from him.

"When I talk, you filter it through your fears and insecurities. We all do. That’s part of waking up, looking at how our pain has shaped us, seeing the pattern and stopping it."

"I need to be able to speak without you taking it personally, without you hearing it as me calling you a failure. Because that’s not what I’m saying. That’s what you are telling yourself."

"I stay because I believe in you. I believe you want to be a better person. I believe you wanted a better us. But that doesn’t mean I turn a blind eye if I feel hurt. That doesn’t mean I let you shut me down because hearing my pain makes you feel like you’ve failed."

"If you don’t want to go to therapy, if you want me to come, then we need to put both of our experiences into an unfiltered lens and really look at what’s happening."

And his response was raw.

"I do want you. That’s all I want. I don’t want war."

I could see the little boy inside of him—the one who had been told his entire life that he wasn’t good enough. The one who had never felt truly loved or wanted until me. The one who, just like me, was afraid of losing the person who made him feel like home.

I don’t know if he can break the patterns.

I don’t know if I can either.

But I’m going to give him one more chance to hear me. To truly listen. To see me not as the enemy, not as a source of criticism, but as someone who is fighting 'for' him, not 'against' him.

Because I have to believe that people can grow.

Even if it’s terrifying. Even if it means risking more pain.

Even if, in the end, I have to walk away.

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Moving Forward

This is my plan. This is my truth.

I will go.

I will try.

I will give him space to listen, and I will take space for myself to see clearly.

And if we find each other again in that space, if we can truly hear and see each other without the past warping our words, then maybe, just maybe, we can make this work.

But if not—if he pulls away, if he shuts me down, if he refuses to see the unconscious forces that shape his reactions—then I will know.

And I will leave.

Not out of anger. Not out of failure. But because I will have finally accepted that I cannot change someone who refuses to see themselves.

I have always been a wild animal.

And I will not live in a cage.

Liz