My stepdad told me to never touch anything in his house without permission.

Moving Forward and Recovery

2 weeks after court, mom found a tiny apartment we could afford with her salary alone. Just one bedroom we’d share with a pullout couch in the living room.

The place was smaller than Greg’s garage, and the neighbors upstairs walked around in boots at midnight, but we could touch everything without asking permission.

We moved our stuff in three trips with mom’s car, mostly clothes and some dishes. her sister gave us, leaving behind all the furniture Greg had measured and positioned so carefully.

That first night in the apartment, we ate Chinese takeout sitting on the floor using plastic forks without having to request permission. And mom actually smiled for the first time in weeks.

The next morning, a CPS worker showed up for our first monitoring visit, checking that we had food and running water and a safe place to sleep.

She explained they’d be checking in regularly for the next 60 days, and we had to follow every requirement exactly. No exceptions or excuses.

Mom and I both knew this meant playing by their rules perfectly, showing up for every appointment and meeting, even when it meant missing work or school.

The monitoring felt invasive, but it also meant someone was watching, someone who could step in if Greg tried anything. And after everything that happened, we needed that backup more than our pride.

The next few weeks at the school became a blur of makeup work and extra credit assignments. Ravi had worked out a deal with my teachers where I could turn in late work for partial credit, and I spent every lunch period in the library catching up on months of missed assignments.

My English teacher let me write essays about what happened with Greg instead of the assigned books I hadn’t read, and my math teacher stayed after school twice a week to help me understand the units I’d missed.

The grades started climbing back up slowly, most of them reaching C’s and B’s by the end of the marking period, though chemistry stayed at a D because I’d missed too many labs to make up.

Ravi checked in with me every Friday to go over my progress chart, marking off completed assignments with a green highlighter and circling the ones still due.

One afternoon, while we were unpacking the last of our boxes in the apartment, mom stopped folding clothes and sat down on the floor next to me.

She said she knew she should have gotten us out of there months ago when Greg first started with his crazy rules, and she was sorry for letting it get so bad.

I told her I knew I’d made things worse by pushing back the way I did, using his own rules to destroy everything. And maybe if I’d just talked to someone instead of trying to get revenge, we could have avoided some of this mess.

We didn’t cry or hug or have some big moment. Just sat there on the floor surrounded by cardboard boxes and admitted we’d both made mistakes.

Mom went back to folding and I kept sorting through old school papers, but something felt lighter between us.

3 days later, Mom’s phone buzzed with a text from Greg that just said he needed to pick up his golf clubs and some files from the garage asking what time would work with the court schedule.

No threats, no guilt trips, no mentions of how we’d ruined his life, just a simple request with dates and times.

Mom forwarded it to Heidi and our lawyer, then responded with two possible windows when we wouldn’t be home. The whole exchange took 5 minutes and felt weird in how normal it was.

Like Greg had finally figured out that acting reasonable got him further than his usual tactics.

That weekend, Rosa knocked on our door carrying a small wooden desk and a reading lamp.

She said her church had collected for families starting over.

The desk was scratched and one drawer stuck, but it fit perfectly in the corner of the bedroom where I’d been doing homework on the floor.

Rosa helped us carry it up the stairs, then stayed for coffee while mom thanked her for everything she’d done, from keeping notes to offering the video evidence.

Rosa waved it off, saying neighbors look out for each other.

But I could see mom getting emotional about having someone on our side.

The school set me up with a therapist who came once a week during study hall, a quiet woman who taught me to write down three things I could control each day and three things I couldn’t.

At first, I thought it was stupid, but after a few sessions, I found myself automatically sorting problems into those categories, which made everything feel less overwhelming.

She had me write about specific moments with Greg, not to share with anyone, but just to get them out of my head and onto paper where they couldn’t spin around, keeping me awake.

The journal filled up faster than I expected. Pages and pages of anger and confusion and fear that looked smaller once they were just words on paper.

About a month into apartment living, I was getting ready for bed when I noticed I’d turned off all the lights and closed the fridge without thinking about it.

No mental checklist of permissions. No hesitation about touching things. Just normal actions that normal people do without thinking.

I stood there in the dark kitchen for a minute, opening and closing the fridge door just because I could, flipping the light switch on and off, touching the counters and cabinets without asking anyone.

Mom found me there doing this weird celebration and didn’t say anything, just smiled and went back to her room.

Later that week, I took a picture of my completed assignment planner, every box checked off for the first time all semester, and sent it to Ravi.

He sent back a thumbs up emoji.

No long message about being proud or how far I’d come, just that simple acknowledgement that I’d done what I needed to do.

I saved the screenshot anyway, proof that I could finish something even after everything fell apart.

That night, I lay in bed listening to the hum of our cheap fridge and the neighbors walking around upstairs, thinking about how different everything was from 6 months ago.

Nothing was completely fixed because mom still cried sometimes when she thought I was asleep and my grades would never fully recover.

And we were living in an apartment smaller than Greg’s garage. But this space was ours. Every inch of it touchable without permission.

And we’d made it through the worst part. Still standing, still together, still fighting. That felt like enough for now.

Kind of wild how time just flew by there. Two years gone in only a few sentences. Stuff like that always gets me.

I’ll catch you in the next one.

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