I got married in 2014.

I was still living in Colorado then.

I’d built up this little career and life. I had my dog, Jeeves, an apartment that backed up against a park. I was freelance writing for magazines, photographers, restaurants, and working with local nonprofits. I really wanted a relationship, something long-term, so I’d started more seriously in 2011, using websites like Christian Mingle and OKCupid and Plenty of Fish and EHarmony. I’d had a few short relationships here and there, but either I wasn’t interested in extending anything seriously or there were challenging behaviors I faced that I didn’t know how to shake.

I had tried to get counseling when I went to college. I realize now that then I was facing trauma and PTSD. But I was told I was fine, and I didn’t know how to advocate for the help that I needed. And certain behaviors felt familiar and comfortable. And I was terrible at saying no and setting up boundaries.

By the time my ex-husband came along, I thought he was different, but it turned out he was just quiet. I told him I didn’t know if I wanted to change my last name, because, after all, I was building a writing career with it, and he told me that was fine. Later, he would tell me that he was just planning to pressure me until I agreed to change it.

There were other, a lot more, moments of pressure that I didn’t know how to sort through or understand. I was feeling stuck, trapped, and parts of my personality began to change. By the time it was a week before my wedding, I knew I didn’t want to get married at all. But by then, friends and family had started to arrive, and I figured it was too late to change my mind.

After we got married, he was the one who changed. Anger I hadn’t either identified or understood began to show up. He punched the wall. He threw a laptop. He kicked off shoes in my direction, one of them hitting me, and I froze, then reacted.

It would take another nine years to understand that I don’t have flight or fight. I freeze. I hunker down. I wait for the storm to pass, dissociating from it.

When I told him I was done, he trapped me in the bedroom, holding the door shut, and wouldn’t let me leave. My heart thudding, I got on the bed, figuring that if he was going to hit me, I’d rather have a bed on the other side of me than the floor or a wall.

I told my mom that I was leaving him, and she flew out immediately with Margaret. They helped me pack, transporting my stuff across town to a house I was able to rent from a friend of a friend. I had no furniture, just my mattress. My youngest sister, who had been staying with us, got an air mattress. There was no internet, so we used DVDs for entertainment, old school style.

Margaret sat in the living room, on the floor, with Jeeves in her lap. My mom had coffee on the porch, enjoying a view that was all forest and quiet.

While my divorce was just another traumatizing event in a string of life trauma, those few days were some of my favorite memories with Margaret.

We went grocery shopping. We went to the gym. We almost hit a deer.

There was this one grocery clerk who was very short, and I think I said something about how I did have a store card, but the little one. Very small. Very, very small. I didn’t realize what I was saying as I said it, and he was quietly offended while Margaret silently laughed before confronting me in the parking lot. I never went back to that particular store.

It was the same store where we sat in the parking lot as she told me about some her trauma — how she’d weighed more, when she was younger and still living with our father and his girlfriend. She’d always loved to bake, using it as a stress-relieving hobby. Then she got sick, and lost weight, and they all commented on how good she looked. They’d comment on what she was eating. They’d comment when she baked. Baking lost special meaning for her, and she stopped, watching the two adults eat salads drenched in cheese and Ranch dressing, wondering how that was a healthier choice.

We almost hit a deer on the way to the gym. Coming down a hill, I saw it flash in front of the headlights, wide eyes staring up at me, and I don’t know how we missed it or how it got away in time, but it was gone, and there was no thud, no damage, no blood.

We worked out at the recreation center, and I remember thinking how serious and strong she looked, lifting 50+ weights after a few deep breaths. She tried to help me workout, but I was overwhelmed and short of breath. I looked in the mirror and thought about how pretty she was and what a troll I was in comparison.

Those few moments together made me feel like I was able to create a space for her. It felt like something we both needed.

Emblem of Our House is an on-going series about the death of my sister Margaret in 2018, published every Monday here and on Instagram @EmblemofOurHouse.