The email came this morning from an 72-year-old reader named Gerald. Gerald is a Baptist minister from Arkansas.
“Dear Sean,” his letter began. “...Sometimes you write good articles but I am so disgusted when you write flippantly about alcohol and beer, Scripture says ‘Be not drunk with wine wherein is excess but be filled to excess with the Spirit…’”
This is exactly the kind of positivity I needed today. Thank you for the kind words, Gerald. But you forgot to comment on my cheap haircut and my weak jawline.
Anyway, today I decided to write a special column for Gerald. This story was emailed to me recently by a reader named Lucía.
Our story begins in Utah, where a young woman named Melanie was living in an abusive relationship. She was 26.
Since abuse only works in isolation, Melanie’s boyfriend kept her away from friends and family. Privacy is paramount for abuse to succeed.
Melanie was pregnant. She went to a doctor’s appointment and found out she was 20 weeks pregnant. And it all
sunk in.
“I’m bringing a baby into this world,” she was thinking. “Is this the life I want for my baby?”
So late one night, she steals her boyfriend’s car. It’s a Toyota. A crappy one. She aims the car Southeast. And she just drives. No destination in mind.
Melanie has a little money, but not much. She sleeps at rest areas in the backseat. She bathes in truckstop bathrooms. She survives on Uncle Ben’s and lunchmeat.
She lands at a halfway house in Colorado. In a few months she has her baby. When her baby is born, she is surrounded by halfway-house volunteers. Each of them, women. Each has been in an abusive relationship before.
She lives at the halfway house. She decides to go back to school. She enrolls in a community college. Melanie undergoes remedial education, then receives a two-year degree. Whereupon she…