Standing Strong

You ever been in love?You ever had a falling out with your
family.Ever met that”special” someone that you thought was
going to be that person to help you reach the stars and give you
everything   life has to offer? The answer to all those
questions is probably yes.

For Trina Stewart, these things were all components of her
young life   post high school graduation
from Leuzinger High School in Lawndale,California.She thought she had found
love.She thought she had found that man.Cinderella had found her Prince
Charming.He was it..or so she thought.Then , in the blink of an eye,things took
a turn that almost turned fatal.

As I spoke to Miss Stewart, I remember quite vividly seeing
missing persons postings affixed with her image on supermarkets and phone booths.Almost
in disbelief,I remember telephoning many friends that knew her, telling them of
my discovery.Most ,like I, couldn’t fathom what happen.Recently, after nearly
18 years,( and thanks to Facebook)I reconnected with Trina .As we reminisced, I
breached the subject of how I had seen the postings in and around my
neighborhood.To my surprise, not only did she confirm    what I had seen,she
expressed a desire to recount the story behind them.

Love,as it turned out, took Trina to Nevada.Love , however,
soon revealed to be short lived as the man of her dreams became an inhuman
monster , becoming both verbally and physically abusive.With this in mind,
Trina decided the best way to try and get out of the situation would be to try
and reopen the lines of communication with her family ,lines which had been
through the wringer.These attempts proved to be futile as 
every time she gave family members a phone number to contact her and
establish her whereabouts, her   “controller” would change   the number and she
would be back to square one.One fateful night , however, that all changed.

See, one night, Trina Stewart, decided , she was going to
cease to be a victim.She was going to fight backThat what was different about
this night.What was also different was the gun that would come into play.Her
“assailant”retrieved a gun from an upstairs bedroom and vowed to kill her,
backing her into the kitchen, and in his deranged state,expelling a bullet from
the gun. The bulletstruck her on the left thigh, leaving a tennis ball size
hole in her leg, which immediately began gushing plasma.The fact she didn’t get
fatally wounded was due to her inadvertenly turning her hips as she tried to
avoid her attacker.

As she laid there, drifting in and out of consciousness, she
kept telling herself she recalls” I’m not going to die”As most abusers do, he
blamed her for forcing him now to finish the job and kill her and whistled a
second shot past her head that she recounts she “only heard but never saw” due
to her enormous bloodloss.

Then ,in either a moment of clarity, or   a stroke of genius, she turned the
tables.She began to use her words to soothe his troubled lament..She exclaimed to him
repeatedly”Baby, we can work things out.We’ll be alright”.All the while, she’s
nearing a critical state of unconsciousness.But not her will to live.Her words
proved to be soothing enough for her then boyfriend to phone 911 and report that
his girlfriend had been”accidentally shot”and that an   ambulance was necessary.At
this point, things become cloudy .The next vision she sees is in a hospital room, surrounded by
her mother, brother and cousin, who she had lost contact with, previously
sabotaged in attempts to repair and heal the wounds that had been opened up previously.

The road to recovery was not an easy one.Doctors told her
that the damage she sustained to her leg would not allow her to walk again.But
she was not to be denied .With help from her brother, helping her with physical
rehab,she was able to overcome this obstacle and move forward, earning a degree,
speaking to young women about the perils of domestic abuse, and how to see the
signs.She also   put her story in musical form , recording two albums , including
one that was almost autobiographical in recounting the incident, at the studio that
her brother and cousin built from the ground up.

What’s next for Trina? Marriage,children?If the right one
comes along.For now though, she ‘s just content to tell you her story…of
tragedy,triumph…and rebirth.

Technorati Tags: life, love, relationships

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