Sonia came into my life through Alex — loud, opinionated, and impossible to ignore. Her voice carried from the upstairs rooms all the way down to my floor, whether I wanted to hear it or not. She was the kind of friend who didn’t suggest things; she told you what to do. She was cordial enough, but something in me never fully trusted her. She felt too loud, too performative, too eager to insert herself into places she didn’t belong.
She liked Rowan, though. She was always kind to him, even if she talked to me like her limited experience as a mother somehow qualified her to tell me how to care for a grown man who still lived in a child’s mind. To keep the peace with Alex, I’d join them for morning coffee sometimes, listening more than speaking, trying not to bristle at Sonia’s volume or her certainty.
When Alex’s boyfriend moved in and the abuse started, Sonia and I found ourselves on the same side of the chaos. We texted often, commiserating about the screaming, the holes in the walls, the doors kicked in. We both tried to convince Alex to leave him, but she wouldn’t hear it. When the two of them disappeared on a month‑long vacation, the house was quiet — peaceful, even — but the silence was laced with fear. Alex barely contacted us. Just a few vague texts about losing her phone and having a great time.
When they finally returned, everything about her was different. The drinking. The spending. The wigs. The surgeries. The way she moved through the house like a stranger wearing her own skin. Sonia and I talked constantly about it, trying to make sense of the shift. We tried to intervene, to pull her back from whatever edge she was dancing on, but she refused to see what he was doing to her.
Somewhere in all that chaos, Sonia and I formed a bond — or at least I thought we did.
When everything exploded and I left the house, she was right there with comforting words and sympathetic texts. She told me Alex had bragged to her about beating Rowan “within an inch of his life” for soiling his pants. She said Alex laughed about “molly whopping” a handicapped man. Sonia was furious. We both were. We convinced ourselves Alex must be using again, because what else could explain something so monstrous?
For a while, Sonia and I talked every day. But slowly, the tone shifted.
Her “support” became pressure. Her concern turned into judgment. Her advice became commands.
She told me I should leave Rowan at a hospital or fire station and let the state take him — because I “couldn’t take care of him anymore.” She said it like it was obvious, like it was the only logical solution. Like abandoning my son was a reasonable next step.
And then Alex started finding out things she shouldn’t have known. That Rowan was in emergency respite. That I was living in my car. That I was barely holding myself together.
Someone was feeding her information. I didn’t know who. But Sonia was suddenly at the top of the list.
By the time someone slashed my tire, I was at the end of my rope — scared, exhausted, manic, and done. I sent Sonia a text full of accusations and anger, blocked her number, and deleted her from my phone. She joined Wade on the list of people I cut loose in order to survive.
And then there was silence.
No friends. No support. No one who knew the full gravity of what had happened or how far I had fallen.
Just me, alone in my car, wondering if losing them made me safer… or just more alone.
Just me now, sorting through the aftermath,
K.
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I'm Still Here. Somehow... 