Finding The One -Tasha's Story (Completed)✅

Chapter 20 ~ The Moment of Truth

One year later

The drive down the winding road held no relief for me but I knew I had to do this to move on. I tossed and turned all night long and the visions of what was meant to be scared the bejesus out of me. Yeah I might have been a tough girl on the outside but inside I was a bobbly mess.

I rolled the window down to get a whiff of fresh air. The closer I got the more everything seem to close in around me. I grabbed my CC's cafe au lait and took a sip. I needed some caffeine to get me through this. I turned on the radio and Mary Mary's song, Go Get It, matriculated through my speakers. Was this a sign? I turned up the radio and listened to the words.

It's like you're looking through a telescope you see where you gone be
Growing getting better you're not the person they see
Can't be mad at the things you been through cuz they built yo muscle
Now you're stronger than you've ever been they can't stop yo hustle

Yo Faith ain't never small that's what brought you this far
See you got your dreams and you got your prayers and you got Yo God he gone take you there
See everybody has a season and I believe this one's yours
Cuz you been workin, waitin, this what you been prayin for

I continued to listen to the words and it was my time. Ever since leaving the hospital in Kassala's I had not only felt pain physically but emotionally. Between the kidnapping and Rosa, I would wake up in cold sweats along with panic attacks, and where I was shot would send tingles through my body. I would hurt so bad I couldn't even go to work so I took a sabbatical and decided to get help.

I found a place in LA where I could drain ounce by ounce of pain I carried. I needed someone to understand that I wasn't crazy and for them to listen to my struggle. It was hard leaving everything and everyone I loved but I had to do it for my sanity. I wanted to be a better person, I wanted to be free to love and not be scared to release my feelings for the ones that loved me the most.

It took months of therapy and prayer to get me back. I worked hard on loving myself first which was the hardest part. When I looked in the mirror and saw the scars I use to turn away. I was Rosa's human target and it made me sick to my stomach as each scar represented a horrid blow to my self-esteem. I remember my mother Samantha telling me it was my coat of armor and that it would make me stronger, now as a woman I realized she was right. Even in Kassala, Rosa's words bounced off and gave me the strength not to give in and to fight until the very end. So now when I would close my eyes remembering the night with Allen, gently kissing each scar, the ugliness would slowly slip away leaving me whole again.

Leaving Allen behind was difficult. How could I start a relationship with him when I didn't know how to be in one and give him the affection he so deserved? It wouldn't have been fair to make him jump through all these hoops when I was at the lowest point of my life.

I glanced over at my GPS. Another hour to go before I reached my destination. I took another sip of my drink and adjusted my sunshades. I looked around as the trees and hills became a blur. I was trying to be strong after working so hard to get to this place. Fear was my worst enemy
and I had to find a way to release it.

Everything I had been through had brought me here. I no longer needed to be afraid because God had put people in my life that cared about me and loved me but sometimes the mind is a dangerous place. It can cause you to second guess yourself even when you have good intentions. They say you have to know your past to know where you are going and today was the day, my life was going to change forever.

For all my life I felt chained up and afraid but with the help of my doctors in LA, now Dr. Sims, my psychiatrist in New Orleans, my family and Allen I was ready to close one chapter and began another. I had come close to death twice and realized I still had so much to do. It wasn't an easy process but I knew if I fell, someone would be there to catch me.