On the night of 23 February 2001, I awoke with a dagger to my throat. A very long, very sharp dagger my ex-husband purchased earlier at a renaissance festival.
He told me to get out because if I didn’t, he would cut my throat and then he would kill our child. I got up from bed without thinking, taking my two-year-old into my arms. I acted on instinct, only stepping into my shoes at the door as we left. We fled through back streets and side yards in the cold, terrified that he was on our heels.
We reached the safety of my parents’ house. We called the police. They arrested him the following day, hiding in my Aunt’s house. He surrendered without a fight, and they took him to a mental hospital, where he would spend the greater part of the next three years.
As the haze lifted from what had become a terrible and abusive marriage, I realized, slowly, that if he had killed us then, we never would have truly lived. I was 26. My child was 2. Our lives had barely even begun…
It was like a bolt of lightning. A shock to the system. I was awake now. What was I going to do about it?
So I wrote out a list of things I wanted to do in my lifetime, the things I dreamed of but had never actually done.
Here they are, the 100 Things I Want to Do in My Lifetime.