She Took A Bullet For Me

I didn’t see it.

Not because I couldn’t, but because I wouldn’t. My loyalty to him was marrow-deep, baked into my bones so thoroughly that I couldn’t distinguish it from love. I believed in him. Unwaveringly. I wanted to. I needed to. I would have done anything except a crime. I would have followed him into fire if he asked. I would have given him anything.

And I almost did.

We were going to hand him a life. A job. A future. A career starting at $70,000 a year. A corporate credit card. A seat at our table and the keys to the kingdom. We were going to give him trust—not just mine, but ours.

But it never mattered. Not to him.

Because I wasn’t a person to him. I was a resource. A convenience. A piggy bank with a pulse. It breaks something inside me to admit that. To say it out loud. To see it so clearly now, in hindsight’s brutal light.

And what shatters me even more is realizing that’s how he saw her too.

Mom.

The woman who tried to shield me without letting me know she was bleeding. The woman who stepped between me and the worst of him, not with fists or fury, but with truth. With evidence. With the kind of love that doesn’t just hold you when you cry—but stops you from falling in the first place.

She uncovered his theft. She unearthed the lies I was too blind to see. And when it all came out—when the truth exploded in front of me like shrapnel—there she was, standing in the blast radius, taking it all.

Figuratively, she took his bullet for me.

She exposed the betrayal that would have left me ruined—financially, emotionally, professionally. And somehow, I believe she knew. I believe, in the marrow of my bones, that she reached across time to protect me. Because this is the mother she always wanted to be to me. The mother she told me she longed to be. The mother she was.

She knew he would destroy me. And so she stepped in.

And now—I carry the guilt of it like a second skin. Not because I wish she hadn’t done it. But because I hate that she had to. I hate that her protection came at a cost she never should have paid. And yet I know, with complete certainty, that if I could rewind time, she would do it all over again.

She told me as much. A thousand times, in a thousand different ways.

I would take a bullet for you.

And she did.

She took it, so I wouldn’t have to. So I could finally see the man who stood beside me with his hands outstretched, not in love, but in expectation. Not to hold me, but to hold me back.

She saved me.

And I don't know how to thank her. I don’t know how to say: I’m so sorry I didn’t believe you sooner. I’m so sorry I didn’t see it. I’m so sorry you had to be the one to prove he couldn’t be trusted.

But maybe that’s the thing about mothers like mine. They don’t need the words. They just need to know that we’re okay. That we’re still standing. That the bullet they took didn’t go through us after all.

She would have wanted it this way.
She told me so.
And now I finally understand.

Peace, Love, and Inspiration,
~Britt Wolfe