Sam’s Journal of Survival

Probation

012426 This journal is fiction. The voice you’re reading is a character, not the author.

Probation

They called it probation, as if the word itself were meant to soften the reality.

Rules. Conditions. Orders to stay away from me.

They said if he violated them, he would be sent back.

What they did not say was that probation does not protect. It only reacts after something has already gone wrong.

Probation assumes restraint. It assumes reason. It assumes that fear of consequence will outweigh desire, obsession, or delusion.

That assumption does not apply to someone like him.

Being told that my safety depended on his compliance felt less like protection and more like a warning. As if the responsibility had quietly shifted back onto me. Be alert. Be careful. Report if necessary.

Live ready.

They said he was no longer a threat.

I know why they believe that. On paper, he behaved. He attended treatment. He participated. He spoke the language they wanted to hear. He learned which words signaled insight and remorse.

He must have gotten good at fooling everyone.

I know he would have killed me because there was a point where that was the direction everything was moving. Not emotionally. Logically. The escalation was already there. The control. The certainty. The way my existence had narrowed to something he believed he was entitled to resolve.

That is not something that dissolves because of a program or a checklist.

That kind of thinking does not disappear. It waits.

People like to believe there are clear lines. That someone either is or is not dangerous. That danger announces itself loudly.

It does not.

It builds quietly. It convinces itself. It justifies.

I lived inside that progression. I felt it tightening. I know where it was headed because I was already standing at the edge of it.

Probation tells me to trust that he will stop himself.

My body knows better.

My body remembers the intensity, the fixation, the certainty in his eyes. It remembers what it cost me to survive long enough to escape.

That is why the word free does not mean relief to me.

It means exposure.

It means that the distance between me and the person who practically destroyed my life is now maintained by paperwork and hope.

I do not live in hope.

I live in awareness.

I follow rules too. I stay vigilant. I lock doors. I watch patterns. I listen for changes in the quiet.

Not because I am paranoid.

Because I am informed.

I survived him once.

Probation does not change that truth.

It only means that now, I must survive knowing he is allowed to move through the same world I am trying to rebuild.