On Paper

On paper, I look like a woman who shouldn’t need help.

A steady income.
A successful career.
A strong mother.

On paper, I’m overqualified for support because the system assumes I’m standing on solid ground.

But that paper is a liar.

It doesn’t show the money I lost to legal fees for a divorce that’s draining me dry.

It doesn’t show how my credit collapsed under the weight of survival and sabotage.

It doesn’t show the cost of rebuilding a life out of nothing because someone decided that everything we built together belonged to him.

On paper, I look successful.
In reality, I’m surviving a war that never seems to end.

In my divorce case, my ex learned how to weaponize the system against me.

He learned how to turn my coping into evidence, my trauma into instability, my humanity into a weakness he could exploit.

He shows the court a version of me that exists only in the shadows of his manipulation and nowhere on paper.

The paper doesn’t capture the number of times I felt like giving up.

There are no numbers for the tears I cried from losing everything I worked so hard for in my life.

There are no numbers for the days I spent in treatment to prevent myself from breaking.

There are no numbers for the bills that piled up because of lack of support.

There are no numbers for the time I lost with my children because my ex decided I was an unfit mother.

The system wasn’t built to protect women like me.

Women who are successful on paper.
Women who are employed and don’t fit the stereotype of someone who needs help.

The system breaks women like me.

Women who earn too much to qualify for support but not enough to survive the fallout of financial abuse.

Women who have a successful career but didn’t earn her full income because of the disability leave they took to recover from abuse.

Women who are punished for being strong and punished again for breaking under pressure.

The system looks at me and sees stability in numbers—but I’m not stable enough to have access to my children.

I’m trapped in a cycle of abuse by a man who uses the system as his battlefield—a system that supports this.

Surviving abuse doesn’t qualify for protection.

I stand alone in a court room because I can’t afford a lawyer—but on paper I earn too much to be given one.

I become homeless because I can’t afford a security deposit and my credit is ruined—but I am overqualified for affordable housing.

I don’t have any of our marital assets.
I don’t have domestic violence shelter.
I don’t have either of the family cars.
I don’t have support.

I’m carrying the weight of surviving a system that is meant to protect women like me but punishes them instead.

I’m tired of looking good on a piece of paper but in real life I’m barely getting by.

But the systems piece of paper doesn’t capture my whole self.

I’m a woman who won’t stop fighting—even when it’s up against a system designed to destroy me.

I’m a woman who is creating a new life from scratch—with or without anyone’s help.

I’m a woman who believes in her worth—even when a man is trying to erase it.

I’m a woman rewriting herself.

I’m starting on a blank page—because I get to decide who I am in real life—and on paper.