Broken, not shattered

                                                 

     She sat there alone in that disgusting hotel room again. She had no idea where he was, what on earth he was doing, or who he was with. And to be honest, she didn't care. If he wasn't there, he couldn't hurt her. She was used to figuring out how she was going to get to work the next day in the event that he never showed up, used to defending herself against outrageous accusations, and used to trying to shield herself from his deafening blows. Her dreams were no longer of what she would do with her life, but surviving the life that she had. 

Her heart was too big and she was too forgiving. She thought she could pray the devil out of him. She thought if she put up with all of the pain, all the bruises, all the trauma, that he would see that not all people are bad, not everyone leaves, and that he is worthy of love. But he saw what she had to offer and destroyed every ounce of self worth she had left. He never deserved an ounce of what she had to offer.

She felt like she would never escape this. That this was her karma for all the bad things she had done before, she deserved this and it was all her fault. She let him in and he got too close. He knew where she worked, he knew her habits, he knew her hobbies, he isolated her from her friends and her family, he didn't allow her to go anywhere or do anything without him knowing. She reached out to people she trusted, when that didn't work, she called the cops. When he got out, he found her. She would try to jump out of the car while he was going 70 on the highway to get away from his fist. That didn't work either. So she grabbed the gun he got from his brother. She knew the only way out of this was death. But when she pointed it fully loaded and cocked to her temple, he somehow managed to unload the bullets from the chamber. He only saved her so that he could continue to put her through hell. There was no way out. This is her life now.

She could never figure out why he had tried for months to get her attention if this was what she had to live through. All she could remember anymore was the abuse. It started with a simple misunderstanding, that escalated into a living nightmare. He nudged her in the hallway with his shoulder, resulting in her pushing him back. That was the first and only time that she begged for him not to hit her. Still to this day she tells herself it's her fault, she started it. At least that's what he's forced her to believe, even when everything is telling her that the shoulder nudge was just him trying to get her to react so that he could blame anyone else but himself. That nudge turned into a slap in the face causing a broken tooth. That escalated to a punch in the jaw on several occasions, causing most of her teeth to now be broken, he then graduated to strangling her for several minutes leaving her praying for her life. For a week straight, he locked her in a room, only allowed to eat what he let her eat, not allowed to brush her teeth or shower. The only contact she got was him coming in there to insult her and try to force her to leave only to threaten her when she tried. His excuse for this was that he wanted to make sure that she really loved him and that she wasn't going to leave him. She didn't love him at all, she loved her life before him, and she knew she had to survive to get that life back. 

Finally, the right people cared. The right people were witnesses to the event. The cops were called and the video evidence shed light on the lies he was feeding them. He was gone. And even if he got out this time, she put all the right pieces on the board. She finally learned how to play chess instead of checkers. And he would never touch her again. Everyday is a battle, everyday she wakes in fear. Every moment in her life is a traumatic episode filled with coping mechanisms to get her through her day. But she found help. She found someone to talk to. She found someone to love her. To truly and wholeheartedly love her without limits and without pain. She found her strength and slowly but surely is building up every little piece of herself that you thought you broke. She found herself and she will be whole again.