I woke at 7 a.m. to the same thought that hit me every morning. It wasn’t just a bad dream. It was reality. I was in the same bedroom, in the same house, with the same monster sleeping beside me. My nightmare continued.
And, like every morning, the second sensation to hit me was how cold I was. I was naked, of course, because he hated me wearing clothes.
Then it registered how much my body ached. Not just the odd muscle twinge or stiffness, but bone-shattering, soul-searing agony. I had been sure he was going to kill me last night. He’d come close many times during sex: forcing my legs so wide I thought they’d snap out of their sockets; pushing my head so far into the pillow from behind that I nearly suffocated; tightening the grip around my neck until I was sure the breath that squeezed out would be my last.
But no. Here I still was. Surviving.
Sex makes it sound like it was consensual. Let’s call it what it was. Rape. Repeatedly. Every day. That’s what happens when you live with a psychotic sex maniac. He would be like a wild animal, sticking his fingers into my eyes, screaming into my face and trying to rip the hair out of my head. He was so violent I thought at times that my neck or back would break as he threw me around, all the time shouting his commands, ‘Do this! Do that! You’re not moving enough!’ Then shoving me into the position he wanted. Me, compliant, lifeless almost – like the ragdoll he wanted me to be, my body covered in bruises and bite marks.
All the time I would think to myself, Nothing lasts forever, nothing lasts forever, everything’s got to come to an end. That was the only thing that saw me through it, the mantra I kept repeating over and over and over.
It’s got to stop at some point.
Everything comes to an end.
Nothing lasts forever. Nothing lasts forever.
On mornings like this, with another day in hell stretching out before me, it was hard to believe it wouldn’t be like this forever. Every day seemed the same. Sex, humiliation, excruciating pain, the debasing of my very soul. Day after endless day.
The monster stirred beside me. He got up.
‘Today’s the day we die,’ he said, calm but menacingly. He left the room and went downstairs.
My senses tingled. I forgot about the abject pain. He wanted us to die together. He told me that most days. Only he could decide when, where and how. He didn’t want me to be with anyone else. It was part of his many contradictions. He wanted us to be together. Together, together, together. It was all I heard. He demonstrated this by making sure he was with me every moment of every day. And I mean every moment.
I wasn’t allowed to go anywhere alone. He stuck to me like a leech, always touching me. If I needed to go to the bathroom, he insisted on coming, watching me or, worse, even urinating while I sat on the toilet. He wished we could be ‘sewn together’, and he carried me around like a baby and insisted on feeding me from his plate.
Now it was like being together in this life wasn’t enough.
‘Today’s the day we die.’ My mind buzzed with the possibilities of what he meant. Waiting around to find out seemed the