What is left behind...truly

That day.... that sorry day of debilitating fear and running out the door...heart pounding, looking everywhere, seeing little but the need to exit stage left, post haste...

No everyone will have a true understanding unless they've been through the storm, have felt that soul wrenching, gut wrenching tearing that occurs as you drive away...

The ripping of your soul as you leave part of it behind...

The heightened sense of sound, smell and time slipping away as you make your getaway..

The screams that left my lips scared me....

The knowledge that if I stayed I may not just lose my life as I feared but most certainly I would lose my sanity and so I ran...knowing that further pain was coming because of the damages inflicted by him...

because I had loved him and he had killed that emotion as surely as if he had stuck a knife in my heart... and because leaving was giving up...

leaving was letting him go...forever...despite and because of him being a monster worthy of Jekyll and Hyde...

leaving was saying goodbye to a future I had wanted to believe was possible and admitting I had been horribly horribly wrong.

The screams were for the death of a dream...

The screams were for the sheer horror of what I had allowed in my life; the absolute shit I had given into, the soul-stealing, spirit-trashing, mind-controlling abuse I had taken from the most evil of human beings.

The screams were for being alive when I thought myself dead...

The screams were for the animals I had to leave behind, the abandonment I felt I was meeting out to them.

I hardly felt I was worth the trouble of involving the police, however.... there would be innocent souls coming after me to take my place at the grindstone of life in that house, with that man.

And so here I am... telling the unsettling story that was an intense chapter in my life in the hopes of helping one of you.... Those of you still in the mire and the mud and the muck... those of you getting out, those of you who have escaped and wander the wasteland alone in need of compassion, love and kindness and the sure knowledge that other women have escaped and lead happy joyful lives. There is a way for everyone, do not fear dear hearts, you are not forgotten.