But I hadn’t been seeing him long, or even that often as I did work full time. He did start giving me rides to and from work but there wasn’t often time for much else. The third weekend, May 24, the night before labor day, Bill started the usual crap—heaping verbal abuse on me from the time I walked in the door (this was Sunday evening and Frank had just dropped me off). And he broke yet another promise. He told me to go “f*** Frank. Oh wait, you already did.”

That was the last straw. He’d made a promise and it didn’t take him long to break it, as usual. Furious, I glared at him and jumped off the bed. “You promised you’d never—.”

He did back off on that issue but the tirade continued, building until he was throwing things everywhere—my breakables, of course. I ducked and dodged and threw things back at him. The place was wrecked but only ceramics, nic/nacs were broken. Electronics were intact. His eyelids drooped and when he staggered so much he couldn’t’ stay on his feet, he finally stayed on the bed with a kitchen knife he’d been waving around under his pillow, and passed out.

First, I gently and quietly moved the knife. Then I packed up my computer and some clothes into my backpack, grabbed my briefcase and my journal, and my cell phone and keys, and let myself out of the room. It would be hours, or the next day before he roused from his stupor and realized I was gone. This was not being pissed and going out for a walk or a beer to cool off. This time, I wasn’t going back.

Two doors down from ours, I had just turned the key in the lock when Frank opened the door and let me in. He hadn’t gone to sleep yet. I’d also brought the rest of my vodka bottle and the coke I usually drank with it. To my surprise, I only had one, really weak drink, while I told him what had happened to make me run.

“You don’t have to go back if you don’t want to. You wanted to leave anyway. Just stay here a bit and relax,” he said, or something like that.

He let me stay and I haven’t left yet. Our relationship has deepened over the past months as I’ve rediscovered myself, things about me long buried or forgotten over the years. I escaped, finally, and it was the best thing I ever did, giving myself a new life and a new love, and a happiness I’ve never known until now.