Her dark remembrances are back. She doesn’t know why she remembers what she tries hard to forget. Those years seem like a lifetime ago. She remembers the pain, particularly of when he would hit her for reasons only he knew. He would always tell her it was her fault. But the reality of it was that she did not have to do anything at all. Some days all she had to do was wake up. Oh and how sometimes she would like not to wake up there, in that place that was her home but instead turned out to be more of a prison. It was her prison because she could not leave. She would not even dare to think of leaving for fear he would read her mind and retaliate. And how many times had she actually believed he had read her mind when he mentioned things he could not possibly have known otherwise.

Sometimes now it is hard to see each actual incident but the fear is still there, like it happened just yesterday. He wanted her to follow his every command and if for some reason he believed she was not complying there would be pain, in different ways and different degrees, but always pain. He would hit, but not always, sometimes it was emotional and mental attacks. He would treat her like a child at times and would leave lists of what he wanted done. She must follow each precisely, do each thing on the list according to his previous and meticulous instructions. He always made her feel like she could not do anything on her own. That was part of the mental and emotional pain. How many times had she heard that she would be nothing without him. She would not even be smart enough to take care of herself. How many nights had he kept up the barrage for hours, letting her get little, if any sleep. She had been told later what he had been doing was called sleep deprivation. Then too there were the times when she was not allowed to eat unless he deemed it was ok. She took this treatment from him all the while he proclaimed his love for her. And then one day, after a particularly brutal beating, when she looked at herself in the mirror she did not recognize herself. How, she wondered, could one person do this to another that they claimed to love. It was unfathomable to her. That was the moment of awakening for her. She decided at that precise moment that he would never do that to her again.