To the man who tried to take my life

When you put your strong hand around my neck and squeezed, your breath drenching of alcohol and your eyes filled with hate, your hand getting tighter and tighter around my throat calling me a whore for something I didn't do... do you know what I thought of? I thought, who would care if I died tonight? I didn't think of my parents. I failed them by being with you. I would be an embarrassment. I didn't think of my friends. They never cared anyway. And no, I didn't think of you. I thought of no one. My mind went blank as I took a glimpse of the pure evil look in your eyes and couldn't bare to keep looking at them. I closed my eyes.

And then suddenly a vision of my nieces who every time they saw me ran up and screamed "aunt Alysia!" popped into my head. They hugged me so tight and the smile on their face always brought me extreme joy. They wanted to grow up to be like me. A dancer like me when I was young. They wanted to wear my perfume and for me to paint their nails. I saw a vision of them sobbing from hearing the news that their role model had passed. And if they ever found out the cause, that their aunts own boyfriend strangled her to death, and she didn't FIGHT?

So I looked the devil right in the eyes. You wanted to kill me but you were simply just a real life representation of the demons living in my mind telling me no one loved me, no one cared. I fought my demons and I could fight you. I tried to kick you but your hand got tighter around my neck. I tried to pull your hand off but you were too strong. I couldn't breath to get a word out, my sight was going blurring to black, and then a miracle happened. You looked in front of you and saw you were about to hit a car. You took your hand off my throat and jerked the steering wheel with both hands. I hyperventilated, forcing breath into my lungs, and you laughed at me.

After a while I tried to speak but words wouldn't come out. Finally I told you off. You said a few things I don't care enough to remember and then your fist clenched and raised, my reactions not fast enough as you took a heavy blow to my face. I was losing. I was failing my nieces. I was too weak. I tried to jump out the car even as it continued to slowly move but you pulled me by my hair until chunks came out in your hand. I sat there and tried to think how to survive. The man next to me was not the man I thought I knew, thought I loved. But there was no mistaking the signs had always been there. I had been too weak to accept it. Or too weak to think I deserved better. You pulled into a gas station, took my phone, and went inside leaving me in the car. It was my chance to run. But I was frozen with self doubt and self hate. You came back with a pocket knife.

You drove until we reached your house. Finally you stopped the car. You asked me a question that only a monster would ask. "Do you still love me?" I had to choose my answer carefully, one answer could be the trigger that sets you off to try to take my life and succeed this time. The other answer could be the real disappointment to my nieces.

"No."

I hope you remember the way that felt. You took the pocket knife and pierced it into your skin, drawing line after line of blood on your arm. Tears and snot streaming down your face. You wiped some of your blood with the same hand that tried to kill me and smeared it on my lips. You told me I did this to you.

Before you went into your house, you stood on the porch and looked back at me. I looked into your eyes one last time. I didn't see the devil, or my inner demons, or the man I thought I loved, but a coward. I realized I had been looking into the eyes of a coward all along.

Now in my driver's seat I turned the keys and drove away. A restraining order and a court date later, you never saw me again. You will never know what you taught me that day. You made me realize I am loved. My self worth isn't determined by the man I'm with. You made me realize that the phrase "we accept the love we think we deserve" is true. Now I'm working on loving myself and I will never settle again. And I do love myself. For leaving even when I was threatened and run down to my wits end. Most importantly I love myself for making my nieces proud even though they will never know it.