The Nightmare

I was looking at some old stuff I wrote and remembering the pain and the heartache of my past life. I am no longer the person that wrote this piece or endured these things, I am a much stronger, wiser and better person now. I will never let this happen to me again...

Have you ever been in a relationship that was wrong but you had no way out? Have you ever endured something so tortuous that it gave you nightmares even years after it was over and you were in a safe place? I did and this is my nightmare...

I cower in fear trying to defend myself. I cry out "Please stop, please stop!" He shoves me; I go down so hard my contact lens falls out. He knocks me to ground and I find myself lying on the floor in front of the main entry of his home. He is now partially on top of me, he sees my contact lying on the floor; he steps on it as if he were putting out a cigarette. His fifteen year old brother is watching us from the stairs, he yells to him "GO AWAY, GO TO YOUR ROOM!" He puts his hand around my throat and demands that I "shut up and quit crying". He says to me that he is going to keep squeezing my throat until I stop crying. I know deep in my heart that one of us will die tonight. I know that finally, this horrific experience will be over. A fury ignites in me, my refusal to die as the victim. In a matter of seconds, in my mind's eye I see my parents, my brothers and my lost future. An inferno of rage has now been established in me. I no longer recoil, I fight and I pray that I get him at least once before I die from asphyxiation. I keep striking him but the man receiving the blows is no longer the man strangling me, but the man I am married to. I leap out of bed, confused, not knowing where I am. I look around startled realizing I am no longer in that man's home, I am safe in my husbands arms. I realize that this was just a dream, another nightmare among the hundreds I have already had over the years and I begin to cry. My husband knows what I was dreaming he does not need to ask he simply continues to comfort me as I weep. My husband reassures me and replies to my tears by saying "It's ok, you will never have to go through that again"