Knight in Shining Armor by Shéa MacLeod
It’s strange how
long a bruise can last.
Long after the
physical evidence is gone, the muscles remember. A raised hand or an angry voice, and the body
flinches away. The mind tries to forget,
bury the pain deep … but the scars are forever.
It didn’t start
that way, of course. He said all the
right things. Did all the right
things. When I was sick he took care of
me. When my car broke down he fixed
it. I thought I’d finally found my
knight in shining armor.
What I’d found was
a nightmare. The minute I was hooked,
everything changed. It started with the
name calling, the blame, the bouts of rage.
As time passed, he turned increasingly violent. It was always my fault. I was useless. I’d never be anything. Do anything.
Accomplish anything.
If I tried to
fight him, he threatened to destroy everyone I loved. To ruin their lives. Stupidly, I believed him.
He was always
sorry after.
You might ask why
I didn’t leave. It’s a fair
question. But until you’ve been there,
until you’ve lived through that, you have no idea how messed up a woman’s head
gets when she has to live through that day after day. There is no such thing as confidence,
self-esteem. You learn to live with the
overwhelming conviction that this is all there is. You have nowhere else to go.
That’s the very
worst part of abuse. Beyond the bruises
and the emotional scars. The absolute
knowledge that this is the way you will live.
And most likely the way you will die.
You don’t deserve anything else.
In a way, I was
lucky. I had something else. A secret weapon, if you will. I just had no idea back then how powerful
that weapon was.
I could write.
All through those
nightmare years I wrote. Not about what
I was living through, but about something else.
An imaginary world where I would escape, where I was strong. A place where I kicked bad guy ass. A place where I was my own hero.
Prophetic? Perhaps.
The writing kept a
spark of something alive in me. My
soul? Hope? Who knows.
But one day, that tiny spark of something flared up. I couldn’t take another minute.
I had
nothing. No money. Nowhere to go. But I walked out that door and never looked
back.
Nobody rode in on
a white horse to save me. I saved
myself.
It was a very long
uphill struggle to get healthy again, but through it all I kept writing. Writing had always been my passion, now it
was my salvation, too.
Through writing I
regained my sense of self. I grew
strong. Stronger than I ever had been
before. Words poured from me as my mind
and body healed itself. Slowly but
surely I recovered.
It’s nine years
later and that life seems like a distant nightmare. The woman I was then could never have dreamed
of the life I am living today.
The writing has
never stopped. It just moved with me,
changing zip codes. I now write in a
sunny room in a Georgian townhouse in London, England. I have self published two novels and am about
to publish the third. My stories, while
sometimes holding a dark edge, are still full of hope and my readers love
them. I am now selling enough that I can
stay at home and write full time. I made
my dreams a reality.
Guess what?
You can, too.
The day I walked
out of that abusive relationship was the day I became my own hero. That one action changed everything.
If you or someone
you know is in an abusive relationship, please visit the Hot Peach Pages for a
list of agencies all over the world who help women living in domestic
violence.
No woman deserves
to be abused and mistreated. It’s time
to say NO to violence.
It’s time to be
your own hero.
“This is one story from Indie Chicks: 25 Women 25
Personal Stories available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble. To read all of the
stories, buy your copy today. Also included are sneak peeks into 25 novels! My
novel, DRAGON WARRIOR, is one of the novels featured. All proceeds go to breast cancer research.”
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