“Let me get this straight.” He took in a deep breath and turned on his side so that he was gazing into her beautiful stormy eyes. “You think that things have changed because I haven’t put any moves on you.” He paused. “When I thought that you didn’t want me to put the moves on you.”
A smile graced her lips. “You make it sound…”
“Do you think that I don’t want to?”
She opened her mouth then clamped it shut. “Because that is the furthest from the truth. I have to take a cold shower every night because I am always overheating whenever I’m around you.” He pulled a careless hand through his hair although his eyes never left hers. And then he was moving closer. To his surprise as well as delight she did not back off but stood her ground. “I’m going to…”
Victoria didn’t give him time to finish that sentence as she pressed her lips to his in order to receive his kiss. At the last possible second, she closed her eyes as Nick thoroughly explored her mouth with a hunger that could no longer be contained.
Thursday, December 29, 2011
Sunday, December 11, 2011
The Ugliness of Domestic Violence
While I had always guessed that there was something wrong with our relationship I still thought that maybe he can change. And for approximately two years he had. He had stopped hitting me, sure we had argued but he had held himself in check. It was then that I was convinced that he had changed. It was two glorious years of not quite believing that we had come through some of the darkest days. And then slowly but surely the violence reared its ugly head. It began small and as time moved on it progressed until I found myself back into the thick of the ugliness once again. Those two years were suddenly gone, as though they had never existed. And I found myself in a place where I didn’t want to be. Once again walking on eggshells and once again masking the pain and bruises. Covering bruises on one’s face has to be one of the hardest things to do. Sure, they can be masked but they cannot be taken out of the windows of the soul. Eyes speak when words do not.
What many people do not realize is that you do not need to see a physical bruise to have Domestic Violence present. There are some bruises that no one had ever seen. Great gashes taken out of someone’s self esteem. Wounds that pierce so deep they cannot be seen with the naked eye. Hope shattered to the ground and broken.
I found myself back in a place I didn’t want to be and for the life of me I couldn’t recall how it had happened. How could one word undo everything in the space of a millisecond? How? Like everything else, it was a process. Yet, when it happened again it had been like a great unleashing of the beast. Two years of pent-up aggression came pouring out. I was weak. I was broken. And it was all my fault, though I wasn’t sure how that was possible, I accepted it. I accepted it because I could not refute it.
My mind went on rewind, and suddenly I could no longer remember a time when I hadn’t been abused. Those two years went down the drain in the blink of an eye. Why? Because the abuse had become greater. The intensity was amazing. The walking on eggshells became an everyday thing. It was a part of my life as natural as breathing. The pain became squelched just as sure as my inner flame was being snuffed out. At that point I was only living for my kids. They needed me. Maybe that was my saving grace because there didn’t seem to be anything else to live for at that point in time.
There was more than once when I looked into his eyes and I thought my God, he is going to kill me! This man is actually capable of snuffing out my life. A wave of helplessness came over me that had been crippling. And there were a couple of times that I had been backed into a corner, literally, and I came out swinging.
Life as I had known it became an endless battle of getting through one more day. Somewhere along the line it became surreal. This is what many people never realize. Domestic Violence does NOT happen over night. It is a process, sometimes a long drawn out process. I have often wondered how a person could put their hands on another person, a person they claim to love, and beat them up for something as silly as forgetting to put the silverware on the table. It still eludes me more than twenty years after the fact. It is something I do not understand and am thinking maybe it is something I never will.
What many people do not realize is that you do not need to see a physical bruise to have Domestic Violence present. There are some bruises that no one had ever seen. Great gashes taken out of someone’s self esteem. Wounds that pierce so deep they cannot be seen with the naked eye. Hope shattered to the ground and broken.
I found myself back in a place I didn’t want to be and for the life of me I couldn’t recall how it had happened. How could one word undo everything in the space of a millisecond? How? Like everything else, it was a process. Yet, when it happened again it had been like a great unleashing of the beast. Two years of pent-up aggression came pouring out. I was weak. I was broken. And it was all my fault, though I wasn’t sure how that was possible, I accepted it. I accepted it because I could not refute it.
My mind went on rewind, and suddenly I could no longer remember a time when I hadn’t been abused. Those two years went down the drain in the blink of an eye. Why? Because the abuse had become greater. The intensity was amazing. The walking on eggshells became an everyday thing. It was a part of my life as natural as breathing. The pain became squelched just as sure as my inner flame was being snuffed out. At that point I was only living for my kids. They needed me. Maybe that was my saving grace because there didn’t seem to be anything else to live for at that point in time.
There was more than once when I looked into his eyes and I thought my God, he is going to kill me! This man is actually capable of snuffing out my life. A wave of helplessness came over me that had been crippling. And there were a couple of times that I had been backed into a corner, literally, and I came out swinging.
Life as I had known it became an endless battle of getting through one more day. Somewhere along the line it became surreal. This is what many people never realize. Domestic Violence does NOT happen over night. It is a process, sometimes a long drawn out process. I have often wondered how a person could put their hands on another person, a person they claim to love, and beat them up for something as silly as forgetting to put the silverware on the table. It still eludes me more than twenty years after the fact. It is something I do not understand and am thinking maybe it is something I never will.
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