He said I deserved having a miscarriage – it was my karma. He told me I was a dark cloud that brought back luck to us and everyone close to me. He called me a bitch, a whore, a cunt. He told me he would never allow our daughter to be anything like me. That she deserved a better mother. She deserved a mother who was beautiful, successful and confident…and I was none of those things.
I was weak. Pathetic. A loser. I was incompetent. Nobody liked me, not even my family. He said I had no real friends and no one cared about me. He said he would make up a fake story, have me arrested and then leave the country with my daughter. Because then she had a chance at a good life, away from me.
When he first began his verbal assault on me, I thought, “He’s wrong. That is not me.” But over time the tirades increased, occurring more often and for longer. More and more, over and over.
And after a while his words got in. I started to wonder if he was right. The words started to seep into every ounce of me. I began to believe that I was a loser. I began to believe I was nothing. That I deserved the life I was living. I started to question my existence – maybe my daughter would be better off if I was no longer alive.
The cruelty and pain he inflicted on me verbally each week, sometimes every day, was incredibly hard to live with. There were days I thought, “I can’t get out of bed.” I wanted to hide under my covers.
But I didn’t. I got up. Day after day, I kept getting up. I had to live. I had a daughter to take care of. No matter how deep his words cut, I knew I had to be there for her. I also had a facade to protect…I had to keep pretending my life was something that reflected happiness. If I didn’t pretend, I didn’t know what that could drive him to do. Because that facade meant everything to him.
He used to keep our passports locked up and put away. I believed in his threats. After all, he was superior to me. He could make anything happen. I was a nobody.
Little by little, over time, he chipped away at my soul, at my heart and my being. I lost sense of who I was. I walked through each day like a ghost.
He was trying to break me. And he almost succeeded. But my daughter kept me going – she needed me and I had to keep going.
What I didn’t realize in those moments was that it was truly I who held the power. I held the keys to the magic facade kingdom he had created. Everyone around me thought he was so wonderful – but what if I told them the truth? Sure…they might not believe me. They might find it unfathomable. But I could have created cracks in the exterior that, over time, could have broken him the way he was breaking me.
I didn’t see it then.