Wednesday

Wednesday. This time, she would go.

She had promised herself many times that this would be THE time. The time she’d break free.

Each time, it hadn’t happened. Mollified by promises to reform, impassioned pleas to stay because he would change. He didn’t. It would happen again. She’d feel terrified and worthless. Lack of self-belief tied her to him like invisible thread. At first, it was beautiful, magical; now, it imprisoned her to a hollow life of desperation and failure.

Not this time. She had to go. She loved him but it was destroying her.

Wednesday. She’d leave then. Definitely.

Maybe.

Please do visit Julia's Place for more entries in this week's challenge, and whilst you're at it, why not visit the children doing similar challenges at 100wc.net? 

One in four women

What do you think that proportion relates to? It could be many things, couldn't it? In fact, I'm sure it is. Google it and I bet there are lots of answers. Sadly, the 1 in 4 women stat that I’m going to quote to you today is this: 1 in 4 women experiences domestic violence in their lives. That's twice as many women that suffer from breast cancer.

I am one of the “1 in 4s”. If you read this post that I wrote in April, you'd know that about me. I survived. I came through the other side. I did it on my own. Sometimes even now, I struggle with my self-esteem and I know that its root cause is almost certainly what happened to me, admittedly a long, long time ago. I wrote that post to help others going through domestic violence. Helping others is important to me because although 1 in 4 women experience domestic violence, they shouldn’t have to live with it.