I used to feel breathless

Butterflies in my stomach

Helplessly and irrevocably in love

Until loving words one day turned in to hatred words

Words that were used to make me feel worthless

Words that were said that made me feel less than what I was

And I told myself that I would much rather be physically abused

I would much rather feel his fist in me than feel his words

Words that pierced my ears and I could not stop hearing them

I told myself that emotional and mental abuse hurt worse than physical abuse

His words used to choke me until I couldn’t breathe

Grasping for air as I felt the burning on my cheeks from the tears that I cried

Each tear stained my face

Each word shot through my heart

Until one day I found myself being chocked

Not by his words

Not by his cold shoulder and empty feelings

But by his palms

And that same pain I felt in my stomach as I held myself each night crying

After yet another bad argument

But this time it was his head driving into my stomach

And instead of my face buried into a pillow so that he couldn’t hear my cry

My face was being shoved in to the sheets

I was being used as a human rag doll

The thought of accepting the mental and emotional abuse

Was actually just as bad as the actual abuse that I was subjected to

I once before blamed it on the alcohol

The heat of the moment

It was my fault

It was my fault I felt his fist strike my face

It was my fault I was body slammed on a box spring

It was my fault

We drank too much

I was unhappy at how he was grabbing me

But it was not him

It was me

He loved me

So I stayed

And months passed before it happened again

And when it happened again

Sober mind

Mid-day

It was clear

That it was not me

It was not what I had done

It was that he needed to be in control of me

He needed to feel that control

And once he no longer had control

He was losing all grasps

So he took matters in to his own hands

And I was that matter

Me

Being tossed around

Thrown around

Thrown in to a kitchen cabinet as glass shattered behind my head

It was me

And at that very moment

I knew

I had to leave

I realized my worth

No words

No amount of love

No amount of tears

No amount of time

I had to leave

For me

Before he took anything else of mine that I had left