On the longest day of the year, he left me while I was in the shower for the woman I later learned he had been seeing for over a year. It was my fault. Of course.

She had a boyfriend. But the phone made it easy for them to stay in touch when he wasn't in the north in the same town as she—at the same gym as she frequented.

My god how he protected his phone, he carried it with him everywhere, locked tight as a drum—I know because when he was in a hurry to get into his phone, it took him ages to get through all the passwords, thumbprints and codes. He said it was for security for his job. But he is just a consultant electrical engineer, not Jason Bourne.

I suspected it was because of me he made all this effort to lock his phone because he had something to hide. But he gave me far too much credit. I was so naïve I didn't even know what WhatsApp was, let alone how to crack a phone's security.

One fine spring morning, I go into the kitchen to make tea. He is in the dining room with his back to me, engrossed in his phone, scrolling through messages and photos. It has a green theme. There are a lot of photos, though I can't make them out. I had never seen such a platform before. I am only allowed to use text messages. I know nothing about apps or how to post pictures on my phone. I'm not allowed to lock my phone and I know he goes into it, because things would disappear. Once, the entire history of our texts vanished. I asked him if my phone would have done that. He said yes, because I used too much data. Much later, I learned the truth. He had done it. Why? Because there were horrible texts in there from him so he deleted history. He was good at that.

I didn't like what I was seeing. I didn't want to see it. I pick up the kettle and pop its lid to let him know I am there. In the dark glass reflection of the extraction fan I see him switch his screen off and hit my back with one of his withering looks. He asks if I was spying on him. I say no, I only just walked in. He asks what I had seen. I say just some green stuff, that I didn't have my glasses on so it was blurry anyway. I act as if I have zero interest in the matter. I hope I am convincing.

He says it is his work messenger. I accept his lie without question. I don't say I think it is strange there were so many photos. Why would I want to do that? Although it doesn't matter. Already I am gravitating towards his words, to the comfort of his denied reality. It is true. It is for his work. It is just his colleagues sharing photos of their weekend adventures. It's a social feed for his job. Yes. That's it. I cling to that because it feels better than facing the alternative. That he's a total liar who is sitting at the designer dining room table I paid for and hitting on another woman.

I go to the sink and turn on the water. He watches me, narrow, suspicious, like he doesn't believe me—like I am the one who is the liar and not he. I wish I hadn't come in to make tea. I offer to make him a coffee, to change the subject. But it is too late. He sets his phone down, deliberate, like he always does when he is building up to what he does best, where he convinces me I am the monster and he the victim. He might as well take off his shirt, fold it carefully and set it aside. The message is clear.

'I am coming to get you.'

No. Please no. I avert my eyes, make myself small, submissive, hoping it will pacify him. I fill the kettle, try to keep my hands from shaking.

He rises from his seat and prowls up the steps into the kitchen and positions himself over me, blocking me, cornering me, his presence dominating, threatening. I can smell the coffee on his breath. It stinks of bitterness. I am still holding the kettle. I clutch it to my chest, the water inside sloshing back and forth; put it between me and him and wedge myself into the corner of the counter, my head down.

His voice gets colder, harsher, sharper. Louder. He accuses me of being paranoid, of giving him no peace, of always making him have to answer for things he shouldn't have to answer for. It goes on for a long time. I don't look at him. His words hit me like rocks, they hurt. He calls me names, those familiar cruel words that pour from the mouth of the man I love and never get used to. I cringe, but say nothing. When he finally stops, panting, his hands clenched into fists, and his eyes daggers of pointed hate. I whisper: 'I am sorry. You are right. I make your life hard. I don't deserve you.'

There are tears in my eyes. Of fear, of remorse, of shame. I don't disagree with him. I believe his litanies. That he suffers to be with me, that everything is my fault, that I make him miserable, that he wishes I would die. That his life would be so much better without me in it. I don't fight it. I tell myself I remembered it all wrong. I did come in on purpose to check on him—like he said—and not because I was in the midst of my writing and craved a fresh cup of tea for having written a scene I was proud of. No. He's right. I remembered it wrong, because I am a liar, even to myself. That's how monsters are. They lie so much they can't see what they are. I am a monster. I deserve this. I deserve nothing.

He doesn't stop. He drives his point home, long after it has already pinioned me to an abyss of hopelessness and despair. It's relentless. My knees give out and I slide to the floor, still clinging to that damned kettle. I weep, broken, hating myself, wanting to die for the awful creature I am. I ask him if he wants me to kill myself, to make things better. I mean it. It's the only gift I have left to offer him. My life. I want to make it better. I want to make it stop. I could cut my wrists. Get into the bath. I am numb with grief. I can't bear my existence. I am ready to die. To end it. To make him happy. The last good thing I could do to prove I love him.

He laughs. I blink, stunned. I wasn't being funny. Fear slices through me. Rides rough over my despair. The narrative is changing, fast. I know this one. The switch. I glance up at him and even through the haze of my tears I can see it in his eyes. The vindication, the pleasure. The sadism. I can't keep up.

He tells me this is the problem. That I am crazy. That he is stuck with a crazy person. Only a crazy person would react like that.

He repeats my offer to end my life in a mocking tone. He laughs again, in cold contempt of my anguish, of my desire to right the terrible wrong he has placed on me.

I don't know what to do. To say. So I say nothing. My body tingles with terror, anticipating worse. But he is done. He is satisfied. He leaves me and returns to his seat at the dining table, picks up his phone and unlocks it. Ignores me. His posture dares me to so much as look at him. I suspect he is back on the screen with the green theme, looking at the photos of someone else. It hurts.

I gather myself together. Stand. My nerves jangle, firing for flight, but I hold myself still. I put the kettle on the hob and switch on the heat, prepare my tea cup, the milk, and wait for the water to boil. In the extraction fan's black glass, I glimpse my tear-stained face. Humiliation claws through me. I can't even begin to piece together what has happened, so I don't. I came in to make tea. So I make tea and go back to my desk, wipe away my tears, bury the last thirty minutes of my life into the grave of all the other hurts, and continue to write.

He had left me once before, for a couple of days, four months before the day he left for good, in late February. It was just one month after we had moved house, when the lamps and blinds were still waiting to be hung and the house was infested with silverfish and the heating didn't work properly. He tried to fix it, but said it was impossible, he would have to think about what to do next. Of course it didn't bother him because he barely lived there, he was spending more and more time in his flat in the north. I remember being cold all the time. Even in bed under a pile of blankets.

The cats would come to me at night, their noses as cold as ice. I would tuck them under the blankets with me and we would huddle together, shivering, miserable. Those nights were long. Unhappy.

I remember that February day clearly. It was a Thursday. He was working from home, but by 10.30am he was already gone. I know this because I videoed him from the bedroom window as he drove away in his 5 series BMW. I marked the date and time in my calendar. I don't know why I did those things, but when you are numb you are reduced to the menial. To record keeping, as if it somehow matters.

That time, he went into a rage over something I hadn't done, a construction he crafted from out of the air, another misunderstanding like so many others similar to the one I endured that brutal Easter weekend. It was pointless to defend myself, because then I was denying his reality, so I conceded, I apologised for something that didn't exist, anything to get the peace back. I even got on my knees and begged. I was afraid. I didn't want him to leave. The heating still didn't work. There were silverfish in the beds. I didn't want to be alone in a cold house that wasn't familiar without blinds, without lights, seething with creeping, slimy things. He had promised he would fix those things, would make the calls I couldn't because I wasn't allowed to deal with it, he had to control everything. But he refused to hear anything I said. I was judged, condemned, berated, and shoved aside, a thing in his way. He was leaving and fuck me if I didn't like it. I deserved to be left in a cold, insect-infested house.

His rage escalated faster than usual, even for him. I wondered if this time he would kill me. The violence he rained on the house, the walls, doors, furniture was terrifying, filled with the promise of what he would do to me if I got in his way again. When he started punching the island in the kitchen, I spirited myself away and hid under my bed. When I slid myself underneath, I discovered my three cats already huddled there together deep in its recess, their eyes wide, focused on the entrance to the bedroom, defensive, scared. Like me.

I slid up to them, and gathered them to me, my little babies. They clung to me as he rampaged through the house, packed his bags, punched more walls and stormed up and down the stairs, screaming his hatred at me, of how much he wished I was dead. I held back the tears of fear. Of terror. Of the silence of my existence. Of guilt. Welcomed the calm of shock, sought the presence of mind to think what to do if he found me, how I would protect the cats. Protect myself. He searched closets, throwing them closed so hard I expected to find them broken afterwards, demanding to know where the fuck I was. I held my breath and waited for him to go. Willed him not to figure out I could hide in such an obvious place.

He gave up, eventually.

The front door slammed. In the driveway, the thump of his car door closing, followed by the throaty roar of his engine surging to life. I hauled myself out from under the bed in time to video his departure. That way I knew it was real. He was gone. It was over. I was alone. And it was my fault.

It was a party. He caused all that to justify leaving me so he could go to a party in the north that night. To see her.

I discovered the truth much, much later, but it didn't help to put things right inside me. By then, it was far too late. The damage was done. Because after he left—after I marked the time of his departure in my calendar, and a particularly large silverfish used its tiny feelers to explore the floor near my feet—I absorbed the hate he had poured into me. Internalised it. Blamed myself for the terrible atmosphere he had left behind. I was bad, I was worthless. How could anyone make anger like that up? Only someone thoroughly awful could cause such a reaction in another human being. I was too dense to see how horrible I was. I deserved to be left. He was right. No one would ever love me. Ever.

I think I cried. But I don't remember.

The day he left me for good, I didn't see it coming. It was June 21, Midsommar Day, Sweden's national holiday to celebrate of the longest day of the year.

Every Swede celebrates Midsommar one way or another. With friends, drink, food, parties, town-wide festivals, dancing around a flower-strewn pole, or just getting quietly smashed at home. The next day the country falls into utter silence as an entire nation nurses the worst hangover ever. It's surreal. I love the day after Midsommar. The silence. The peace, the emptiness. The feeling as if I were the only person alive wandering in a wild, remote place. It felt apocalyptic. It was great to be a writer on that day. To experience that.

The morning of Midsommar Day, I get up early to write. I am in the midst of writing the final book in my series. At one point I need to calculate how long it would take Thoth to run a certain distance at a certain speed so the timing in the narrative would be realistic. I hear my husband go into the kitchen. He has been in a good mood so far that morning. I decide to chance asking him for his help.

I go in to make tea, ask if he would mind helping me figure it out the math since he knows a lot about both math and running. He is pleased to help and when it is a good day, like today, he likes it when I consult him on the more technical aspects of my work. Plus he is smart, and gives good, useful answers.

I loved him for that. Admired him.

As I boil the kettle, brew the tea, and make him a coffee he helps me wrap my head around how I can make the pieces fit. We talk a little further about what else I intend to write the rest of that morning before getting ready to celebrate Midsommar with his parents. I leave with my tea, pleased by how things are between us and continue writing. I feel good. Everything is going well between me and him. We are having a nice day. He is being nice. He even smiled a few times. I love his smile. Especially when it is bestowed on me.

When I hit my writing target, I ask if he wants to join me on my daily walk along the canal, something I do to clear my mind each day from the intensity of writing.

He says yes, but the darkening of his mood in the three hours since we spoke is tangible. I rake over the last conversation we had. Nothing. I had been good. I had been grateful, and let him know how much I admired him for his intelligence. Since then I had worked, and it hadn't taken longer than I promised; I hadn't made him wait. I can think of nothing I have done, nothing I could say or do to put the brakes on wherever this is heading.

Then it occurs I must have said something he has had time to dwell on, to twist into something else. I catch the look in his eye, the one I dread. I have done something, but as usual, I will not know what it is until he tells me. It will be something he has built into something else, fabricated from the dark corridors of his mind—something I won't be able to defend myself against because if I do I am denying his reality. You can't argue with that.

I should have gone on the walk alone. But I am afraid to leave him with whatever is brewing in his mind. If I go alone, it might make him more angry with me, and I don't know what I will come back to. I dare not ask what is wrong because he will deny there is a problem, even though the atmosphere is drenched in his mood, of the promise worse is to come.

Once again I face a hated, familiar crossroads. Two options rise on the horizon, both guaranteed to lead to more hurt, more suffering. The goal is always to choose the path that leads to the least hurt, only in his case, all roads lead to hell. Always.

I always thought I had some control over that choice, but now, as I write this, I see I did not. It was a construct I created to give myself a sense of power over my fate. It was a lie, like everything else I told myself to make sense of the impossible. He always had all the control.

I taste the suffering to come, my destroyed appetite, the acid scald of fear, dread, powerlessness, of not knowing what will come next, the collar of his dominance wrapped around my neck so tight I cannot breathe. Of there being no escape.

After almost a decade with him, I know the steps to this dance very well. He will become enraged by whatever crime he believes I have committed against him. There would be no trial, only his accusation delivered in a haze of fury, my judgement and the punishment.

Next comes the indeterminate period of banishment as a human, of being ignored, deprived of money or necessities, or abandoned in a parking lot miles from home with no money or any way to get back, or perhaps for a lesser crime, of what minimal privileges or promises he has granted, stripped away, or—most terrifying of all—of him leaving for his flat in the north for days on end, erasing my existence, refusing to answer my texts, or emails, refusing to give me my allowance so I am penniless, and me going on, wondering, waiting, anxious, his poisoned words feeding on my mind, condemning me—without any idea when he would return, or if he would ever return. Those were the days I wanted to die the most. The days I knew I was nothing to him. No one.

Then, once my despair reached its deepest, when I was ready to do anything to make it stop, the steps of the dance change, abrupt, like a savage, cruel tango. He would come back to me, find me in his car as I wandered, weeping and lost trying to make sense of my abandonment; or come into the office and offer to make me tea, or ask to watch something on Netflix together, offer a cuddle on the sofa. He would pour me a glass of wine and act as if none of what had happened, had happened, and I would be so grateful I would go along with it, pretend what I had just lived through, the long horrible, terrifying hours and days of uncertainty and fear a mere figment of my overactive imagination.

So, like a homeless kitten starved for love, I let him cuddle me, as my heart sought to mend in silence the anguish he had driven into it, to convince myself it hadn't been as bad as I remembered. Or if I could not do that, I settle on the fact I must have deserved what he had done to me. But now I was forgiven, and that was all that mattered.

When he gave me those reprieves I clung to them like a woman released from the horror of solitary confinement, desperate never to be sent back. I believe so long as I behave myself the way he wants, I can stop it from happening again. I always swore in those moments to do whatever he wanted, no matter how humiliating, no matter how much it denied what my senses told me otherwise. But I always fucked up. Always. I know, because he said so. In detail. I didn't remember it the same, but he was so certain, he had to be right, and I wrong. I didn't know what was real anymore. It was too hard to fight it. Better to just accept it. I never was right anyway.

By the time he left me, my mere existence was enough to drive him into a rage, into violence. I would be condemned and thrown back struggling, pleading, weeping, and terrified into my cell of silence and powerlessness—while he, the possessor of the keys to my long imprisonment would secure the lock and walk away. Sometimes he smiled, cold, cruel, satisfied.

The pleasure he took in my suffering as he locked me into my hell, as he revelled in his absolute power over my existence tore me to shreds. Those times something primal in me reared up. It wanted to kill him. To make it end. To end him. In those moments I wanted him dead. I could taste it. It never lasted. I am not a killer. I am not him. No. As he left me locked in the silence of my punishment, it was easier to blame myself. To let him decide all. Even whether I lived or died.

I don't want to make it real, acknowledge his mood on that Midsommar Day, or ask him what is wrong, because the reason would certainly point to me, as it always, always did. I had to choose: continue as I had begun and endure the wait for him to reveal my crime or walk alone and return to him and find him even angrier for having left and walked without him . . . or worse, find him gone again for another indeterminate length of time. And no knowledge of what I had done this time.

Fear hijacks me. I choose to continue as I had begun, hoping it will be the lesser evil, that the walk will lighten his mood. I smile and say it is a beautiful day and put on my shoes.

Bathed in sunshine, we walk under a cerulean, achingly perfect summer sky, the wheat in the fields verdant with gold-furred fronds. He is silent. Resentful. His ugly mood a blot against the beauty of the day. A barricade, laced with aggression locks me outside of him, an impenetrable fortress to which I walk round and round in search of an opening, a crack where I might gain admission, find forgiveness, and be spared the isolation of his hate. My heart tight, I cling to the fading remnants of our earlier conversation and continue to chat, as bright as I am able to, about what I had written after we had spoken—of how grateful I was for his help.

He doesn't look at me. The distance between us yawns, intentional, a deafening message. I quail. Whatever I have done, it is serious. My thoughts career ahead, into the woods, past the fields, up into the skies, searching, like the hawks circling above, seeking sustenance

I console myself with one thought: we would meet his parents in a few hours. If only I could hold out until then, perhaps this will pass. He will drink and eat tonight and he might feel better towards me after.

He was brilliant at hiding his dark moods from others, could switch from being a monster to a perfect, doting husband in the blink of an eye. It was terrifying to witness. And yet, I, ever the desperate fool would go along with it, thinking it was over, that things were better, and bask in his loving attention. My god, sometimes he would even feed me something from his plate in front of them, as if he adored me, and others would smile, indulgent and pleased for our blissful union, but always, as soon as we were alone, the mask would fall and the hate would begin again, worse than ever.

I keep talking, nervous, about the flowers, and the butterflies. About the birds. About all the flowers that have been taken from one part of the meadow for the Midsommar tree and how sad it makes me for the bees and the butterflies to lose so much just so people could celebrate a pagan holiday. I try not to babble, but I do. I say things I know he likes to hear. His silence becomes stonier. He clenches his fists and walks faster. I have to trot to keep up with his long strides.

Perched once more on the knife-edge of his mood, that precarious, terrifying place between peace and annihilation where he is the sole master, I hope I can make it stop with my words. I try to make it stop with my words. My useless, pointless, wasted words.

He orders me to be silent.

His tone ensures I shut up. Regret feeds on me. I made the wrong choice to walk with him. I have only made whatever he was angry about, worse. We walk on, him ahead of me, and me trying to keep up, like a subservient squaw. I am invisible to him. In my haste to stay apace with him I trip on a rock in the path. He doesn't look back. Humiliation slays me. Dread slides into me, a shadow.

Eventually, we return to the house. I am sick with anxiety. I must bite my lip not to ask what is wrong. I dare not ask. I know what happens when I ask. Bad things. Please not today, of all days. Let this not be a bad day. It's Midsommar, the whole of Sweden is celebrating, is happy. I want to be happy, too.

He lays down on the kitchen floor on his back, his knees bent, and says he is tired. I leap for this olive branch. Say I understand, that he does so much work and must drive so much for his job that it is no wonder he is tired. That it is good he has the long weekend off to rest and relax. I am so careful with my words, make sure to say nothing that will cause offence, only show my support.

I am on one of the bar stools at the island, ridiculously grateful he is talking to me, lying down and not standing up and in my space where unpleasant things can happen. I nurture a faint hope his mood has passed, that the walk helped after all. That maybe everything will be ok.

He gives me a filthy look.

He is on his feet. His fists clench, a threat, a promise. The yelling begins. He pushes himself into my space so fast I am startled from my seat. Panic grips me. I try to slide away from the corner he is shoving me into. I fail. He pins me in the narrow space between the jutting corner of the wall and the solid weight of his chest. The corner's edge digs into my spine. I concentrate on that. On what that feels like. It's important. It's real. The rest is not. It's a bad dream. A lie. What man could do this to a woman he loves?

His face looms over me, his eyes bore into mine, hard as granite. Remorseless. His mouth moves, almost touching my lips, but instead of a kiss, of love, hate pours out. Vitriol. Words I know by heart. The ones I hear in my head even when he is not there, that I have indoctrinated into my soul, embedded into my heart, and worn into rutted paths in my mind. I want to close my eyes but I am held hostage to his hate, to what will be next. My worth is decimated. My existence willed to silence. It goes on and on. But there is nothing new. Just the same things, recycled. It still hurts. He can still hurt me.

He leans back to catch his breath, to gather new words to hurl at me. That primal thing inside me roars to life, reacts, and I slip, like quicksilver out from under his arm and dart across the kitchen. Out of reach.

He turns, paces towards me. Fury slams into me and I welcome its embrace. I rise. Enraged. Ready to fight to the death. At last.

Fuck you. I scream. Fuck you. No more. I won't live like this anymore. This ends now.

And then it evaporates. My courage. My strength. I run and lock myself into the bathroom. I expect him to kick in the door, to break my neck. To finish me. I have never defied him like this before. I don't know what comes next. I have driven the pattern so far from of its course anything can happen. I look for something to defend myself with. There is nothing.

I sit. Trembling. No. Quaking. Terrified of myself. Of the magnitude of the rage that enveloped me as I turned on him. As I snarled back, showed my teeth for the first time in my life. How I was ready to die, was ready to fight to the death. My death. Perhaps he saw it in my eyes.

Because he does not come.

I wait. And wait. He storms around the house. Banging. Crashing. But he never comes to me. I wonder if this was all I ever needed to do. Stand up to him. His rage continues to rain on the house. But still. I am left alone.

I calm. Organise my thoughts. The pattern will return, I think. What will come next will be my punishment.

Numb, I resign myself to my fate and get into the shower. I don't know what else to do. I don't want to come out of the bathroom. As the minutes tick past, well worn behaviours, old friends born out of the habit of survival tell me what to do. Keep up appearances. Bury the pain. We must go to his parents for dinner soon. Get ready.

I take my time in the shower. Try not to think of the consequences I will inevitably face. As I switch off the water, the sound of suitcases hits the floor of the hall. It's intentional. He wants me to hear. To react. I don't let him down.

I am dripping wet. I grab a towel, unlock the door and look out. He is just about to leave, suitcases packed. He gives me a dark look of injured victimhood mixed with triumph. Far too late I realise what has happened. How deeply I have been manipulated.

He wanted this. Stupid, stupid, stupid me. All this time he had been provoking me to get me to react. At last, he has gotten what he wanted. He can walk away, go to his other woman and say I said those things, tell her how horrible I am. Say that I ended it by twisting the meaning of my saying 'this ends now'.

He walks out. The victor.

The door slams shut. His footsteps retreat. The car starts and he drives away.

Water drips from my hair, slides down my skin, pools on the floor. The truth settles around me. A death shroud. It will only be a matter of time before I am utterly destroyed. He promised what would happen when he left me. He would take all. I would have nothing.

I call him, so great is my fear of the annihilation he promised that I cannot help but try to stop its unfolding, but the narrative has already shifted to another, more sinister one. He accuses me of the things he had done to me, my pain and suffering usurped by him. When I protest, I am told I am crazy, that all I ever did was deny his reality. The line goes dead.

Alone, I wander through a house imprinted with the stamp of his hate, his words slide from the walls, the floors, the ceilings and doorframes, they reach out to me, catch me in their grip. Possess me. Enemies. Friends.

Here, in front of the staircase, on my knees I am a worthless shit, and a stupid cunt. Here, in front of the chest of drawers I am jealous of the other woman. I say no I am afraid for her and her children. I am shoved against the drawers, bent over backward, his big, beautiful hands around my neck, choking me. It hurts. I can't breathe. I rasp. 'Do it. Let it end.' He tightens his hold a little longer then throws me aside, a doll.

You get up. You always do. What else is there to do?

I process through the house. There is no escape. Every centimetre of it drowns in words and acts designed to break another human being. And I am not strong. I am a mess. I am broken. I know he has won. He knows he has won.

I blame myself. Because I fought back, I now face the ultimate punishment. Banishment. Poverty. Homelessness. And so, on Midsommar Eve, as all of Sweden celebrates the longest day of the year—as I later learned he and his parents enjoyed a barbeque, ate strawberries, drank beer and whisky and planned my demise, I walk, lost, frightened, and utterly alone in the house that will be taken from me. I can't bear it. The horror of it all. The unreality. I have been discarded. I am garbage. Worthless. Everything he said about me is true. I could not fix it.

By ten pm the anguish is unbearable. The facts glare at me, cold and precise.

I haven't worked in a real job in years because that was his wish, to control all, to provide for me, to be the man, as if we lived in some perverse version of Gilead, where he was the Commander and I his powerless, imprisoned wife. I cannot understand Swedish enough to work, because I have lost my hearing. Even with hearing aids, I cannot hear what is gone. I will have to leave the country. I cannot cope. I don't know who I am—what I am without him—without his abuse. I am utterly lost. I have no power, no agency, no control over my fate. I am completely dependant on him. He has everything in his name, the utilities, my car, the house, even my phone number.

As the daylight drags on and night refuses to fall, I stand in the hall, unmoving, and stare at the door. Will him to return. To come back and make the nightmare stop.

But this was not like when he wanted to go to a party. This time he is gone and will not come back. His wealthy mother came in her designer golf clothes and told me so earlier that evening. Already they were preparing for the next Act. The one where I am disposed of as efficiently and cheaply as possible.

My thoughts become treacherous. They entice me to end it all, to escape, to deny him the pleasure of my suffering.

Do it. If you don't do it now, you will do it later. It won't be worth staying alive. It will only get worse from here on out. Save yourself the suffering.

For two hours I fight. Debate the truth of it. Dwell in despair. See my future with striking clarity. I know my husband too well. I know what he is capable of. He will not see me right, will not wish me to have a chance at a new life. A good life. To find love. To be loved. My ruin is all he wants, hungers for. He reminded me often enough: If you are not with me, you will have nothing.

And so it begins. The beginning of nothing.