Knight in Shining Armor
by Shéa MacLeod
It’s strange how long a bruise can last.
Long after the physical evidence is gone, the muscles remember. A raised hand or an angry voice, and the body
flinches away. The mind tries to forget,
bury the pain deep … but the scars are forever.
It didn’t start that way, of course.
He said all the right things. Did
all the right things. When I was sick he
took care of me. When my car broke down
he fixed it. I thought I’d finally found
my knight in shining armor.
What I’d found was a nightmare.
The minute I was hooked, everything changed. It started with the name calling, the blame,
the bouts of rage. As time passed, he
turned increasingly violent. It was
always my fault. I was useless. I’d never be anything. Do anything.
Accomplish anything.
If I tried to fight him, he threatened to destroy everyone I
loved. To ruin their lives. Stupidly, I believed him.
He was always sorry after.
You might ask why I didn’t leave.
It’s a fair question. But until
you’ve been there, until you’ve lived through that, you have no idea how messed
up a woman’s head gets when she has to live through that day after day. There is no such thing as confidence,
self-esteem. You learn to live with the
overwhelming conviction that this is all there is. You have nowhere else to go.
That’s the very worst part of abuse.
Beyond the bruises and the emotional scars. The absolute knowledge that this is the way
you will live. And most likely the way
you will die. You don’t deserve anything
else.
In a way, I was lucky. I had
something else. A secret weapon, if you
will. I just had no idea back then how
powerful that weapon was.
I could write.
All through those nightmare years I wrote. Not about what I was living through, but
about something else. An imaginary world
where I would escape, where I was strong.
A place where I kicked bad guy ass.
A place where I was my own hero.
Prophetic? Perhaps.
The writing kept a spark of something alive in me. My soul?
Hope? Who knows. But one day, that tiny spark of something
flared up. I couldn’t take another
minute.
I had nothing. No money. Nowhere to go. But I walked out that door and never looked
back.
Nobody rode in on a white horse to save me. I saved myself.
It was a very long uphill struggle to get healthy again, but through
it all I kept writing. Writing had
always been my passion, now it was my salvation, too.
Through writing I regained my sense of self. I grew strong. Stronger than I ever had been before. Words poured from me as my mind and body
healed itself. Slowly but surely I
recovered.
It’s nine years later and that life seems like a distant
nightmare. The woman I was then could
never have dreamed of the life I am living today.
The writing has never stopped.
It just moved with me, changing zip codes. I now write in a sunny room in a Georgian
townhouse in London, England. I have
self published two novels and am about to publish the third. My stories, while sometimes holding a dark
edge, are still full of hope and my readers love them. I am now selling enough that I can stay at
home and write full time. I made my
dreams a reality.
Guess what?
You can, too.
The day I walked out of that abusive relationship was the day I
became my own hero. That one action changed
everything.
If you or someone you know is in an abusive relationship, please
visit the Hot Peach Pages for a list of agencies all over the world who help
women living in domestic violence.
No woman deserves to be abused and mistreated. It’s time to say NO to violence.
It’s time to be your own hero.
“This is one story from Indie
Chicks: 25 Women 25 Personal Stories available on Amazon and Barnes &
Noble. To read all of the stories, buy your copy today. Also included are sneak
peeks into 25 novels! My novel, DRAGON WARRIOR, is one of the novels featured.
All proceeds go to the Susan G. Komen Foundation for Breast Cancer.”
Indie Chicks is available on Amazon
and Barnes
& Noble.
Thanks for hosting my story today, Mel. It means a lot to me. :-)
ReplyDeleteMy pleasure, dear lady. x
ReplyDeleteA fantastic post, Shea! You need to have a tissue handy but it's a truly inspiring story. I'm honoured to be part of such a great project! :)
ReplyDeleteA great story. Truly inspirational.
ReplyDeleteMel,
ReplyDeleteThanks for posting Shea's story. It gives me goosebumps. Very inspirational.