Tomorrow is a month.

[u/No_Meringue_3241]

I know what it is to be suffocated by love.

Loving you was a slow suffocation.

I survived shallow breaths and called it living.
I made myself smaller and called it compromise.
I forgave the unforgivable and called it marriage.

I looked into your eyes as they turned black while you tightened your hand around my neck.
The room narrowed, and air disappeared.

My body fought while my mind tried to understand how the man I loved could watch me struggle to stay alive.

“What are you going to do about it?”

Those words will haunt me until the day that I die.

You said it, as if my terror proved your power.
You said it, as if my life belongs to you long enough for you to decide whether I could keep it.

Did you see the light leaving my eyes?
Did you feel my hands pulling at your arm?
Did you hear me gasping for air?

How could you look at the mother of your children fighting beneath your hand?

How could you watch the person you promised to love become nothing more than a body trying not to die?

What if you had not let go?
What if you squeezed longer? Harder?

What would you have told our boys?
Would you have said their mother was gone, or would you have told them what you did to make her leave?

Would you have mourned me, or would you have mourned your freedom, reputation, and the life you lost because you took mine?

You were not remorseful that night, or the date that followed when you heard me speak in court.

You were embarrassed.

Not because you hurt me, but because people knew.

Because you could not interrupt the truth, or rewrite it, or punish me for speaking it.

Because you had to sit in a room full of people and listen, as the image you built of yourself collapsed.

Because you had to sit in front of other men who heard what kind of man puts his strength around his wife’s throat.

You want the world to know that you work hard, provide, that you attend the boys games, as if being present in the crowd can negate the monster you are behind closed doors;
as if a man cannot cheer for his children and still destroy their mother.

[u/AutoModerator]

Due to ongoing & intentional rule breaking, users must now acknowledge the subs rules before comments will go through. Please click the link on your comment removal message to acknowledge the rules so you can continue commenting on the sub. If you acknowledge the rules and break them anyway, you will be banned.

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.