He told people I was lucky.
That I had freedom.
That I could do as I pleased.
He painted the picture of a partnership that was solid, supportive, enviable.

But behind closed doors, I was a prisoner.

He was only physically violent once.
That’s what I used to tell myself, as if that made everything else easier to swallow.
He broke my finger, wrestling me for the last £20 we had to our name.
We needed nappies.
Baby food.
He wanted pints.

And still, for years, I stayed.

All the while, I was raising our son.
A boy with ADHD, full of emotion and fire, going through puberty in a house that already felt like a war zone.
He’d smash the place up, screaming, unable to regulate what was boiling inside him.
And what did his dad do?
He hated him for it.
Shouted at him.
Told him more than once he’d be better off gone.
Dead.
At his own hand.

I tried to protect my son.
To calm him.
To understand him.
But how could I, when I was barely surviving myself?

And still, for years, I stayed.

There’s fight, flight, freeze.
Me?
I froze.
I stopped answering back.
Stopped speaking up.
Slipped into silence.

They say when someone controls you long enough, you start to preempt their mood, their triggers, their storms.
I became an expert in reading the weather of his rage.
Tiptoeing around thunder.
I’d retreat to the bedroom like a child who’d done something wrong, hide under the duvet and pretend to sleep just to avoid another explosion.

But there’s a part of this story I’ve never said out loud.
Not to friends.
Not to family.
Not even to myself, fully.

At one point, during the very worst of it, I found out I was pregnant.
And I just knew.
I couldn’t do it.

Not another child.
Not another reason to stay.
Not another life pulled into his orbit.

So I made the decision, quietly.
Alone.

I booked the taxi.
Went to the hospital.
Had the procedure.
Got a taxi home.
Still bleeding.
Told him I’d been sent home from work because my period was heavy.

There was blood on the taxi seat.
He never noticed.

I didn’t feel shame.
The fear was louder.
Fear of staying.
Fear of losing myself completely.
Fear of never getting out.

I chose survival.

And I never told a soul.
Until now.

Later, I made another decision I never thought I would.
I let my daughter go live with her dad.

At the time, I told myself I was protecting her, helping her avoid the mess our lives had become.
But part of me still wonders —
Was I protecting her?
Or was I just so consumed by trying to help my son, so brainwashed by the life I was in, that I took his side again?

I don’t know.
I still don’t.

And then came the breaking point.

I was going out.
A rare day with friends.
Bottomless brunch and a drag show in Chilton of all places.
He was supposed to drive me.
But the night before, he went out, came home with a face like thunder, started an argument with me that didn’t even exist.
I was just getting ready in the kitchen.

He turned to our son and said,
“You’re going to your gran’s for dinner, and I won’t have you say no about it.”

My son slipped out quietly, the way he always did when things were about to boil over.
I left for my day out.

But the phone calls started.
The threats.
The name-calling.
The same tired cycle.

Then he smashed our son’s bedroom up. Again.
And went out drinking.

Our son snuck back in and destroyed the living room.
Anger passed down like a torch.

A few days later, I sat across from him and told him,
“I can’t do this anymore. I don’t want to be with you. I want a better life for my kids.”

That night, I went to bed.
He stayed up, drinking, taking whatever he could get his hands on.
And in the morning, I opened the bedroom door to find him pretending to hang himself, right outside.
It was meant for me to see.
To find.
To feel responsible for.

That day, I left.
And I never went back.