by just another voice

Created on: August 10, 2010

As I lie here with my eyes closed, I just keep reliving the events of the last six months.  I try not to think about it, but I can't rest or sleep, I just see the images on the back of my eyelids.  First the loud, scathing belittling, the caustic accusations, then the near physical confrontations.  These are all lead-ins to the brutal assaults that I endured while asking over and over again "Why Me?".  The next chapters play for the umpteenth time.  I reach for the gun and calmly pull the trigger as he comes toward me to again rape and physically abuse me under the guise of sex, sometimes referred to, by him,  as love.  Finally, I see him lying on the floor with a hole in his forehead and a pool of blood slowly spreading around him.

I've told my story over and over again.  First to him.  I told him it was wrong to speak to me that way, to threaten and belittle me, to strike and rape me.  His response was that I deserved it.  I told my Mother and she told me it was a part of life and I should be thankful it's not worse.  I told my sister who let me stay at her house until the threats against her, her family and her job became more than she could take.  I told the police who made me go to court and get a restraining order, a piece of paper that said he was not to come within a certain distance of me.  I told the counselor at the shelter after he violated the order and I ended up in the hospital.  I told my boss when I had to explain my absences from work.  He said he hoped things got better soon. 

I told my court-appointed attorney the same story after my arrest for first degree murder.  He seemed to understand that I did what I did because I had no other choice.  He said he understood and that what I had done was not murder, but self defense.  He told me to tell my story one more time to a jury of my peers and that they too would understand and find me : Not Guilty.

They've reached a verdict..

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