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Many say that humans have natural survival instincts, the flight or fight instinct. Victims of domestic abuse relinquish this instinct. Victims of domestic abuse are taken down to the very basic levels of survival; we lose the instinct of flight or fight, sometimes for years. So how do we finally regain our survival instinct? How do some of us make it out? Is there a recipe for surviving domestic abuse? Some breaking point that victims reach where are instincts take over again?

For me there certainly was, but I don't believe there is any quick cure or recipe for recovery. Each of us finds our own way through the morass of self-doubt and guilt that being a victim of domestic violence carries with it. Make no mistake victims of violence, especially domestic violence do carry guilt, along with self-doubt and all the other emotions that victims of any crime or traumatic occurrence have to contend with.

I was 15 when I married. My husband was much older. I suppose he thought that he was gaining a "child bride" who he could control and mold to his standards and requirements. I was just seeking safety. Neither of us got what we wanted. For the next three years my life was one of sheer hell that included physical abuse and emotional abuse of such magnitude that even now, thirty years later I have a difficult time looking back on without becoming physically ill. I can chronicle the broken bones, the times he took a razor to me, the times he took a baseball bat to me, the number of times he broke my nose, shattered my jaw, blacked my eyes. I am able to write of the time he left me bleeding on the bed while he watched the football game; had he taken me to the hospital earlier maybe my uterus would have been saved. I can write of the time that he lost me in a poker game to teach me a lesson in submission and then continued playing while I was raped; afterward I was beaten because I didn't scream and fight more. I still remember when he chased me with a baseball bat out to the street and continued to beat me after I was down, finally a neighbor called the police. It was the only time he was taken to jail. I was bleeding from my ears that time, with 5 broken ribs, a broken jaw, a broken nose, a shattered cheek, a broken wrist, a concussion, my hip bone cracked, my foot broken, and numerous other smaller injuries. He was in jail for 3 days. I was in the hospital for 3 weeks. It was the last beating.

I had nowhere to go. I had no money. I had nothing of my own. Even my clothes

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