I know that somewhere - in some parallel universe, or perhaps in the great unknown that awaits when this fragile body crosses over - I will be forced to answer to myself.
My conscience will stand as the jury, relentless and unforgiving. And it will not ask me about the bruises or the blows, nor about the cruelty inflicted on me.
No - it will demand to know why I chose to stay. Why I allowed it. Why I stood still as the storm consumed me. Why I, of all people, became the accomplice to my own suffering.
It will ask why I became the medium that fed his arrogance, the encouragement for his violence, the silent proof that patriarchy works. Why I allowed the age-old, rancid script of male supremacy - archaic, uncouth, disgusting - to seep into my bones and pin me down.
Why I let the weight of centuries of silenced women crush my spirit when I should have risen. Why I allowed myself to be dragged into this bottomless pit, where the only horizon I could see was more darkness, more despair, more of myself dissolving into nothingness.
And the truth terrifies me. Because if I cannot even save myself here, in this living world, in this present moment, how will I possibly face myself in that reckoning? How will I justify the endurance, the silence, the nights I lay broken but told no one?
It eats at me, gnaws at me from the inside, until all that's left is the bitter taste of self-hatred. Not hatred of him. Hatred of me - for allowing it. For normalizing it. For brushing it aside in the name of endurance.
I cannot blame anyone else. I am left with only one verdict: I betrayed myself. I let myself fall into the trap, and when the chance came to walk away, to tear through the web, I convinced myself it wasn't worth undoing. I called it fate. I called it destiny. I called it commitment.
But really - it was fear. Fear disguised as loyalty. Fear masquerading as love. Fear wrapped in the suffocating cloth of "what will people say."
That's the cruel thing about choices. We always have them - even at the crossroads, even at the worst of times. But choices demand courage. They demand reasoning, brutal honesty, the willingness to endure the consequences.
And I - God help me - I chose wrong. I chose to stay. And I clung to that choice like a sinner clings to prayer beads, convincing myself that one day, somehow, this sacrifice would be vindicated. That a new dawn would arrive when my suffering was rewarded, when my silence was praised, when my endurance was seen as strength.
But the years rolled on, and the dawn never came. And I am still here - still caught in this nameless bond, this prison that mocks the very idea of love or partnership. I don't even know what to call it anymore: a marriage? A farce? A living hell disguised as domestic life?
And yet, some fractured part of me still whispers: stay. Stay and fight, as though survival itself is victory. Stay and hold on long enough, maybe the day will come when the reflection in the mirror does not flinch, when dignity and self-respect return to me not as fantasies but as flesh and blood.
I don't know if that day will ever come. But until then, I fight. Not for him. Not for society. Not for the institution of marriage that has reduced me to dust. I fight because somewhere inside me, however faint, there is still a pulse - a stubborn refusal to vanish completely.
And if one day I emerge from this battle with even a fragment of myself intact, perhaps that will be victory enough.