Nail on head. I’ve said before that DV is an imposed state of mind. It’s not the actual blows. It’s the anticipation of the next blow. It is the changing rules, that you aren’t allowed to know But are expected to follow. It is the hypervigilance of waiting for the next shoe to drop. It is being caught between terror that if you and the children stay, he will kill you, and terror that if you and the children leave, he will kill you. The fear that your kids will end up in your shoes because it’s all they know up against the fear that your kids will end up in his shoes because its all they know.

DV is living in a state of adrenal overload over a real threat that people think is all in your head.

It takes a terrible toll on your health-physical, emotional, spiritual.

And you are alone in it. And every child you have is alone in it, too. And if they are scarred, you bear the burden of knowing you didn’t do enough.

Every therapy appointment I take my daughter to makes me want to scream, because at the end of every week she has to go home to my abuser and there isn’t anything I can do about it. And I watch her reacting to the same indignities he forced on me. She’s a teenager now, long past the daughter-daddy worship years, and he can’t stand a mind in opposition without having to annhilate it.