‘Finally, my life has been brightened and everything around me seems to placidly glimmer, and sometimes shine. I feel as if I had gone through a very narrow, disruptive tunnel of darkness, and as if someone had suddenly snatched me from such obscurity. It’s been so long, so miserable, so inextricable, and so violent and frustrating since we last met – since we used to be nothing but wingless angels-shaped dolls full of innocence and idealism – straw stuffed toys.

‘Please do not take offence; this is the strange way that my own experience makes me feel. Try to understand that by going through such darkness I haven’t experienced anything but pain and sorrow in vain. But here I am with my wounds about to heal, nearly closed as a grave. It feels as if I had been born again. I always knew this was going to happen one day; nevertheless it never did in so many years. My mind and my actions were so anxious and desperate that I even reached the conclusion that I had lost myself for good. “But here I am now,” – I say, claiming my own human rights as the same Scarlet O’Hara would do.

‘It’s hard to believe that I would have never thought of myself in such role before – the role of the victim, the depressed and the abused. After a time which felt an eternity, I got to finish my studies with one kid and a busy job which didn’t pay. However where I find merit is in being a twentieth first century young and sensitive women who eventually somehow fought and won a war which was declared to me and that I spent years refusing to fight. My husband, now my fickle and inept ex husband, meant to just step on my very soul as if it were nobody’s.

‘I remember his words saying: “You will never finish that course. You will never be a nurse,” he repeated himself again and again while being totally out of his mind after having “too much bug” – as many would say.

‘After these aggressive, disruptive and incessant statements, which he despicably spitted out of his mouth, he continued tormenting me. He had to – he couldn’t just let me be. He would have, only if he would have been capable of it, and this reality was unfortunately unknown to me. “I will tell the police how you hit me and abuse me,” he shouted too. “I’ll tell them about all money you’ve taken from me,” – and he then satisfied concluded, “and they will prosecute you. When are you going to pay me back all money you owe me?” he kept repeating the same sentences for no less than an hour in the sickening state of mind in which he was; a state of mind which he was choosing himself and of which he was ironically prisoner. He chased me every where I tried to hide, into the room, the kitchen, the bathroom. He was a nightmare that I couldn’t escape – a nightmare which would refuse to vanish, and which made a mouse in a trap of me.

‘”I’m going to squeeze your head,” he replied as a raging dog to what I had to say and at the same time completely indifferent to my words. He would sometimes enjoy showing me his fishing knifes as if implying something evil with such display. In the meantime, our son -fortunately too young to understand, wouldn’t be able to imagine somewhere at the back of his infant’s mind what a safe household was, or what to have a family which supposed a benefit to his health and safety and not a menace could ever be.

‘These were the best words that he ever said for the number of years that I felt sorry for somebody of his kind. And, I really did feel sorry for him, and this – I thought, was the root of the problem. He wanted to be as his dad, and have a woman who could never run away from him, regardless of how much she would have wished to be able to do so – but, he wasn’t. He could never own a woman as his dad did, for he didn’t earn enough and always spent more than he earned. After all, he could never be really who he wanted to be. His dreams were nothing but delusion, and after this realisation I began to despise myself for daring to feel sorry for him, instead of feeling sorry for myself. Some people asked me why I was putting up with him; I always answered with the same pathetic truth, “Because I was sorry for him.” He was more miserable than misery, and my inept idealism – I was convinced, was ideal enough to change him.

‘I still find myself in a strange mood when I think about the fact that I almost changed all the best in me for that hopeless thought, weak feeling and degradation – change him. I’ve finished my studies now. “I’ve done exactly what I wanted,” – I say to myself, and I repeat it again here for you (so you won’t forget), including getting rid of him, which was the most challenging of all my ambitions due to the vile nature of my enemy and the almost blind fear he induced me.

‘I moved to another house in a different city, all I could do to keep my son and me away from such mediocrity, abuse and useless distortion. Nothing else on hearth could have changed the feeling of fear and rage in my hearth – because this is all fear breeds, hatred and rage; and these are the two elements that when put together turn your simple life into an abominable hell. My mind sometimes remembers his usual tender words after his continues violent scenes; it would be a matter of a couple of hours before he came back to me with a childish smile on his face, never apologising but begging for mercy – begging for some company to get to exorcise the demons brought by his loneliness. “I love and need you so much,” he softly whispered while delicately holding my hand tight. “You are my favourite flower.”

‘I guess by now, you probably know better that I do at the moment why I’m writing this. And I guess that I have already mentioned it by asking you not to forget. But the truth is that I hope to have forgotten all this by the time I read this part of my diary again. We must forget and forgive if living is what we want, and I do not doubt that I, you, will find the way – you always have. Let’s make the end brief and as less bitter as possible, and so let the past to reconcile with the present at some point in time for on this depends my healing and my sole victory.

‘By putting my ex husband out of our way, I took the demon’s tongue out of his mouth. His tongue was as harmful and sharp as the butcher’s blade; his actions not better than that. “Am I trapped?” I used to ask myself. My mind, immersed in obscurity only lacked clarity and – I still remember, all I knew was that I had to find the way out of such confusion, so I madly searched for the light.

‘”Am I trapped?” I repeated to myself in silence. “Am I trapped or I have just trapped myself?” The answer did not come easy. It was somewhere lying in the air, but refused to show itself in a definite manner. “Am I trapped?” my mind kept asking me, and my pride, or maybe fear, even dared to imply. “No, it’s your entire fault,” said a despicable voice which I hated to hear – the voice of a coward – I though, the voice of my fear out of control. “Am I trapped?” asked a more gentle, although weak and useless, voice, which came out of my mind asking to myself every time I was left alone after every single one of my husband’s tantrums.

‘”Am I trapped?” the voice continued. “What you are it’s a …?” And his voice appeared in my mind, interrupting my thought with just one more insult. His voice – I remember his voice, breaking into my mental peace, bringing in only negativity, only madness. Whenever I went, whatever I did his insulting words would somehow come out of my mind, maddening me. Maddening me because I could never find the reason why he hated me so much when after all, I thought, he only meant to keep me by his insane and traumatised side – “but why, then?”

‘The man I loved – I came to realise – was nothing less than a Minotaur, half man and half beast. His man said: “we are two captured spheres adrift in space time,” with a loving, caring tone, which sounded almost as innocent as that one of a child; whereas his beast condemned me for my sole existence. In his labyrinth I was searching the way out of the darkness; I was waiting for either finding the way out, or for him to come and finally prey on me. As a sacrifice, the monster would slowly devour me; while the man, as if absent and thoroughly tamed by the beast, would not even be heard in his and his beast’s own insides lamenting himself during the fiend’s barbaric operation – his outcry coming from somewhere in a remote and lost part of himself would not be more than the mere and distant eco of someone’s fatal grief.

‘For everyone’s surprise though, as Theseus did, I slay the creature – I did. The only difference was that to get to do so all I did was finding my way out of its labyrinth. In this way, the man’s solitude turned into the evil spirits which his beast could not exorcise. One day the police called. They thought the man had killed his beast by jumping from a cliff into the voidness. They wanted me to identify his body.

‘Some may see love as an object of destruction, to either destroy, be destroyed, or both. I learnt that sharing pain is not as easy as being open and willing to help, for your dear love may require from you to experience it, so that both’s feelings, experiences and understandings can blend with each other as equals before eventually being able to become one.’