Chapter 2

    Things hadn’t always been so bad. She could actually remember a time when she actually loved her husband. Looking back she knew she should have seen the signs from the beginning. She was so busy trying to prove to herself that he was different and he wasn't the same man as her father was that once she realized it was too late. When the realization hit she went through a break down and began to separate herself from her friends and from her family and from the ones that had loved and supported her through her years of getting over the abuse that had plagued her childhood.   
 

    There was a time when she thought she had moved past the abuse that she was dealt at the hands of her father only to find herself right back in the same situation her mother had gone through. She should have seen the signs coming. On the day of her marriage her best friend Alice looked Rebecca in the face and asked, “Are you sure this is what you want to do? You know that I love you and I would protect you with my life and I know you would do the same for me. We have been through too much together for me to do otherwise. What do you see with him? Do you see the future you truly want and do you feel he is truly the one you can see yourself with for the rest of your life? I love you but I can't protect you from him if you aren't willing to see it for yourself.”   

     Even now Rebecca looks back on that day and wonders what possessed her to decide to get married to him and she will never forget what she said to Alice in return. “Don't worry about me. I can take care of myself. You don't have to worry about me. You have been worrying for me as long as I can remember. You should start worrying about yourself from now on. I am fine. I know well aware what I am getting myself into."  She had given up a lot of herself during her marriage but if it hadn't been for the intervention of her family
getting her to the shelter and the help she needed and even setting her up with her new house she doesn't know where she would be today.

    More than anything she just wanted everything to go back to the way it was before she
married her husband in the first place. She had told herself a million times she would never allow herself to let a man dominate her and to abuse her just like her father had done to her mother. She had promised herself that she would make a new start.  She made herself a promise to her unborn child that they would never have to live in a house of abuse and dysfunction. She needed and wanted to believe this more than anyone.

    She could still feel the pain racking her skull and mind thinking back to those days when she had to live under the rule and dominion of her overbearing father. She wanted to prove to her family and to all of the people that sat back and watched and knew that she was being abused and tormented at the hands of her father, but more importantly she wanted to prove herself to her father as well. She never wanted to make the same mistakes that her mother made in allowing any man to dominate and control her as completely as her father had controlled and dominated her mother. She wanted more than anything to prove that she could be the one to break the cycle. She didn’t realize just how much she wanted to believe it.