abuse is a strange concept.

you see in the moment when my husband screamed so loud my four year old, who has slept through earthquakes on the past,woke up i did not consider it abuse

for every couple has disagreements, and he smashed a flower vase not my head, so it couldn’t be abuse

and in the moment when he threw a beer bottle at the wall next to me making it shatter just inches from my head i did not consider it abuse

for he was just drunk and angry. and it’s not like the bottle hit me, it hit the wall. and sure i stepped ina. piece of broken glass when i went to fetch the broom, but that was my own fault

and only in the moment when he hit me for the first time did i realize it was indeed abuse

from the way he expected everything done around the house by the time he got him or he would scream at me to the way he’d start drinking the moment our son went to bed. and all the beer bottles he threw and vases he shattered were not normal outlets for normal men. they were those of an abuser.

they were not those of a cold hearted man who beat his wife every day if the week, no, they were those of a man who did not know what else to do.

and his outlets was not a weak easily subdued woman. no his outlet was the woman who loved him, who gave him the son he always wanted and was just blinded by hope for the man she once knew.

and so that is why abuse is strange.

it is not always clear as physical scars and bruises. sometimes it is words and broken vases that scar. and yet the scar is not seen, so if you don’t look for it you will never see it. just like how if you don’t arrange the pieces of broken glass back together, you will never see the vase for what it is…abuse.