conditon that if he contnues to beat me we return to igeria, I’d leave him for good. And of course, we
came back to igeria and the beatngs contnued so I started planning on how to leave him
permanently.
Another major reason I couldn't leave him was the fear of how I’d cope without him. I’d always ask
myself “what will I become without him?r This is one of the questons that make most people (women
especially) going through domestc violence stay with their abuser.
We are very scared of startng all over again. We are too busy worrying about the stgma of having a
failed marriage, being a “divorceer and most especially, of what people would say. We worry about
“who will take care of our children when I leave?r We worry about the disappointment and shame we’d
bring to our parents, hence we stay with our abuser, bear the pain and die in silence. We tend to please
the world and neglect our own happiness.
We completely forget that “only he who wears the shoe knows where it hurtsr, hence no one knows the
pains and sufering domestc violence beter than we that are going or have gone through it.
We forget that we have only O E LIFE to live.
We forget that if we die today, the children we make all the sacrifces for will move on with their lives
and only remember us with a fower on our graves.
MY REASO FOR LEAVI G
It wasn't easy for me to leave but I talked to myself. I asked myself many
important questons like “why should I die because of a man that no longer
loves (and probably never loved) me?r. I asked myself “what will happen to
me if I should kill out of self defence and possibly go to prison?r.
Every tme I held the kitchen knife to defend myself when he beats me, he
runs from me. I always thought to myself, “What if he dares me one day and I stab him to death? Who
will believe he's been abusing me? Who will fght for me not to go to prison for killing my husband?r