There’s a demon living in my attic and she has three rules

Whenever I close my eyes, I see him laughing again. Saying that I’ll never be able to make it on my own, that I’ll starve in the streets and come back begging him to take me back. That I can’t do anything without him, and that’s why I’ll never really leave him, that I have to be guided and disciplined like a stray dog.

He wasn’t always like that. He was sweet before he started making more money than I do. Then the humiliations started; he told me to know my place, to quit my job because if I was going to make a puny salary it was better that I only took care of the house and of him. He didn’t hit me for the first three years of our relationship. And before the verbal abuse, there were no red flags that I could see.