Shame

They walked downstairs in their beautiful Brooklyn home, as she'd asked to have a private word away from his friends who had showed up late to watch a boxing match. 

There was a ring on her finger, and a recently made final payment out of her account to a villa in Tuscany for the nuptials planned in only a few weeks.

Once in the bedroom, she closed the door behind him, calibrating what she wanted to say.

She wanted to tell him that it wasn’t OK that he had invited people over at such a late hour without informing her. She wanted to say that it was not OK that she had gone for hours before hearing from him that day. She wanted to assert herself, to stand up for herself and to demand respect. 

Yet.

Before she had a chance to say anything, he struck her. It was an incredibly calculated strike—not a punch or slap or anything that would make noise, designed to attract no notice while delivering maximum force and impact. It was a grabbing of her body and forcing her to the ground, a dragging of her across the floor with his body weight on top of her The feeling was crushing, physically, and emotionally— She was stunned, her brain seized by surprise and fear.

Still on top of her, he spat into her ear quietly, “Don’t you ever disrespect me in front of my friends again.” He then left and went upstairs. 

She lay on the floor.

The well of despair rose, rattling throughout her being. Everything inside of her felt ripped out. She was empty, a cavity, hanging by a string over a precipice like a mutilated cadaver, bleeding, exposed in the wind, and completely destroyed. She had fought and lost. And most heartbreaking of all, She was no more. She was gone. Her lips parted silently, a wail rising to her throat.

With the hollowness came shame.  Ugly shame and self-blame and self-hate. A successful independent woman, having conquered New York and outwardly lived a confident life, now lay prone and splayed on a bare, cold hardwood floor, brutally forced there by the man whom she wanted to love her putting her there. She couldn’t get up, and rather just laid there for a long time while the men above laughed and cheered to the TV noises loudly blaring upstairs.