Over forty years have passed since I wrote this manuscript describing my marriage with David. I had grown up in a sheltered middle class environment, and had never seen--much less experienced--any sort of domestic violence. To suddenly find myself involved in an often volatile relationship went beyond anything I could ever have imagined.
At the beginning of the 1970's, David and I were living an isolated and frugal existence in a foreign country, where we had no family or close friends and barely spoke the language. Having no one in whom I could confide, my salvation had been my diary, where I recorded my life as it unfolded. Consequently, the events of those years are not described from looking back on them through the filter of time, but rather, they are events recorded while I was in the midst of experiencing them. The intervening texts were added when writing the manuscript, in order to connect the diary entries.
So why publish my story after all this time, one might ask. I survived and came out on the other side. But unfortunately, domestic violence still exists in a myriad of forms, brought about by any number of causes. Mine is but one scenario of many, but hopefully it may serve to cast some light on the possible complexity behind such behavior, as well as why one remains in such a relationship for so long.