He never told them that he had spent years making me feel defective.
He never told them how often I had begged him to accompany me to a doctor.
And he certainly never told them about the nightly ritual.
The most frightening part was that I had begun to believe I deserved the life I was living.
Then, three months before my thirty-eighth birthday, something happened that finally made me question everything.
I was cleaning the bedroom when I discovered a small bottle of prescription medication in Michael’s desk drawer.
It was hidden beneath old receipts and papers.
I recognized the name of a medical clinic printed on the pharmacy label, but the medication itself meant nothing to me.
When Michael came home, I asked him about it.
He snatched the bottle from my hand so quickly that I stepped backward.
“Why were you going through my things?”
“I was cleaning.”
