I wanted to die to make the pain go away. I begged for mercy, pleading with him to stop.

He just hit me harder.

He hit me and hit me and hit me and hit me until I finally lost consciousness there on the floor. That emptiness was a gift. I had no dreams. I had no awareness of what he was doing to me.

Thank God.

By the time I awoke again, hours had passed. The sun had risen. Outside, it was a beautiful morning, the snow and clouds forgotten. A winter cardinal trilled at the feeder beyond the window. Bright light streamed through the living room and across my body on the floor.

I was alone. The house was silent. Ricky had gone.

Everything in my world was pain; every movement stabbed me like a sharp knife. I tried to push myself up, but I’d forgotten my broken wrist, and my arm collapsed under me as another shiver of lightning seared through my nerves. I lay on my back.

For a long time, all I could do was cry.

Cold air through the chimney chilled my skin. I managed to sit up, swallowing down nausea as my vision spun. My eyes were practically swollen shut, making me squint. I could see just enough to realize that I was naked. My clothes, ripped and torn, lay around me, along with buttons that lay on the floor like acorns. I was completely covered in bruises that made me into a horrible rainbow. Blood had dried on the floor around me and all over my face and chest.

There was so much pain it was hard to isolate any one area, but one thing I knew was that the hurt was between my legs, too, a hurt that went deep inside me. When I touched myself down there, I winced, and I knew what he’d done. That was the final insult. The final humiliation.

I’m sorry, sweetheart. I’m so, so sorry to lay this burden on you. I didn’t want to tell you any of this. I thought I could leave it out, thought I could spare you the ugly details, but you have to know the whole truth of what happened that night. You need to know the horror I faced. Otherwise, how can you understand?

That was the night you were conceived, the night that brought you into this world. That’s where your story began.

Were you brought to life in love? Were you the product of those few blissful hours I spent with a man I’d just met?

Or were you born out of a violence that changed me forever?