How Long Do You Stay?

I know so many women who think they'd leave the second a man touched them....until it happens to them.  You never really know until you're in that position.  

When he kicks you so hard and you can't straighten your leg without throbbing pain in your knee, you stay.  And when he locks you in a hotel room and you block out what happens that night because he apologizes and tells you no one will ever love you like he does, you stay.  And when he hits you with a closed fist and knocks you out cold in front of your eight year old brother, you still stay.  You stay through a year and a half of mental and emotional and physical abuse because he's brainwashed you into thinking this is somehow what love is and that you deserve this... that no one will ever love you like he does and you are not strong enough to be without him.  So you continue to stay.  Until the night he shoves you and throws a bottle at you and you run and hide in a ditch on the side of the highway because something finally snaps in you and you walk however many miles home but you don't care because you are finally free.  You left.  And you think of all the women who say they'd walk right out the door if any many ever touched them.  You hope they would.  But you know they have no idea what they'd actually do if the man they loved and thought loved them beat them.  You couldn't leave.  But you eventually did.  And you're that much stronger for it.