Ola Danny ‏@Haysmart 4 Min.
Ray Rice video sparks massive Twitter conversation with #WhyIStayed and #WhyILeft http://goo.gl/fb/Mb2kQt
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Everyone should read the powerful stories of abuse and survival in #whyistayed and #whyileft
Updated by Alex Abad-Santos on September 8, 2014, 10:11 p.m. ET
alex@vox.com
http://www.vox.com/2014/9/8/6124703...htags-are-the-most-powerful-things-youll-read
I can't even read the tweets.
Reading headlines alone is enough to do it.
I certainly can't watch "Ray Price" videos.
The memories come flooding back.
After 38 years, my heart starts pounding, my breathing speeds up, my stomach gets knots, my mind starts to race with scenes from my past.
That kind of life-or-death fear ...
TERROR ... never really leaves you.
It brands your psyche and spirit.
It changes you.
Domestic violence is a special kind of hell on earth that those who've never personally experienced it cannot truly imagine.
Like me, Reeva Steenkamp thought she was safe in her home, safe with the man who loved her.
She was not ... and he did not.
Unlike her, I somehow survived the mental abuse, the assaults and death threats.
I'm only alive today because I left and disappeared from his life. What a baptism of fire at age 21.
Time obviously lessens the actual physical and mental traumas, but each day of your life, your subconscious works silently, diligently, to keep the raw memories at bay. Mostly, it's very successful.
Sometimes though, no matter how hard you try, no matter how many years pass ...
a movie, a place, a photo, a person, a name, a song ... powerful memories escape to torment, till you once again force them into a dark box, under lock and key.
I could so very easily have become a Reeva Steenkamp.