My story isn’t unique. Isn’t rare. Which is, I guess, what makes it so sad. The story about a girl who falls in love with the wrong man, lured by tender gazes, devoted promises and gentle touches. The gentle touches disappear and she’s held captive with ugly insults and brutal beatings. It’s common, this story. My past. I can’t change the past. I wouldn’t even if I could. The ugliness of my past gave me a future worth living for. Worth dying for. It gave me a reason to fight. To escape. That was my mistake. Thinking girls like me could have a choice. I wasn’t given many promises in my life that weren’t broken, but chaos is a constant promise, always kept, never broken. He comes amongst the chaos. Amongst the ugly. He doesn’t promise a way out. He definitely doesn’t promise peace. But he gives me the opportunity for a different ending to my story.