I was born in 1969. I was my mom’s fourth attempt at a baby and her last hope at having a child with a happy ending. The moment my two brothers were born she doomed them for failure, unfortunately she made the mistake to think her golden locks daughter would be any different.

I was 21 when I met him, he was dating my best friend’s friend and boy did I know he was trouble. We got along pretty well, I never expected him to be the monster he is or was these last 23 years. The first time he kissed me was aggressive, he bit my lip so hard I started bleeding, I even tried to pull away but he just pressed his body harder against mine, I should have known right there and then what I was getting myself into.

I was 8 months pregnant the first time he hit me. His family never liked me, I was apparently too “ordinary” for them and this was enough reason for him to lash my legs. I held on tightly to my belly, making sure nothing ever hurt her, but I was wrong once again and I’d know this in a couple of years. He apologized the next day with tears in his eyes, I believed him. By the time I was pregnant with our second daughter I found the emails, but I couldn’t leave, not with another baby on the way. So, I made a plan, the question was, would I able to follow it through…

He wasn’t the type to get drunk and come back home banging down doors and breaking glasses. He was the type of person that if he wasn’t right and you tried to tell him so, he’d slap you in the face. He had numerous women throughout our marriage too. Karen was her name, the one who lasted 10 years into our marriage. I remember on a sunny day in May I was picking up my daughters from school, I’d spent all night reading the emails so I knew exactly where she was at 3:01pm. I had no time to leave Issa and Amanda back home so I drove them to her house with me. She lived in one of the scary neighborhoods of Panama, every single window was barred and you could tell by the amount of people walking on the street just how scary and unsafe it was.

“Mami is just visiting a friend okay girls? I’ll be right back.” I said with a knot on my throat.

The next 5 minutes became a blur to me. I saw them fucking and the next thing I remember was being inside the ambulance and Amanda and Issa just staring at me blankly. This was the first time I ended up in a wheelchair.

If you asked why I didn’t leave after this I wouldn’t be able to tell you. I think it was the pain I saw in both my daughter's’ eyes, they asked so many questions that day, they weren’t dumb and they were old enough to know their dad was not a nice person. Unfortunately, I did not want them to think that. So I stayed, I stayed and lied to everyone around me about how everything was okay.

He was sent to jail for 18 hours that afternoon, his best friend bailed him and we did not see him for the next two weeks. He didn’t call nor texted, he came back one Saturday night and slept in the guest room. A part of me felt sorry for him, 18 hours in a Panama jail, he must have seen gang members, rapists, everything. The worst part was that they all knew why he was in there, “El Pega Mamis” they probably called him. I opened the door that morning and found him just staring at his reflection; I keep thinking maybe he had finally realized how fucked up everything was, he had broken two of my ribcages and my nose. But I was wrong once again, all he said once he saw me in the corner of the room was how much of a bitch I was for getting him in jail. He never forgave me for that night and I can’t blame him, I sent the father of my children to one of the most dangerous jails in Latin America, even his mother who has the heart of a saint brings it up at every festivity.

That’s the funny thing of being the abused, it’s very rare to find people who won’t ask you questions like:

“Do you know where it all went wrong?” or “What did you do that made him so mad?” and I believed that for a very long time, that it was my fault. Something was wrong with ME that made him hit me, kick me, push me and hurt me emotionally.