She just sat there and listened and allowed me to voice what had been happening to me for some period of time.

My voice was creaky and hoarse to begin with, but this soon changed when I realised I had opened up a sea of troubles that I had kept locked within my heart. I talked to mum about all the split lips I had received and the punches I had hidden, as well as all the verbal fights that we had gotten into over very stupid things really. Mum said she sensed something had not been right for a while, but she didn’t want to open a can of worms in case I told her to butt out, but deep down she knew something was very wrong.

She told me I could leave him. That I could move back in with my parents but at this moment in time this did not feel like the right option for me. In fact, I didn’t