The end of a sixteenyear tyranny finally came. For a decade and a half I had endured her contempt, and I had simply put up with it
Spring turned everything over.
I could not have imagined anything shaking the mire in which I had been stuck for those long sixteen years. Hope had long since left me.
At twentytwo I married, convinced I had found the one person I would spend my whole life with. Eleanor was everything to me. She seemed to draw me in with a strange, almost magical pull, and I was so dazzled by her that even her oddities appeared endearing.
Take, for instance, her habit in winter of flinging the window wide open and pulling the blanket off me to rouse me at dawn. Or her favourite joke when friends were over: she would make me spin round in place as if I were a mannequin being examined before a sale.
She made decisions for me. She chose where I should work, where we would holiday, which of my mates I could keep and which should be cut out of my life. And I allowed it, believing that this was how love was meant to be, blind and unquestioning.
I was a fool. I clung to the belief that a child would change everything. When our marriage began to crumble, I was certain a baby would rescue it. I was wrong.
Eleanor abandoned me in that struggle. She cared little for my fears, my anxieties, or the doctors grim prognosis. She settled easily with the fact that she already had children from a previous marriage, and therefore we might never have any of our own. To me it was a wound; to her, a chance to crush me even more.
She turned me into the villain of every argument.
Youll never give me a child!
You cant even cook; your meals will give me an ulcer!
Youre no man if you cant handle such a trifle!
I felt worthless. I fought back, hunting doctors, handing over tests, enrolling in treatment courses, but all in vain. She broke me and I endured.
Eventually I gave up. I withdrew, stopped seeing people, isolated myself. I became a shadow of my former self, no longer the confident lad who once dreamed of a family, of happiness, of children. When I looked in the mirror I saw a pitiful creature terrified even of uttering a single dissenting word.
Whenever I tried to protest that I did not deserve the constant humiliation, that I wanted respect, Eleanor would laugh in my face:
You? Who do you think you are? Youre a wretch! Youre lower than any tramp on the pavement!
She knew I had nowhere to go. She convinced everyone around us that I was useless, weak, a dead weight. I began to believe it myself. She told me I would perish without her, that I had no chance of surviving alone. And I stayed.
Then, in March, everything turned.
Only one friend remained: Susan. She had gone to work in Spain years ago, but she returned in the spring when her husband fell gravely ill and then he died. Susan was left alone in her cottage; her sons had long been living abroad.
After work I began visiting her, sometimes staying the night. At first Eleanor bristled, then she started staging scenes, and finally she threatened me outright.
You wont go there!
Ill pull you out by the hair!
Ill lock you inside the house!
Ill file for divorce!
One evening Susan looked at me and said:
Heaven help us if she files for divorce!
Our eyes met, and I suddenly saw my chance. Susan offered me a place to stay when she returned to Spain. If I didnt have to pay rent, I could live on my modest salary of £1,200 a month.
I accepted. I left. I chose myself.
Since then I have lived in her flat. Each morning I walk to the window, gaze at the old terraced house where I once lived with Eleanor, and whisper:
Good morning, Stan!
I look at my life and realise I am free. Fear no longer grips me. I have begun to smile again. I have learned how to live once more.
I turn toward Eleanors house and, in my mind, say:
Salvation is always possible, dear.
I pull on a clean shirt, step out of the flat, walk down the street with my head held high.
Now I cannot be broken.
