"Why did you write your own Bio?"

The most common question I seem to get is “why, did you decided to write an autobiography?”. With the subheading: were you looking for revenge? Did you just get tired of being a doormat and decided to journal and publish it one day? I’ve even been called “selfish”. Along with; bitch, slut, whore, stupid…etc. You get the picture. I think maybe I portray myself as a little too "happy" with my current situation. How does one come up such names to call a victim of domestic violence? I keep trying to find some sort of reasoning and explanation for some of the responses I have gotten towards this accomplishment and the only one I can really think of is “people don’t want to hear the truth because they don’t want their illusions destroyed.”- Friedrich Netzsche

I have done a good, no great job over the years creating this illusion not only for others around me but for myself that my life was perfect. If it looked like it was, then it meant it was. So I can’t blame my readers for questioning its authenticity and asking "why now?". I can only speak "my truth". It has taken me this long to come to terms with what I am responsible for and I cannot point the finger at anyone else other than myself for enabling my significant other to treat me this way. I grew up in a house where there was a lot of domestic violence so I clearly understood what was happening to me. It doesn’t matter if he was on his hands and knees begging with tears streaming down his face for my forgiveness. I chose to ignore the facts and evidence in front of me to focus on my child and salvaging my marriage. For that I cannot and will not blame anyone for, but myself. I willingly turned the blind eye constantly
"forgiving and forgetting". There is only so much one can forgive and forget before it becomes a sacrifice to our true self and then we cannot continue with the same old behaviours. We truly never ever really know what our limit is until we’ve reached it.

I can however say that I was not responsible for taking anyone else’s hands and injuring myself. The only scars that are self inflicted are those where I had lost hope and saw myself as more of a burden than someone "useful". Those were dark times when I felt utterly alone and couldn’t talk to anyone. The hate I could feel towards me felt so paralyzing at that time. I always felt like I wasn’t doing enough and always looked for an easy way out of the life I was living.

I wasn’t until after my car accident that I thought more firmly about finishing my book. The whole process was agonizing. I felt like he fought me the whole way. There were days where I would bring up what I was writing about and it almost 10/10 times broke out into an argument or a yelling and screaming fight. Always about “this book is just retraumatizing you, we’ll never get over the past”. For some reason he couldn’t understand when I told him that “it was always traumatizing me, I just never realized that I was suffocating how I truly felt every day for the sake of my own shame and guilt. I didn’t want to hear anyone say ‘I told you so’ so I told myself it was okay, that not all marriages are perfect, you married a man just like your father, focus on the good. I never let myself feel what I was truly feeling and so I put up with so much more shit than I should have”. I now understand why he always got so upset after I said these words. I was seeing things clear and he feared my sense of clarity. He feared my eyes opening and not ever closing again. This is when I mentally outgrew him and he knew it.
I did not and still do not understand how I could have been so clear with my feelings and what emotions I was going through at that time and STILL defending myself. It seemed as though no matter what I said to him, all he heard is that ; it's his fault, and he needs to fix it. The gift of taking what is told to you and turning it around into a whole new meaning is both productive and destructive depending on how you use this talent.  

When I didn’t see reasoning in his reasons anymore he resulted to body shaming me. Those attempts to mentally fuck me were short lived. I started listening to my body and my own needs. I got regular counselling from a private psychologist who taught me how to implement my anger management skills with the self growth achievements and never reverted back to my old ways of suffocating my own needs and feelings.

​So yes, when you take a step back and evaluate, I did write this book for my own selfish reasons and for that I don’t feel shame or guilt.

Instead I feel; accomplished, happy, excited, motivated and most of all peaceful. My biggest desire is that my story helps at least one lonely teenager, not feel so lonely and to know that there are people out there you can talk to and seek help. There really and truly is always a way, we just have to want it bad enough. I don't want anyone else to make that same mistakes I made in life. 

-Rose