This is an excerpt of the book that I am writing. It is very hard for me to share the details of that night.

Neel never answered the questions that I had asked him. The girl looked at me in shock, I became angry towards her, and asked her if they had been fucking for a long time now because I had just slept with him recently. She didn’t answer me either. I took steps towards her, and Neel got in front of her. He told her to leave. She got in the elevator. When the doors closed, I yelled at him.

“How could you do this to me?”

“How did you get up here?”

“Your neighbor was coming up and I came up with her.”

“I am going to call the cops because you are trespassing.”

“How could you do this to me? You said you loved me a few days ago!”

“We dated for almost 8 months, that is it.”

“8 months yes, but for me it meant a lot, glad to know for you it didn’t mean anything.”

“You are a stupid bitch.”

I slapped him.

He grabbed me by my hair and slapped me back.

I pushed him into the wall, and slapped him across his chest.

He slammed me against the opposite wall and choked me, “you fucking piece of shit, your breath smells like dick, you stupid slut, I’m sure that you were sucking someone’s dick tonight.”

I dugged my nails into his hand and he let me go. I ran towards the elevator and pressed the button. The doors opened and the stupid girl was still standing in it. She had not left! I called her a stupid bitch for still being there. She just laughed, a nervous laugh I could tell. She had changed into her shoes and wasn’t wearing his sandals anymore. Neel came and told her to leave, he pressed the lobby button on the elevator and held me back until the doors closed. We watched the elevator numbers go down; she had left. He probably thought that I wanted to hit her. I just wanted to escape. I was scared to be near him, and didn’t want to stay up there with him, I knew that he wouldn’t hit me in front of her.

He slapped me across my face. I called him an asshole and pressed the button again. The elevator was back, he was trying to stop me from getting in it. But I managed to let go and run inside, I pressed the close door button, but he got in it with me, the doors didn’t close fast enough.

“You fucking bitch, I hate you, you are the worse thing that ever happened to me. I never should have brought you around my family. You are a worthless piece of shit and a whore.”

“Fuck you, you were just fucking someone in your apartment. You said you needed boy time. I knew there was someone else.”

He grabbed my head and slammed it into the elevator wall, and held it there against the wall as he punched me on the side of my ribs. I tried to move, but the pain that was spreading across my head was unbearable. I screamed and tried to wriggle free from his grasp. He let me go as the doors were opening up in the lobby. I ran out of the building. He caught up to me, and pulled me by my hair, turning me around so that he can slap me again. I pushed him away from me and ran across the street. He came after me and hit me again. I grabbed him by the collar of his shirt and ripped it open, exposing his chest. As soon as I did this, he punched me on the left side of my face right next to my eye. I immediately felt a bump rising in that area. He grabbed me again and slapped me again, then pushed me back and kicked me in my stomach. He grabbed a bottle that was nearby on the ground. This gave me a minute to just gather myself together and I ran down the street. I had parked my car at the end of the street. But it was nighttime, and my car is black. I ended up running past it. Neel had been chasing me but stopped when he saw my car. I kept running without looking back. But I could hear him punching my car. I could hear something breaking. I did not care, at that moment I was more scared for my life than the last time he had beat me in his apartment a few weeks earlier. I ran for about 4 blocks without stopping, I ran through green lights, I ran even though my calf muscles ached. I ran until I had no breath anymore. I found a garage that had trucks parked. I ran inside and hid in between two trucks. At that moment I caught my breath, and since all the adrenaline had left my body, I was able to feel every ache on my body where he had struck me. I looked at my face in the mirror of the truck, and I had a huge lump near my eye where he had hit me. My eyeliner and my mascara was smudged all over my face. My knee was cut and bleeding, my mouth was bleeding. Everything hurt. My nerves were shot and I couldn’t stop shaking. I didn’t know if he was looking for me, and felt that my heavy breathing would give up my location. I covered my mouth until I was able to breath as calmly as possible. During the minutes that I spent in between the two trucks, I tried to meditate, remember the calmness and peace that meditation always brought me during yoga. I closed my eyes and found a place of peace in my mind. I had traveled to a beach, my paradise. I was walking towards the ocean, the ocean was calm, and there were no waves in the crystal teal waters. I was all alone. I walked into the ocean, almost knee deep. Reached down and touched the surface of the water, it was nice and cool, and then it burned. I screamed and ran out, the sky turned dark again and I opened my eyes realizing the hell that I was living at the moment. My heart started racing again, I had to get out of there, but I needed to get back to my car. I didn’t want to leave it there. I looked at my phone, but didn’t know how much time had passed. I had not looked at the time at all since this all started. It felt like hours had passed by, but I know maybe it had only been 40 minutes. I started to walk back towards his block where my car was parked. I was so scared; I walked slowly, and jumped at every sound near me. His neighborhood is pretty quiet in general and at that time was completely empty. Not even a soul in the streets. I reached his street; I walked against the wall, in case that he was still nearby. My car was parked 5 cars down from the corner where I was. I was terrified that he was still around, so I crouched down as low as I could without having to crawl on the floor. I walked like this very slowly, scared that my foot steps could be heard miles away. I had reached the third car when I realized that he was standing by his garage in front of his car. I had two cars to go before I got to my car. We were at an almost equal distance from my car. My heart started beating in my chest and I was sure that he could hear that. I walked a little bit more and then stopped. I got my key out of my pocket, and my choices were to go back into hiding, or to stand up and make a run for my car. I was lighter than Neel, and more fit than he was. Not by a lot, but definitely felt that I could out run him, especially if he wasn’t expecting it. My body was aching, and I felt really weak. However, I remember learning about the fight or flight response that was first introduced by Walter Cannon in the 1920s. According to his theory animals react to threats with a general discharge of the sympathetic nervous system causing the release of adrenaline and norepinephrine from the medulla of the adrenal glands. If this was correct, then I would be able to get the energy that I needed to escape and survive at this moment. I decided to rely on this theory, and stood up and made a run for my car. Neel was on the phone, and immediately started running towards my car the moment he spotted me. I made it first, unlocked it and got in as quickly as possible. He had made it as well, but I had already locked my doors. He punched the glass of my driver side window. I put the car in reverse, and turned my wheel to be able to drive out of the parking spot. He was yelling all sorts of curses at me that I could not hear through the sound of my own heart pounding in my chest. I left, but realized that he had taken my side view mirrors off on both sides of my car. I was driving without any eyes. I stopped for a while a few blocks away. I gave myself 30 minutes to calm down. Somehow I decided that I wanted to drive back to his street to see if my mirrors were on the floor. If I could get them, I could easily just get the mechanic to put them back on. I drove back, and saw them laying there on the middle of the street, Neel was no where in sight. I stopped my car and as I was about to get out of my car, he came running out from behind a car. That psycho was still there. It made sense later when I thought about it. He parks his car in the garage of his building, but there aren’t any walls, he must have thought that I would come back to damage his car since he had damaged mine. The thought had not even crossed my mind. He had picked up one of my mirrors and threw it at my car, it hid the driver side door and left a dent there. I started to drive off, but not before he threw the other one at me, and it hit my trunk. Before I turned into the next street, I saw him pick up both mirrors and slam them on the ground. I realized that even if I got them back, they would be too destroyed to attach back. I decided that it was best to leave and buy new ones. However, I was scared to drive, you never realize how important something is until it is gone. I never paid attention to how many times I glance at my mirrors when driving. It was 6am at this point. So I drove home slowly, with my hazard lights on the whole time, and just tried to use my rear view mirrors when changing lanes. I was so relieved when I parked my car in my garage. I somehow feared that he had driven after me and was waiting by my apartment. I picked up a glass bottle that I found on the ground and carried it with me as I made myself up the stairs. But he wasn’t around. I climbed into bed and fell asleep into one of what would become very frequent nightmares starring Neel.

I woke up only a few hours later; I couldn’t sleep. My head was hurting; my body was hurting. That day was my daughter’s confirmation. I showered and then looked at the bruises he had left on my body. The skin around the outer corner of my left eye was a dark purple, I had a huge lump on my left temple near my hairline. My right knee was black and blue and cut open. My ribs were bruised, and I had the majority of my left arm badly bruised as well. My spirit was the most bruised and broken out of all. But there was no time for tears, I had to get it together, and get ready so that I can go pick up my daughter from my mother’s house and get her ready as well. This was her day, and I was very proud of this step in the Catholic religion. I am not very religious; I don’t go to church every Sunday. But I do believe that my job as a mother, is to teach her our religion, and let her decide what she wants to believe in when she is older. I think it is important for kids to grow up with some sort of religious belief. It gives them structure. I thank God that I am into make up. I looked at my reflection and was unsure if I was going to be able to pull off covering the bruises that were on my face. But an hour later, I had managed to rock a smoky eye, curled my hair so that the bump wasn’t noticeable, and my dress had long lace sleeves and the skirt was knee length. No one noticed anything for the rest of the day, nor the rest of the following weeks that it took for the bruises to subside. I ended up having to go to the doctor a month after the incident because a hard lump had formed on my arm where the bruises were. The doctor said I had a hematoma, a collection of blood outside of the blood vessel that is caused when there is trauma to the wall of that blood vessel. He gave me a referral for a dermatologist to have a look at it, saying that it may just take a few more weeks for it to dissolve.