The Silence That Wasn’t Consent:

He didn’t ask.
He didn’t care.
He just took.

Sometimes I woke up with him already inside me.
Other times, I didn’t wake until it was happening.

They called it marriage.
He called it love.
But I called it what it was — rape.

But now I know better.
Silence is not consent.
And I was never his to break.

I screamed.
I begged him to stop.
To let me go.
But he didn’t.
He stood over me, accusing, tearing away my dignity, piece by piece.

My child woke up.
And still, he kept going.
Still, I wasn’t believed.

That night didn’t just strip my body.
It shattered something deeper.
The belief that I was ever safe with him.

He didn’t stop — even when I did.
Even when I cried.
Even when I screamed.
Even when I laid still, hoping it would be over.

My voice cracked.
My body froze.
My spirit broke.

But he didn’t stop.

And that’s the part people don’t see —
Not the bruises or the silence that follows.
But the moment you give up mid-sentence,
because pleading no longer works.

And still… he didn’t stop.

It wasn’t loud. It wasn’t dramatic. But it was final.
The day I chose me was the day I stopped begging to be seen,
and started seeing myself.
Not as broken.
But as done.

My birthday didn’t break me —
it revealed what I’d been denying.
The absence. The silence. The coldness dressed as care.
That day, I stopped pretending I was okay with it.
I stopped celebrating people who never showed up for me.
And I started showing up for myself.

They didn’t just want control —
they wanted silence.

They twisted truth into guilt.
Made love feel like obedience.
Turned power into punishment.

But even when I forgot who I was,
God didn’t.

They tried to break me —
but I was already bending toward breakthrough.

They thought silence meant they’d won.
That stillness was surrender.

But in the quiet, I was rising.
In the shadows, I was rebuilding.

They tried to break me —
but I healed in the cracks they left behind.

And now I speak.
Now I rise.
Now I live like they never had the final say.

We weren’t just running — we were surviving. One room, two children, no plan — but more honesty than ever before. He found us, tried to twist the truth, but we didn’t disappear. We stepped into the light, bruised but breathing, finally seen for who we truly were: survivors. This was the moment we stopped hiding — from him, from the world, from ourselves.