When I was 15 years old, my boyfriend held a gun to my head and told me that at any moment he could pull the trigger. He told me that if I “upset” him, he wouldn’t hesitate to pull that trigger. He made sure that I knew he had total control over my life. Even as a freshman in high school, there was nothing I could do to stop him. Nothing I could do to leave him because I was nothing without him.
Even though it’s been over two years since I last saw him, I am still afraid. I am still scared that at any moment he will show up on my doorstep, and I will become one of the 70 women who are murdered by an intimate partner each month.