This is so humiliating....I hate being weak. I hate having to ask people to be patient with me, to understand that I'm not up to par, to hope that they don't see that my eyes are leaking or on the verge of it....

All my life's training has been towards being strong, towards surviving, enduring, finding the next handhold when people say there isn't one, hanging on when others say I should bail. I don't like the physical weakness that comes along with being small and female (which is why splitting wood gives me such a rush), but have consoled myself with the notion that others are bigger and stronger, but I'm tougher, can take more pain, can stick it out when they start whining......

And now...

now.........

now........after being hit and slapped and laughed at and insulted and shocked with a stun gun, seeing my animals killed before my eyes...after being half starved and exhausted and played out and hypothermic and going through the absolute hell of four childbirths, after almost bleeding out, being cheated on, raped, and everything else that I don't even want to ever think about again......and still coming up fighting......after all that...I've been subjugated and tamed by someone simply refusing to speak to me.

This is awful. I've been broken before....but never like this. No fist, no words, could ever hurt me as much as your silence. This, my not-friend, is very, very bitter.