It Ends with Us by Colleen Hoover (z-lib.org).epub

begins to shake. I have never, in all my life, felt so much pain radiating
from one human.
It breaks me. It rips me apart from the inside out. All my heart wants to
do is wrap tightly around his.
But even with everything he just told me, I’m still fighting my own
forgiveness. I swore I wouldn’t let it happen again. I swore to him and to
myself that if he ever hurt me again, I would leave.
I pull away from him, unable to look him in the eye. I walk toward my
bedroom to try and take a moment to just catch my breath. I close my
bathroom door behind me and grip the sink, but I can’t even stand up. I
end up sliding to the floor in a heap of tears.
This isn’t how this was supposed to be. My whole life, I knew exactly
what I’d do if a man ever treated me the way my father treated my mother.
It was simple. I would leave and it would never happen again.
But I didn’t leave. And now, here I am with bruises and cuts on my body
at the hands of the man who is supposed to love me. At the hands of my
own husband.
And still, I’m trying to justify what happened.
It was an accident. He thought I was cheating on him. He was hurt and angry
and I got in his way.
I bring my hands to my face and I sob, because I feel more pain for that
man out there, knowing what he went through as a child, than I feel for
myself. And that doesn’t make me feel selfless or strong. It makes me feel
pathetic and weak. I’m supposed to hate him. I’m supposed to be the
woman my mother was never strong enough to be.
But if I’m emulating my mother’s behavior, then that would mean Ryle
is emulating my father’s behavior. But he isn’t. I have to stop comparing
us to them. We’re our own individuals in an entirely different situation.
My father never had an excuse for his anger, nor was he immediately
apologetic. The way he treated my mother was much worse than what’s
happened between Ryle and me.
Ryle just opened up to me in a way that he’s probably never opened up
to anyone. He’s struggling to be a better person for me.
Yes, he screwed up last night. But he’s here and he’s trying to make me
understand his past and why he reacted the way he did. Humans aren’t
perfect and I can’t let the only example I’ve ever witnessed of marriage
weigh in on my own marriage.