Trip 2015-16. Day 62. Ireland, Midlands

The most beautiful girl in the world

- There's no way out of it but death. There's no way out of it but death. There's no way out of it but death.
I'm in a cozy warm living room with a huge TV screen and a nice fire place in the rural Irish house.
- There are no places in the refuge. There are so many women in similar situations that all refuges are full. They have houses for women but they are all taken. But they told me there was somebody moving out in four days. So I knew I had to survive for only a couple of days more.
We are four friends and we just had a very nice dinner with lovely food and wine.
- When I thought about what I would take with me I realized that nothing was worth anything. Everything was just useless. I looked at all my clothes as if it belonged to a dead woman.
Is it real? - I'm thinking to myself.
- I got my payments in cheque but he'd never let me sign it. Since he controlled the money he controlled sex. I always had to give in to him. Sexually he did horrible things to me. He raped me and even more.
I keep asking myself what could be worse than a rape. I don't come up with an answer. Actually I am (a hitchhiker, a backpacker, a free traveler) terribly afraid even to think about it.
- If you let me go I will not see you again, I tell my sister-in-law.
- Yes, I know my brother but the same happens in many families.
In many families? In the twenty first century in Ireland where every farm house today has a huge TV screen and a washing machine. But just no place in the refuge...
- He would say to my daughter that I threatened to knife him. I never did because he was much stronger than me but they didn't let me see my grandchildren again.
I'm sitting next to a woman who survived forty years of abuse. Forty years in the desert of loneliness, suffering and pain. Forty years! It's all my life! And she's just said to me that I'm the most beautiful girl she has ever seen...