A niggling feeling

He hit me today. It's not a real bashing-up, but I feel that it's the first step towards physical abuses. They all start small, don't they? It all happened when we were eating at McDonald's after the midnight show. He started to talk shop again, and he started to put me down on how lower educated people don't know what 'IJ' stands for, and that his friends are all of degree level and mine are not. I got irritated and smacked his face half in jest. He hit me hard on the thigh in return. The thigh numbed for a while. I was shocked. He said he would never lift a finger on me. And I'd said I would definitely leave him if he ever does. I'm not sure if I should wait till he bashes me up before I leave him. If I do, I would be filing divorce for a second time. And we are just one year into our marriage ... I was talking to Chujuan yesterday when she mentioned that she couldn't understand how Ex could have been 'good' to me. She said that she could still remember how he shouted at me in her presence over some matter. Honestly, I have no recollection at all about this particular scenario, but it still affects me emotionally. It makes me think about how small I was in that relationship, how emotionally bruised I was, how trapped I felt. Friends told me he was nasty to me but I thought they were saying that because they didn't understand him. On hindsight, they were the bystanders, and they passed the best judgement when I couldn't even figure my way out of the relationship. I couldn't leave him because I was afraid that no one would treat me better than he did. I thought that no one else would want me. I thought that he really loved me. If not for Coco, I would still be stuck with him. It was for her sake that I forced myself to pluck up the courage to leave the empty marriage, a marriage only in name. I didn't want her to look up to him as a role model for a father, or worse, future husband. I wasted my most precious 9 years on him. I'm not just about to waste time on another man. I thought William is God-sent, but I guess he's a man after all.