Hi all,I’ve been sitting here for about half an hour now, trying to put some of my story down and it always ends up turning into a novel. So I guess I’ll just start with the fact that I was married to a corporate man.At the beginning of our marriage I was happy, healthy and filled with hopes and dreams. I worked hard taking care of everything at home so the only thing he had to do when he returned home from work was to relax. I began oil painting and I loved it! I always enjoyed a good laugh. I was honest about my feelings with myself and everyone around me. I was a light hearted, creative and fun-loving woman. I drank only socially and was not involved with any drugs, recreational or otherwise.I’m not trying to make myself out to be a perfect person because I wasn’t and I’m not. I’m only trying to get the point across that at the time, aside from the usual insecurities we all share, I was generally ok. I was a happy person.After 14 years of emotional and mental abuse I was reduced to being a nothing. There was absolutely no joy in my life. I had no life, actually. I was a non-person… existing only to receive a little pat on the head because I had either helped him with something or done something for him that had made him look good at work. I tried to end my life at one time because I just could not see any reason why I should be alive. Whenever I read about a person who wanted to die and succeeded, it breaks my heart. I know that feeling of utter nothingness.In the end, after I helped him become head of his department over all of Canada, he decided he liked his new secretary better than he liked me and began to have an affair with her. Even so, he wouldn’t say the words to me… I want a divorce. He hedged and danced all around it until I finally said… Do you want a divorce? Aha… I said it. He nodded his head ‘yes.’ He was then able to say that I said the word ‘divorce’ first… not him.We each saw our respective lawyers. We had to live in the same house for a year during the separation. Funny thing was, I thought that because it was over, because we getting a divorce after all, that he would stop being mean to me. Nothing could have been further from the truth. He was 1,000 times more spiteful.I went from being his ‘right arm’ to… ‘Yeah, I should have married a rich nymphomaniac with a bad cough and left her out in the rain.’ Upon over-hearing him say that to a work buddy I thought to myself, why didn’t you just stick a spike in my eye, it would have hurt less.So to make a lonnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnng story a lot shorter… he moved out. I stayed here. I began to claw my way back up… and I do mean claw. I went down into the black hole of depression and self-destruction for several months before I was able to begin reclaiming my heart, my spirit and my life. And then one day I thought, I’m going to create a website for abused people. I’m going to do everything I can to stop abusive people dead in their tracks through empowering their victim.So, okay… there’s a bit of my story. That’s it for now because I’ve been here for way over an hour and I am starving!!!