It’s been a quarter-century, and I can still hear clearly the sound of my voice that night. It wavered with a plaintive, childish note as I spoke into the phone: “He hit me.” That sound, which I had never before heard in my own voice, broke something. I started to cry.
I don’t remember exactly what happened after that. Eventually he wasn’t there anymore, and my roommate and her boyfriend were, holding my hand while I debated whether to break up with him.
Some part of me is nodding along with the incredulous reader of this passage: debated whether to break up with him?