A letter from Brandy Reese Sloan

Ten years ago, you tried to end my life. You picked up an aluminum bat and tried to beat me to death. You killed my unborn child. You broke both of my arms, you crushed my hands, and you fractured my skull. You broke most of the bones in my face and all but three of my fingers.

You sat on my chest and strangled me again and again, then left me lying naked in a pool of my own blood. You wanted me to fear you, and I did. You wanted me to feel insignificant and small, and less than, and I did. For a very long time, I did. But I’m not insignificant, and I am not less than, and I am NOT afraid of you anymore.

The 10 years since you tried to kill me have not been easy ones. I had to go through a painful recovery and several surgeries and physical therapy. It took two years to get you before the judge to send you to prison — and I barely left the house for almost all of those two years. I hid from you, so you couldn’t find me and fulfill your promise to finish what you’d started. After your sentencing, it was another three years before I finally felt like “me” again.

With you behind bars, I could finally begin living my life. I grew stronger and stronger. I did A LOT of counseling. I worked on myself. I became an advocate for abuse victims, to try and help keep what you did to me from happening to other women. I helped get women out. I helped women put their abusers behind bars just like you.

I fell in love again — this time with someone who treated me the way I deserve to be treated. We’re married now, and my husband is a thousand times the man you are, or could ever hope to be. He would cut his own arm off before he raised a hand to hurt me.

While you have been sitting in prison, I have been living.

I’ve been living the life you tried to take from me – and I’ve been living it well. My bruises have long since faded, my broken bones have healed, and while the scars will never go away, I barely notice them now. I finally stopped having nightmares about you every night five years ago. The last shred of power you had over me is gone.

They denied your parole this year, but I know the day will come when you get out, and I’ve been preparing myself for it since the day you went in. I forgave you years ago for what you did – not for you, but for me. I couldn’t carry that anger around — I couldn’t let you live in my head like that. Hating you took too much of my precious energy.

Forgiving you released me from all of that.

My hope is that when you do get out, that you’ll go somewhere and live your life and let me go on living mine. I will never “get over” what you did to me — that trauma will be with me forever. But I learned how to live my life around the trauma, in spite of the trauma. . I learned how to use my pain and my experience to help others.

I survived you. I survived, and I thrived.

Click here to check out Brandy’s feature on “Surviving the Intimate,” on YouTube.