Thanks for taking the time to visit my JustGiving page.

Please please take the time to read my story, it's taken me years to finally have the balls to tell it.

This is the first time I've been brave enough to stand up and say I've been a victim of domestic abuse.

For four years I was told I was stupid or fat or ugly. I wasn't allowed to go out. I wasn't allowed to wear the clothes that I wanted. I wasn't allowed to wear make up. I had my phone checked. I wasn't allowed friends. I had my education taken away. I was bullied. I had my money taken. I wasn't allowed to learn to drive. Every single thing I did was wrong. I was told I was an incompetent mother. Told day after day I was depressed and mentally unwell. I was worked to the point of malnutriton, exhaustion and collapse where my blood pressure fell so low my organs almost began to fail. I let my life be taken from me. Things happened to me that I will probably never tell anyone. Life was very very dark and I didn't hold out much hope for the future.

After four years I something inside me snapped and after receiving abusive calls to my place of wor and returning home to a smashed up house I found the strength to go. I left the flat I was living in with my two beautiful daughters and a carrier bag of clothes and have never looked back.

Since then I have been desperately trying to rebuild my life, raise my daughters alone and to learn who I am again and what life is. Thanks to an amazing support network of family and a handful of friends and extemely special people things got a little brighter.

There are times when every minute of every day is a struggle, when you don't feel you can cope. I still have panic attacks when I'm stuck in a queue at the supermarket because I spent four years having to run to someone elses time scale and I still ask my new boyfriend a million questions about how he wants his sandwich because I'm so used to getting told off for doing it wrong. Constantly feeling anxious and terrified is exhausting and is hard for myself and everyone around me to deal with and this is where IDAS come in.

After finally hitting rock bottom I admitted I needed help to cope with life after my abusive relationship and now have a support worker who has played an invaluable role in helping me understand why I feel how I do. They do not receive funding and help people who are totally isolated, lost and who are most of the time at rock bottom.

I still have a long way to go to put myself back together and there will probably always be a part of me missing but this October I will be holding my head high and proudly running the marathon for IDAS. I am doing it to remind myself that there's nothing in this world I can't get through and to send a message to anyone who has ever suffered abuse that it is not ok.

I am holding up my hands and saying it happened to me but it will NEVER happen again. There are still many many men, women and children domestic abuse is affecting and many people that need support so please please please dig deep and donate!!!!!