As chairs crashed on walls, tables broke, glass shattered, and fist met flesh Stacy couldn’t hear anything. Somehow her body shut down the sense of sound amidst all of the chaos that was occurring. I guess sound, wasn’t one of the senses at the time that needed to be heightened during this fight or flight moment. Her stomach was knotted and her arms covered her face while her husband did everything he could to drive his fist past her defenses. Maybe it was her screaming that drowned out the rest of the noise around her. The hurling of insults that spewed out of her drunken husbands mouth. The smell of alcohol that seeped from his body only a few inches from hers. Deep down the screams were just harnessing up courage, fueling her fire to finally fight back. Once he got tired of punching face and forearms he took one step back and she pounced, she lost all physical control over her actions and saw only red. Anything and everything became a weapon for her. She swung, kicked, threw, grabbed, scratched and bit every bit of him that her bruised hands could get a hold of. When all was said and done and she had depleted every bit of fire left in her body, she fell to the floor two feet away from where her pummeled husbands lifeless body laid with one open eye and one swollen shut. She gasped for air in between every cry and within minutes a calmness came over her. A sense of clarity. The knowledge that in this chaos that just occurred a reckoning also happened, one that would give her the strength and courage to move on with her life. Stacy learned what she was truly capable of and in this moment she took in a deep breath of calmness and exhaled a lifetime of chaos.