Sadly you often lose yourself, you dont see taht you are worth anything and often, even though it appears that you dont care, you do but you hide it from the world.
You get used to shutting your feelings inside you where it doesnt hurt as much.
You hide yourself from everyone until finally you dont even know who you are.

Often even after you leave it can take years to even find yourself again.

The children and i had own own life, we played and laughed most of the time, it was only when he was there that things where different. My children would pray that he didnt come home on a Sunday. Mostly he didnt come home but when he did we would often just do whatever it was he wanted, if he becasme really angry, we would just sneak off into the bush and stay there a few days.
Really it sounds bad, but we where bush kids, we turned the horror into fun, we camped , cooked and made our life just a big adventure.
We built a cubby house that had bunks and with all our camping gear and would often stay there for days.
The kiddies where homeschooled and they had their schoolwork with them,
Its funny because when we look back, although we know that there where really bad times, we really only remember the fun parts of it.
In some ways he broke us, but in other ways he taught us to apreciate everything we have.