Will I ever be able to ask for the knife?

I did think about what aisha  said about enough being said about the knife, and oatmeal girl's comments made me think maybe I should just leave it at that, but at some point I have to face this knife "thing" and decided that maybe here was a the place to begin.

I know he has a knife, I know he has a few, not a great big collection, just a few.

He knows about my past, he knows all about previous things that have happened to me, he tries to get inside my head, to probe and poke, to explore and expose everything, so there is nothing hidden.....and mostly he has done that. There are a few dark corners where things are hidden, not necessarily from him, but maybe more from myself, and there lurking in one of those corners lives a knife.

Its not my owner's knife.....but a knife from long time ago, from a different life, when I was not the woman I am today, but from a time that began to make me who I am.

The knife belonged to my partner, well it belonged to me actually, it belonged in my knife set on the side in the kitchen, but when he picked it up and put it to my throat, it belonged to him...............when he placed the edge of the knife under my chin and began to push...........it belonged to him, when he held me over a bowl of boiling water and the knife was the alternative it belonged to him When he threw it on the floor  and stumbled out of the room it once again belonged to me.

When I moved the knives , and put them away, they belonged to me............but when he came home in a drunken temper or when he was angry with something he thought I may have done, if i was late,or the dinner wasn't to his liking, there were times when the knife became his again............and he would threaten to cut my throat, to do the same to the children, to cut my face so no one else would want me,to hurt me with the knife.

So this is why the knife stays in the dark corner in my mind............hidden and away.........

So the first time my owner got the knife out, I thought I would die, not in a good way, but I really thought I might die, like I had so many times before, when there had been a real possibility.

I was mesmerized by the knife, not wanting to look but fearing that if I took my eyes off it for one second I would not know where it was, I fought to retain some control over myself, he called me, he touched me and I shrank further into the corner, in the end he called me by my given name and told me the knife was going away, he would not be using it, it was gone.

And strange as that may seem, it was easier to be like that, to feel something, than to be so resigned to my fate as I had been in the past;  that I had actually got to the point where I no longer cared if my ex carried through with one of his threats to me , because it was easier than living with the constant fear and uncertainty. 

So feeling scared, being allowed to be scared was good...........it was a relief.  When I calmed down, when he held me, wiped away my tears, held me more so I couldn't move and inch, when he told me to breathe, when he put his hands round my neck and controlled each breath until I was calm, when he got the stories out of me, and he understood more about me and my reaction, when some ghosts were laid,
I remember how I felt, I felt like I had let him down, along with all the other feelings, that is how I felt. It was not something he made me feel, and he told me I wasn't to feel it.

I know he has a knife, I don't know where he keeps it.

Sometimes he gets one out and lays it on the table beside the bed.........sometimes it is on the floor, it is in its case, sometimes it is on the bed.................and then I get jumpy, it still makes me cry. He has got it out of the case and shown me and that makes me cry..........not hysterically any more but it makes me cry.
Occasionally he runs it over my body, in its case,but he has promised me that he will not take it out and run it over me until I ask him.
 
And will I ever ask him?

I don't know. I would love to be able to........................its not a trust issue, its a little black hole in my soul issue.