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I WOKE up horizontal across the bed, with my legs hanging off the end. What the hell?

I tried to get up but I couldn’t move. I wriggled but I felt like a caterpillar stuck in a cocoon. I wriggled again but my arms were trapped by my side and something was covering my face.

What’s happening? Why can’t I move? Why can’t I see? The next thing I knew, two hands were clasped around my neck, strangling me. Squeezing until my head felt it was going to explode. Squeezing all the air out of me, and I passed out. I came around gasping. I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t move, I couldn’t scream for help. My heart galloped in my ears as I was smothered by blackness.

Big hands were back around my neck, throttling me through the duvet. I was wheezing and thrashing from left to right, trying to free my hands. The grip tightened and I passed out.

I came around for the third time and realised what was going on – my boyfriend Shane was killing me. He started strangling me again and I had an out-of-body experience. I thought I could see my neighbours screaming at him to stop. I thought I was going to be saved. I passed out again.

I came around the fourth time to the sound of gargling, the ­horrible sound of someone taking their last breath. Then I realised it was coming from me.

I’m dead, I’m dead. I was so close to death my toes were curling in on themselves through spasms.

Seconds before I was about to pass out for what I’m convinced would have been the final time, I drew on some superhero strength and stretched out my right leg to push against the box by my bed.

I managed to lever my body up the bed and my head out of the duvet. I managed to speak a few words to save my life.

“I’m sorry, Shane, I love you,” I whispered.

He stopped in his tracks just like the times before. There was an eerie silence like the build-up in a horror film, and then he ripped the duvet off, spinning me out on to the bed. He spoke for the first time.

(Image: PA Wire/Press Association Images)

“Your eye is hanging out of your f***ing head!” he shouted. “You’re blind. You’re never going to see your kids again. I’m getting 20 years for this!” he yelled.

I was in shock. I couldn’t absorb his words or feel any pain. I sat up and reached my hand to my face... and felt my eyeball hanging halfway down my cheek.

“Ugh,” I retched. I traced my fingers across my face and my other eye was swollen to the size of a tennis ball, sticking out of my head. The entire time I was under the duvet I had no idea my eyes were gouged out.

I felt my eye again, cradling it with my fingers.

Oh my God, my eye.

“It’s all your fault!”

Every time he screamed at me I touched my slippery eyeball, like I couldn’t believe it was real, that this was really happening to me. “Please, Shane,” I begged. “Please let me and the kids go.”

Shane ignored me. I sat ­trembling in just my strapless bra, wrapped round my waist, listening to his ranting for over an hour, trying to guess where he was. I was helpless as his brutal hands came down on me and scooped me up.

“Where are you taking me,” I whimpered as he carried me out of the room. He didn’t say a word, and then he dropped me like a sack of potatoes.

SPLASH! My head went underwater as he dumped me in my bath. I came gasping to the surface.

He’s going to drown me, I’m dead.

The cold water went to my nerves and the pain shot through my body like an electric current. My eyes felt like someone had stuck a red hot poker in them. My body felt like someone had ripped out my soul. I threw up all over myself again and again. I felt Shane’s hands grip my wrists and he yanked me out onto my feet. I wobbled in the darkness before I felt all my bodily functions go. It was the most degrading moment of my life.

“It’s all your fault!” he shouted, as I crouched over the bath. “All this is your fault.” I was sick again.

For the next 12 hours Tina was held hostage at her home in Hayle, Cornwall, as Jenkin refused to call an ambulance. Her sons Ben, 13, and Liam, three, were sleeping in the same house. Shane eventually let Tina call her ex-boyfriend Paul, Liam’s father, who immediately came round.

Paul must have driven like lightning from Penzance,. He was knocking at my door 10 minutes later. “F***,” I heard Shane spit. I craned my ear to hear Paul insert the door key I didn’t know he had. My heart raced as I saw the finishing line. “Where is she?” Paul snarled. He ran up the stairs as Shane trailed after him, whimpering pathetically.

“Two girls beat her up behind the Co-op,” said Shane limply. Paul stormed into the boys’ room and scooped Liam into his arms. Oh God, please don’t bring Liam in here. It was too late.

“Oh my God!” Paul shouted. I turned my head to hide my face from Liam and felt my eye fall onto the bed. Liam started screaming.

“I’m ringing an ambulance!” Paul shouted as he ran down the stairs with Liam in his arms. I was gasping for water again. I shimmied myself to the edge of the bed, and this time I could feel Shane staring at me. I just didn’t know where he was.

I reached both my hands out in front of me as I shuffled to the door. I could smell him. I was getting close, and then my fingers touched something hard, his chest, as he guarded my door.

He smelled of fear. There was no way he would finish me off with Paul in the house. I pushed forward and he backed off like the coward he really was. I ­bum-shuffled my way down the stairs. I heard the ambulance siren. I was safe.

Tina was taken to hospital where surgeons were unable to save her left eye. She would later reveal how the night before the attack she and Jenkin had watched a DVD movie which ended with a girl having her eyes gouged out.

I knew my left eye was gone. I’d felt it dry up. But I was certain my right eye was going to be OK.

I had no idea Shane had gouged both my eyes out. I thought he’d throttled me so hard one eye had popped out. I’m going to be OK, I thought, I’m going to see my kids again.

My left eye had been hanging out of my head for over 20 hours by the time they operated. There was nothing left but a dry shrivelled ball. The surgeon told me he’d never seen a case like it. He would have had to use “extreme force to do this” he said. Paul told me Shane had turned my house upside down to hide the evidence. He hid my bloody bed sheets in the shed. He used such force gouging out my eyes he had broken the wooden bed slats.

Sadness washed over me as I thought what a waste it had all been. I was blind and he was going to be banged up a long time. I’d put up with his beatings for nothing. Shane promised me he’d change, but he’d lied.

Tina faced an agonising wait to see if she would regain sight in her right eye.

It was the moment of truth. As the doctor unwrapped the bandage from around my eyes, my heart was beating in my mouth. He lifted my swollen face and rested my chin on a machine that felt like a telescope. I touched my eye and it was still as big as a tennis ball.

“I’m going to shine the light into your eye. Tell me if you see anything,” the doctor explained. I couldn’t bear the waiting any longer. Please God, please God, please God, I prayed.

“Don’t be afraid,” he said. “OK, ready?” “Ready as I’ll ever be,” I joked. I heard some clicks and waited for the light. But the light was already shining. “Can you see it?” he asked. “No,” I replied.

(Image: Channel4)

My sisters and Mum were waiting for me on my ward and I felt the pressure to be strong for them. They crowded around my bed, stifling tears.

“At least I’ll never see myself get old. I’ll be 31 forever,” I joked. They tried to laugh. “And none of you will age either, you’ll stay young and beautiful in my eyes,” I smiled. My sister Lorraine broke down sobbing.

I knew in my heart I was never going to see again. Shane had pressed his thumbs so hard into my eyes he’d squished my right eyeball into my head.

But I wasn’t ready to face the truth. I couldn’t deal with the idea of not seeing my boys again.

Shane might have been the one in prison but it was me rotting in hell. Every day I woke up in hospital hoping this would be the day I’d see the light from the doctor’s telescope.

But every day my dreams were shattered. All I could see was eternal darkness. I felt like I’d been buried alive.

As Tina fought to adjust to life without eyes, she still couldn’t stop thinking about Jenkin.

I started thinking I would have been better off dead. I used sleeping tablets to get me through the lonely nights and higher doses of painkillers to ease me through the day. But no drug could numb the pain I felt in my heart for Shane.

Not a second would pass without me thinking about him. I hated him but I still needed him. I wanted him to ring me and beg me to forgive him.

I was wishing terminal illnesses like cancer on myself. I’d had enough. The GP gave me anti-depressants for post-traumatic stress disorder. My weight plummeted to 6½ stone.

Jenkin pleaded guilty to grievous bodily harm with intent in April. He got life, but with a minimum of only six years. Only after the trial did Tina start to move on with her life:

During my special quiet time in the morning, I would think about Shane.

I’d imagine him in his cell, thinking how much he wished he’d finished me off that night.

I’d think about all the promises he’d made and broken. I’d push any nostalgic thoughts away and congratulate myself on how far I’d come.

A year ago, all I wanted to do was sleep. Now I fill my days doing household chores. I can put the washing machine on, cook meals in the microwave, and I have every takeaway in Penzance saved on my phone.

I take pleasure in the little things, like a cup of tea and cake in the afternoon. My trampoline, where I used to love sunbathing, has been replaced by garden chairs.

And there is nothing that fills me with more joy than feeling the sun on my face while hearing my boys laugh and play around me.

© 2012 by Tina Nash. Extracted from OUT OF THE DARKNESS by Tina Nash, to be published by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd on October 25, 2012 RRP £6.99. To order your copy at the special offer price of £6.49 with free P&P, please call the Mirror Bookshop on 0871 803 6772.