CHRISTOPHER, Ill. (WSIL) -- "I fought and I made a hell of a fight."
It took Deborah Nichols numerous counseling sessions to gain the courage to go back into the bedroom where it all happened.
"It's just a room with four walls. Nobody else is in there. The room will not hurt you," Nichols said. "I did that every night for a couple of weeks and then a little bit longer each time."
Nichols has scars on her neck, hand, back and chest from the night she was stabbed eight times by her then-husband Eric Wakefield.
"To put your own spouse through that kind of torture and the torment and to traumatize them for the rest of their life is not love," Nichols said.
In September 2019 Nichols and Wakefield separated and Wakefield asked Nichols if he could grab his belongings before heading west to Arizona. Nichols agreed.
Nichols woke up to a text from a friend around 4 a.m. on September 26 asking if she was okay. After replying, she put her phone down and tried to go back to sleep.
Around that time, Wakefield got up to go to the bathroom across the home instead of using the one attached to the bathrom.
Thinking nothing of it, Nichols tried going back to sleep again. Minutes after Wakefield laid back down next to Nichols, he began to choke her.
"I was hollering 'Stop stop. What are you doing? Please Eric stop,'" Nichols remembers. "The next thing I know I saw him reach up above the headboard above my head and I saw a knife coming at me."
Their dogs were in the bedroom locked in a cage but their barks woke up Nichols' daughter who was sleeping upstairs. Nichols' daughter pulled Wakefield off her mother and ran back upstairs to call police.
Meanwhile Wakefield grabbed his clothes and his belongings seemingly getting ready to leave.
"He had a cellphone in one hand and a knife in the other and said I'd better call you an ambulance before you die," Nichols said.
In March a jury convicted Wakefield of multiple felonies including attempted murder. Wakefield is being sentenced Wednesday at 1:30pm at the Franklin County Courthouse in Benton.
"I know that he's going to prison but to me it's not enough. I honestly think he should have pain and suffering like I did," Nichols said.
Nichols credits her daughter and the friend who sent the text for saving her life. That friend is now Nichols' husband Chris. They got married in Gatlinburg, Tennessee in January.
"Chris and my daughter have become my guardian angels," Nichols said. "Through all the trauma I've went through I don't know how that man has been able to put up with me for that long."
Through the immense pain, the ultimate betrayal and the miraculous survival Nichols is working to be happier, to be the person she was before the stabbing.
She's opening up in hopes of saving others who might be in her spot. To Nichols, life is too short to live in fear, too short to go down without a fight.
"At any day anything can happen," Nichols said. "Be happy and overcome the odds otherwise I wouldn't be here today."