Earlier, I wrote that I was feeling irritable and I wasn’t quite sure why. I guessed it was tiredness and the fact that I am living a lie right now but I have since realised the real source of my irritation – I am SCARED! 

I am scared of what he will do when I leave. I am scared of how I will leave. How can I take all my stuff and the dog without him suspecting anything? I don’t feel safe, I am having to live a lie, sleep with the enemy and all that and not getting enough rest. I can take important papers with me, that is not a problem, but what about my stuff, MY STUFF!? It is important to me. Please don’t tell me to just leave it behind. I can’t. Why should I do without MY mother’s paintings, MY books, MY grandma’s tea-set!? I need those things around me in my new home to help me get over this. Please tell me that it’s going to be okay. That it will all be okay in the end. I need to hear that right now. I’m sounding a little crazy, I know. I am right now but I’ll be okay. I’m just scared.

I am feeling constantly irritable and it isn’t just PMS! The reason for this is 1) I am not sleeping well. I wake often in the middle of the night and sometimes very early in the morning following anxiety-filled dreams about my partner. The other night I dreampt we were at a family party (his family, of course) and he was deliberately undermining me, whispering mean things and then turning to his friends and family and acting all charming and friendly. He kept coming up to me and telling me what other people were saying about me (none of which was complimentary) and he was deliberately showing a great deal of overt and flirtatious attention to another woman. I felt belittled, isolated, cheap. It may have been a dream but I have experienced those feelings for real many times in my current relationship. 

The second reason (although I suspect the primary one) I feel irritated is that I am living a double life right now and lying to my partner. I am planning and preparing to leave and yet I can tell no-one most especially him and that does not sit well with me. I have always believed that the truth sets you free and I have always known that lying makes me feel bad, makes me feel incongruent and like my life is in ‘dis’. I want to say to him: “Listen, we both know this isn’t working and hasn’t been for some time. I have found somewhere else to live and I will be moving out on *****. Nothing is forever and perhaps we can still see each other and keep in touch but I think some space will do us both good.” I’d dearly love to be able to say that but I can’t because I know the mere fact that I have had the audacity to plan this, by myself, without consulting him or seeking his permission will set him off and sabotage the situation. I fear it will be bad enough on the day I actually, physically go, never mind preempting anything now. I am guessing he will be awkward and disruptive so I am making plans around that as much as I can. 

The thing is there are lots of things I could do, call the authorities, sneak off without his knowledge, move my stuff in stages – loads of things and I am doing what I can but I refuse to be terrorised by that man. If he wants to be awkward, let him! He can hold my stuff hostage but he can never have the one thing he wants and which I have control over and that is me! Anyway, perhaps I am worrying unduly and it will all be okay and he will be totally accepting and helpful (yeah right!!).

I found blogs like this useful when I was at the point of knowing something was up, that my marriage wasn’t ‘normal’ but not really having any clarity on what it was or how to label it. Why were some days so full of tension for no apparent reason and yet others, which ought to have been because of work pressures and so forth were refreshing as a spring breeze?

Reading other people’s stories helped me recognise that I was married to an abusive partner whose only motive was control and for whom reason was/is the enemy. It got me to a point of clarity from which I could see that the only option was/is to leave. Prior to that I lived day-to-day in a haze of self-doubt, confusion, constant unexpressed anger (which sometimes manifested as depression) and stress. It blinded me and sometimes pushed me so far into myself that I felt like I had disappeared.

Last week I thought I would make an attempt at offering what I hoped would be useful tips to other sufferers by creating a page about recognising domestic abuse and adult bullying because that seems to be the starting point for most people to end abuse. I soon realised, however, that although I am suffering this horrendous misfortune, I am no expert. I tried making a list of bullet-points, things which I have come across on other sites that resonated with me but it didn’t feel right. It lacked substance; the substance that comes from writing from the heart about MY experience, what is happening to me, where I am right now and what I am going through in the hope that someone else who is going through the same or similar will read it and no longer feel alone and isolated. I figure I will leave that expert stuff to the experts, the people who are counsellors and psychotherapists and specialists. They are the ones who are (if they have suffered abuse in the past)  well-healed enough (nothing to do with being rich) to offer advice and guidance. All I can do is tell you what is going on with me, what I am choosing to do about it and the consequences thereof. Maybe I am making mistakes, maybe I am being super rational – I don’t know. All I do know is that I do not deserve to be treated the way I have been treated in the past. Although he is behaving okay now, I AM scared it will happen again and besides which there is too much hurtful baggage between us. 

So, if there is anything here that has helped anyone to either recognise what is going on or helped in the healing process – great! I take great comfort from having this as my ‘release’ and from the encouraging and helpful comments from fellow survivors.