Communication – getting it out there!
Posted: August 26, 2008 Filed under: Domestic abuse, Seeking help and advice, Uncategorized | Tags: dealing with emotions, Domestic abuse, healing after abuse, therapy Leave a comment »I’ve started writing letters to people. I probably wont send any of them but it’s stuff that needs to be said, stuff I need to get ‘out’. I’ve written to the girl who came to work for us for a while and ended up being abused by him too. I’ve written to the Priest who married us and has made it clear to me in no uncertain terms since then who’s side he is on (and it is not mine!). I’ve written to my father-in-law, mother-in-law and his brother and his wife. I’ve written to her parents; beautiful, gorgeous, sweet people who, despite there being a language barrier between us, understood exactly what I was going through and offered love, warmth and caring.
I’m sure there will be others but that is as far as I have got right now and it is making me feel better, stronger. I will probably send the one to the girl who worked for us but that’s it. I will perform some kind of ritual with the others I guess just to get clean with myself. A good, clean, cathartic out-pouring. I’d recommend it – particular if you are NOT going to send them. You can say anything you like.
I’ve left him, so why don’t I feel happy?
Posted: August 26, 2008 Filed under: Domestic abuse, escaping abuse, Uncategorized | Tags: coping with abuse, Domestic abuse, feelings, happiness after abuse, leaving an abusive marriage 4 Comments »This is so confusing. Okay, so I’m glad I’ve left but my feelings are all over the place. One minute I’m lying on the couch in my new house, looking around at all my things and feeling all cosy and tranquil and the next I am down and depressed feeling like life has got the better of me! I guess it’s normal, after what I have been through, but sometimes my mind wanders to negative thoughts and “if onlys”. I’m trying to be positive but it is difficult. I also still feel quite lonely and isolated. I’m not meeting new people in my new place and that scares me (the fact that I am not meeting them and the prospect of having to get out there and meet them!). My health is not great right now either. I have Asthma and it has been playing up these last couple of weeks (the stress I guess) and I am feeling tired and lethargic. I used to walk miles with the dog but it all seems too much right now. I’m slowly, gradually starting to sleep better and I like the fact that I can wake up at 2am and go get a book to read from the shelf without having to creep into the spare room for fear of waking him.
There is still stuff to sort out between us and I guess that is making me a little unsettled. I am hoping that one day, in the future, I will wake up and this will all be a distant memory and I will feel happy, settled and content.
Domestic Abuse – just remember why you’re leaving
Posted: August 11, 2008 Filed under: Domestic abuse, escaping abuse, Uncategorized | Tags: abusive marriages, Domestic abuse, honeymoon, leaving abuse 2 Comments »When it quietens down it is easy to forget the abuse, to think that perhaps it has never actually been that bad and that perhaps you have overreacted sometimes, that maybe all relationships go through this type of thing and that it’s normal. That’s when you need subtle reminders – and packing up to leave is great for producing little memory jogs.
Yesterday, for example, I came across a framed photo of me sitting on a bench on the jetty of a gorgeous hotel in Mauritius where we spent our honeymoon. It’s evening and the sun is casting the most beautiful sunset. My smiling face is glowing orange and I look really relaxed, contented, happy. It’s a nice picture, good memories. But then I noticed the shoes that are on my feet; black mules with white embroidered flowers on the front. They were so comfortable. I loved those shoes and had bought them especially for our honeymoon. I remembered what happened to them.
A few months after the honeymoon, one time when my husband was being particularly abusive and cruel, he pissed on them. Worse still, I was wearing them at the time. They ended up in the trash after that – along with our marriage!
The great thing about finding the picture though was how it reminded me of what this is about: I am leaving that sh1t because I deserve better.
Domestic Abuse – the tactics they use
Posted: August 11, 2008 Filed under: Domestic abuse, escaping abuse, Family relationships, Uncategorized | Tags: abusive families, abusive tactics, Domestic abuse, harassment, intimidation 1 Comment »Not content with abusing me, my husband has now turned his attentions to other members of my family, specifically my father who is elderly and not in the best of health. He is aware of our situation but I have kept quite a bit from him as he lives a long way away and I do not want him to worry. So, my husband persuades his father to arrange a little social visit – just the two of them, two father’s together chatting about life over a pint and celebrating his (my father-in-law’s) recent birthday. Oh yes, says my Dad in all innocence, not wishing to offend (the two have always had a convivial relationship) but wondering why he wants to drive over 500 miles for a social visit when he’s never been interested at any other time in our three-year marriage! The reason became very clear the minute his car pulled up on the driveway – my husband was at the wheel. It was actually his car that they had travelled up in.
Whilst there my husband tried his best to convince my old man that his daughter is actually the most cruel, abusive and violent person and that it is me who has put him through absolute hell and he is the innocent victim. He came up with all sorts of stuff. Apparently, I pushed him to the floor once, pinned him down with my knee in his chest and punched him in the head several times!! I attacked him with a broken glass and tried to slash his face. There were dozens of other such fabrications. Dad didn’t go into too many details because he said it was when my husband starting speaking about these things that he realised it was all just fantasy. He said my daughter has never shown any violence towards anyone in her life so why should I believe what you are telling me? And besides, if she really is all that bad why don’t you leave her? Apparently, his answer was that he loves me so much that he is willing to put up with it!!!! Amazing!!!!!!
My husband kept his little visit secret from me but when I spoke to my Dad yesterday he said did you know they’d been up to see me?
As you can imagine, I was really angry when I found out firstly that he had bullied his own father into being party to his mission of harassment and secondly because he’d been to see my ailing old man behind my back to say nothing of the lies and accusations!! Initially I decided not to say anything to my husband but my feelings got the better of me and I confronted him. I told him how upset I was which he laughed at and I asked him to leave my friends and family alone and his response was – I will contact them if I want. Anyway, what are you afraid of? Are you afraid they will tell me something about you you don’t want me to know?
This morning I called the Police. They said it was harassment and wanted to arrest him right away. I asked them not to, for now, as I am still inconspicuously packing my things and have not quite got everything over to the new house but I guess the real truth is I am trying to avoid a scene. I want to leave quietly not with a blaze of Police cars all over the place but I am actually wondering if that will be possible. I guess, also, I am still doing my usual habit of protecting the ba****d and giving him ‘just one more chance’. One more chance to what? Intimidate me? Abuse me? Kill me?
Domestic Abuse – staying safe whilst leaving/playing the game.
Posted: August 8, 2008 Filed under: Domestic abuse, escaping abuse, Uncategorized | Tags: chess, Domestic abuse, leaving an abusive relationship, Police protection, protection, sel protection, self-preservation 1 Comment »I’m writing this at work as we have no Internet at home, currently. We have been cut off because he hasn’t paid the bill. Damned if I’m going to; I need every penny I can get right now to buy furniture for the new place. It breaks my heart seeing my hard-earned money coming in to the business and seeing him piss it up the wall. I’ve taken action to safeguard what I can but I can’t ring-fence all of it unfortunately until I get my own business bank account set up and I can do that until I have set up my own company and I can’t do that until legally we have separated out our business interests and I can’t do that until I am safely ensconced in my new abode. It’s like I’m in this prison slowly but surely finding my way out but each and every action has to be done just right, timed just right or the whole plan falls to pieces.
I took some boxes over to the new place this morning and for the first time I actually allowed myself to feel at home and begin to get a little excited about being there. I am so looking forward to getting my furniture, choosing pieces that I like and that suit me, my stuff and my house.
So, why don’t I just pack a case and go! Get the hell out of there and leave!?
If only it were that simple! There are things in our marital home that matter to me. I mean, REALLY matter to me and there are things in there that I would like but that don’t matter so much and then there are things in there that I don’t want at all (most of the wedding presents from his friends and family – for example!). I am surreptitiously packing the most important things and taking them over to the new place so that he doesn’t even know they’ve gone. I have to do it this way because I don’t know how he will react when he knows I’m leaving. He has destroyed my stuff before so I have every reason to believe he will try that again. ‘Cause, he will realise at some point when he begins to look around and notices things missing but by then I will have most of it in my new house. There are practical issue too, like the fact that we still work together in the same business and I don’t currently have a phone at the new place and right now I need to safeguard my business and cannot risk that being disrupted in any way. He has also shown in the past a complete disregard towards business, customer service, even basic human decency that says that if someone is paying you good money to provide them with a service you show appreciation and deliver value for money – you do not abuse them! He has, in past, almost lost me my clients by being his usual, argumentative, rude and mean-spirited self. I’m not willing to risk that. My clients like me. We have been together a long time (longer than I have been with my husband) and that means a lot to me as it does to them. They are vaguely aware of a ‘situation’ but they do not know the full extent of it. They like me and are great to me but I imagine they will only tolerate so much. I do not want to give my husband any excuses to ‘ruin me’ as he has threatened to do if I so much as think of leaving. I am also scared that he might physically try to hurt me or follow me to my new home and stalk me but I have Police protection for that and I am hoping (praying) that will be enough of deterrent for him.
So, you see I could just leave. Pack a case and go but it’s better I do it this way; the way I have run my marriage since the abuse began. All relationships need to be managed but when you are living with an abusive person the way you manage the relationship is by always being on your guard, staying one step ahead, never letting your guard down, anticipating their every move and planning for that, just like you would in a game of Chess except this is not a game. What’s at stake is survival and freedom. Even though this is the hardest thing I have ever had to face and it is draining me to the core those two things, above all else, are worth it to me.
Parting is such sweet sorrow!
Posted: August 1, 2008 Filed under: escaping abuse, Uncategorized | Tags: angels, Domestic abuse, leaving an abusive relationship, renting a house, sad to be leaving 2 Comments »I now have the keys to my new house in my possession. I will be moving out next weekend.
I can’t get excited about it. I want to, dearly, but I can’t. I am leaving my marriage, my husband of three years whom I thought I would be spending the rest of my life with, hoped I would be spending the rest of my life with. I want to be married and I wanted to be married to him. It’s not like I have suddenly got bored of him or outgrown him or any of the usual relationship-breaking reasons. Our relationship is too broken to ever be repaired. There is too much hurt, physical and otherwise, for me to ever be able to trust him again or believe in him. I am too wary to let him anywhere near me, let alone love me. He is only ever bearable when he thinks he is losing me. I have to live in a permanent state of imminent departure to stop myself being abused. I can’t do that. I will not do that. That is not what I signed up for. I want to be ‘in’ a relationship not permanently teetering on the periphery.
So, now I am embarking on this new phase in my life and it is one that I choose resignedly rather than out of optimism. Even though it is my choice it is almost as if it has been foisted on me rather than rewarded. And yet I say that at the same time as acknowledging the synergies that have come to play so that I can begin to live again, to heal and to mourn; the woman who was in my shoes twenty years ago who owns the house I am moving to and who took pity on me even though I cannot ‘guarantee’ to pay the rent for a while. Then today, when I needed five more days to get enough money together for the deposit, and I ran out of cheques in the estate agent’s office and they said “don’t worry. We can wait until you get your new cheque book”. Then, the call to my brother asking if he knew where I could get hold of removal boxes to pack my stuff and he said “oh, we’ve got loads in our garage. You can borrow them”. It seems the angels have conspired to make this happen. I guess I just need to allow it to unfold and perhaps one day, soon, the joy will begin to emerge.
I cried hopelessly this morning. Didn’t sleep last night at all, worrying “am I doing the right thing or am I just setting myself up for an even bigger fall?”
I have made my choice now and I will make the best of this. I will make it work – come hell of high-water and one day soon this will all be a distant nightmare.
