This Man: Healing After Domestic Abuse
The winter sun is streaming through the window, I sit with my coffee and edit the photographs I took at last weekends’ monthly drag show. Each photograph I bring up on the screen is a reminder of the wonderful people that I get to work with, hang out with and call my friends. It’s a reminder of how far I have come.
I still struggle to choose music to listen to and prefer to put iTunes on shuffle, it makes it easier to work, helps me to concentrate. The music through my headphones throws out anything from silly pop to drum and bass. I let the music flow over me, bringing memories of girly nights out, clubbing and house parties. Memories that I’ve collected from the last few years, there are none from before. Until a few years ago I had stopped listening to music altogether, I had given in, after always being told that my taste in music was shit and to fucking turn it off. We used to listen to radio one in the car though when he wasn’t there.
Ben Howard starts playing and I have to stop editing, just for a moment. I have to sit back, breathe, and remember how hard those waves used to hit me, grief, pain, loneliness, one after the other knocking me down and leaving me winded and struggling for breath. I used to wish they would pull me under, drag me down into the deep and never let go of me.
It’s nearly 8 years since I moved into my own home, the one I share with my two funny, brilliant children and two idiot cats – my family.
I filled up my car to bursting, my beautiful cat in his box, meowing loudly, on the front seat, and I drove away from our family home. The one we bought to see our children grow up in. I left behind the lines drawn onto the kitchen doorframe.
I listened to that song a lot back then, every time I was filled with doubts, Ben Howard would sing
“keep your head up, keep your heart strong, keep your mind set, keep your hair long”
I had to keep telling myself I was doing the right thing and I kept moving towards this day.
As I drove away from our house The Foals were on the radio
“It’s times like these when I’m on my way back out of the woods.
I'll never be afraid again now I'm out of here for good”.
People ask me how I found the courage to leave. I want to tell them it wasn’t courage. It just couldn’t get any worse, there was nowhere else to go. I had nothing left to lose.
The truth of it was, my ex used to threaten to kill my cat and regularly kicked him down the stairs, the threats were getting more hate fuelled and I believed he would do it. He would warn me every day that maybe that day would be the day that Muppet wouldn’t be there when I got home. I knew I had to get him out of there to keep him safe. I look over at my, 18 year old cat, where he snoozes curled up in his spot on the sofa warmed by the sun, he’s very frail now but he’s not ready to leave us just yet. I smile at his beautiful face; we’ve been through a lot.
That day, with the radio turned up loud, I drove away from a 17 year marriage, a 20 year relationship. It wasn’t all bad, but I can’t remember any good bits either. I don’t know when it got so bad, I don’t know how I let it happen. How had I disappeared so completely? How had I ended up living with someone who hated me so much that I soon learned to hate myself?
It was small things at first, saying that my male friends weren’t really my friends, they were only after one thing.
I eventually stopped seeing them, it felt easier that way. He didn’t like my parents and thought I shouldn’t see them so much. Then when we had small children and I wasn’t working, he began to withhold money from me, it kept me poor and drove me into debt just paying for groceries. Then later if I needed a break from the children, I was only allowed to go into town by myself for two hours and I couldn’t meet up with anyone, I was only allowed to go to the two shops I said I wanted to go to. He controlled what I watched on TV, teased me if I chose something he didn’t like, made me go to bed every night at 9.30, so I wouldn’t disturb him later. He wouldn’t let me put the heating on in the depths of winter, he told me repeatedly that I was worthless, stupid, fat, that I didn’t get to have an opinion because I didn’t pay the bills. He knew where to really hurt me though, he would laugh at me and tell me that I was a useless mother and what the fuck did I think I was doing. It was my one job and I couldn’t even get that right. I started to doubt my own sanity, he would tell me I had done something or said something which I knew I hadn’t, but he was so convincing that he got me believing I was the person he told me I was. Stupid, worthless, can’t take a joke. I was blamed for how much toilet paper we went through, I was blamed for the damp in the spare room, I was blamed when the children had got toys out and I hadn’t put them away fast enough, I was blamed for the house being messy. I was blamed for our lack of finances, I was blamed because he hated his job, I was blamed when he had a disciplinary, I was blamed for him drinking. I used to take the children out all day, to find somewhere warm to play, and to stop the house being messy, but I absolutely had to get home in time to cook dinner. It had to be on the table at 6pm. I started to have panic attacks about not getting home on time to start cooking.
This was the man who I’d known and loved since I was 19 years old. This man who was charming and funny and could hold a room captive with anecdotes about work. This man who was someone I didn’t know anymore, where had he come from? This man who never held my hand or smiled at me, this man who hadn’t touched me for years, this man who hadn’t kissed me for years, this man who looked at me with bitter hatred, this man who laughed at me when I told him I had post-natal depression and needed help, this man who carried on as normal while our son nearly died, I prayed he would live through the night but prayed my life would be over soon.
This man, my husband, who drank.
Maybe it was my fault, I’d done something wrong, I’d said the wrong thing. He used to say it was my fault, he was always right so it must have been me.
How did I ever let this happen? How did I lose myself so completely?
I think people just expected me to be ok, to be happy once I’d moved, for life just to go on as normal. But, the truth of it was so different. I hadn’t lived on my own for 20 years. I found myself completely on my own, with no family or friends to turn to, no support net to catch me. I was so utterly exhausted and utterly alone. I think it had taken all my strength to leave and there was none left in reserve. He had not made it easy and I learned the hard way that when you’re the one who leaves, you lose everything.
Most of those early months are a blur but I still remember the feelings. I used to think about suicide every day, I knew it would just be easier if I wasn’t here then I wouldn’t have to go through this anymore.
I struggled every day just to get out of bed, I would have stayed there too if I could have. But there was no one to give the children breakfast, make packed lunches or take them to school. No one to give them a squeeze and a kiss before school. I had to keep going, for them.
I threw myself into work when I didn’t have the children and then I threw myself into bars and clubs and anyone’s arms. It didn’t matter who. I’d go out, drinking, smoking, raving and everything else that entails. It helped me to forget how completely lonely I was, how utterly awful this life was, and for those few hours, of being a ‘party girl’, I didn’t think of killing myself but in the morning it would all come back.
I lost some people along the way, people who I thought were my friends, they didn’t approve, they didn’t understand, they thought I was going off the rails, spiralling out of control. What they didn’t know, was that I believed not being here anymore would be easier. So much easier, then I wouldn’t have to feel this pain. They never asked. They didn’t know that I had to distract myself from the pain I felt, the pain from knowing my kids were crying and upset, knowing I was powerless to go and get them and hold them close.
When the kids were back with me after weekends with their dad, we would shut the door to the outside world and it would just be us again. Just the three of us against the rest of the world. We would snuggle under duvets and watch movies, throw popcorn at each other, we would make dens behind the sofa and make chocolate chip cookies. We would make plasticine aliens and call them all ‘Dave’. We would sneak into the zoo and try and give all the monkeys’ names. We would write our names in 6 foot high letters in the sand with sticks and eat chips on the pier and play in the arcade. We went camping and wild swimming and toasted marshmallows on campfires, we went to see the ocean and laughed as we jumped over the waves. We went to festivals and sang loudly to our favourite songs in the car. We were free.
Every morning I made myself get out of bed, make breakfast and packed lunches, put a smile on my face and take my kids to school. And eventually every day it got a bit easier. The waves came further apart and didn’t hit me so hard. I’m only still here because of them. I owe them my life. They will never know how they saved me. They will never know how their beautiful soft kisses and warm sleepy cuddles started to put my broken pieces back together. They believed in me, I was their world and I would never leave them.