Its an epidemic... how sad.....

I originally typed this up on the weekend then lost it when my laptop battery died but have recovered it. Then first thing this morning I logged on & read Stephs post.. After reading that I wasn't going to post it at all, or at least not for a while because her experience makes me feel guilty as fuck for complaining about what happened to me (I explain that in the post, it'll make sense later, I promise) and because I didn't want anyone thinking that I was just jumping on the bandwagon.

Then I went & read tfs's post.

Wow. I have felt the rage he talks about & the satisfaction in it.

After reading Tfs's post I realised that the problem is that no one wants to be seen as jumping on the bandwagon and because we all know there is someone out there who is worse off, we feel guilty for 'complaining' and because once upon a time, I too was of the 'well if the stupid bitch didn't leave him then she deserves all she gets' school of thought.

So fuck it - I'm posting too. It's easier for me as I have a lot less people who read this blog then those guys do but the worst thing about it when its happening is that sense of isolation and the feeling that no one else can understand what you are going through - perhaps if everyone who has experienced it in some way starts posting about it then someone who needs help might stumble across one of the posts & realise that it doesn't have to be that way.


A Looooong time ago, in a land far, far away from where I am now…..

Sorry, I'll be serious now.


As a child obedience had been bred into me, I always did exactly what I was told to do. I never rebelled (or not openly anyway) and was always the 'soft' 'submissive' personality of my family. I was also loud & outgoing and always laughing & smiling. I had what is often referred to as a 'vibrant' personality. Life was good to me and I was not used to people being angry with me. People were never 'mean' to me, we might argue sometimes but people were never mean. Living like that makes it very easy to always see the best in people. I was hardly ever yelled at and I can count the number of times I was smacked as a child on one hand. My sister - the strongest influence in my life - had always adored me and cherished me and supported me. My brother in law was the one who finally pointed out to her that I was too soft so she started introducing me to people who were different to us in order to expose me to different ideas and lifestyles. All of my experimenting was done under my sisters close supervision. When I started going out, all my drug taking was monitored by her as well as she was usually out with me All our friends on the coast knew that I was off limits and that no one was allowed near me, if I wanted to go dance on the dance floor, a couple of people would come with me and dance near me so no one else could get near me. I was walked to the toilets in the club by someone who would wait outside for me to finish then walk me back to the group - that's how protected I was.

Then she & I had a fight. It was something stupid (isn't it always) but it took us a while to get over it and restore our relationship to pristine condition. Essentially what it was really all about was I resented the level of control other people had over me and I wanted a bit of freedom. If our relationship hadn't been damaged by that argument, things may well have turned out differently as I may have told her what was happening and she would have tried to stop it. But anyway…

While we weren't talking, I re-met Psycho Boy (PB for short). He was the only child of family friends who we hadn't seen in years. He was well educated, intelligent, articulate, good looking etc etc etc - in short, perfect. PB & I went out for a year. It was serious. I was 19 and he was 26. And not to put too fine a point on it, he ran rings around me. While I had had bf's before, no one serious. He on the other hand… well... prior to meeting me he usually had more then a few women on the go at one time, cheated on most of them, slept with their best friends / sisters / mothers / dogs (ok, I made that last one up)

It all started out as a bit of fun - I was thinking it would last a few weeks / months and then we'd both move on but for some reason it didn't peter out. The day he told me he loved me I did something very very bad - I told him I loved him too even though I knew darn well I didn't (cut me some slack - I was very young and I didn't know what else to say!)

I don't really see the need to go into the worst things that went on here, but things started to get weird. By the time I finally left him I wasn't allowed to chose what colour my hair was, how it was styled, what clothes I wore or who I spent time with. He had managed to totally isolate me from all of my friends and would call me numerous times throughout the day at work just to make sure I was there.

On average he accused me every couple of weeks of cheating on him and thanks to his temper tantrums we eventually replaced just about every wall in the house (on the plus side I am pretty good at renovating & painting nowadays). In some fucked up part of my brain this all seemed perfectly normal. In fact, as I was the only person who he ever acted like this towards, then clearly, it was my fault.

I was living constantly on edge - while we were around other people, he was perfect but when they weren't around I would still get in trouble for things I had said & done in front of them. Constantly trying to judge his moods and creeping round trying not to draw attention to myself was what my whole life revolved around. I lost all faith in myself & my own abilities and it was then that I stopped singing. Singing was the only part of me that he hadn't been able to infect.
When I am singing is when I am happiest and he hated that. I didn't really have a lot to sing about anyway and as I had lost all of my self-confidence, singing in public became very painful for me. Seeing as my whole sense of self was tied up in that due to my upbringing, that was a real blow for me.

The third last straw came when he hit me. Now he'd thrown me up against the wall and punched the wall next to my head a few times but he'd never actually physically hit me so I was a little shocked to say the least. Things like that just don't happen in my family or in my world in general. It was an open handed slap but he was a lot bigger then me so it was enough to knock me to the ground. I picked myself up, walked out of the living room and locked myself in the spare bedroom for a while and tried very hard not to think while he broke the door down and cried and told me how much he loved me. I was absolutely bewildered and couldn't figure out how the hell it had to come to this and it was easier to not have to think about it or deal with it so I forgave him.

A couple of weeks later we were at home and we were arguing again (what a surprise) and he raised his hand to hit me again, this time, I had a very large knife in my hand (never argue with someone who is chopping onions) and I told him that if he hit me, it better be worth it because as soon as I picked myself up off the floor again I would kill him and if I couldn't finish the job I would find someone who could.

I think he believed me. I have always been soft but thanks to my sisters training I have also always been the type that when my backs against the wall I come out fighting and it was only all the mind fuckery that had kept me docile until that point… I think I was more stunned then he was though, but in that split second of resurrection of the person I used to be, my brain told me, quite clearly and very calmly that I needed to get out. Even then, I didn't actually break up with him and while he didn't try to hit me again over the next few weeks, the mental abuse escalated drastically. I actually wish he had hit me more often, physical pain I can handle, I don't like it but bruises fade and painkillers don’t heal emotions.

Due to the job I was doing at the time, I had to go on a 'call centre walk-through', basically, call centre managers, HR & call centre policy makers etc all go and have a look at other call centres and look at what systems they are using and trade ideas etc. I had told him that I was going on one that day but he obviously forgot. He tried to call me at work at about 10am only to get some stupid girl who just said 'No, she's not in today' he freaked and immediately started trying to call my mobile which was of course switched off. That afternoon as the bus pulled up out the front of my office, everyone who worked in call centres around the city started to pile out, I was standing there talking to the national call centre manager for a private health fund and a team leader from telstra when he saw me. He had been sitting outside my office since about 10.15, waiting for me to come back (he knew I had to as he came & picked me up from work every afternoon) and he came over, grabbed me and without even bothering to to excuse us, simply started screaming me in front of everyone. I can still remember the looks on their faces.

I did exactly what I always did - I knuckled under.

But at work the next day I immediately arranged a transfer through work to our Sydney office and I didn't tell him about it - no way was I risking him forcing me to resign or anything like that. Then my mum went into hospital and while we were there he & my sister went to get drinks. M innocently asked him why I was wanting to move to Sydney. My family knew nothing about any of our problems - as far as my family was concerned he was the perfect bf. M was shocked to find out that he didn't know and tried to cover for me but she obviously didn't do a good job.

That weekend we had another argument when he brought up the subject of my moving and that was it, I told him it was over and he wouldn't let me leave the house. I was absolutely fucking terrified but I remember sitting there looking at him as he was shaking me and thinking that the only way he was going to let me leave the house was if he believed I was coming back so I started crying and telling him how much I loved him in order to convince him that I would never be able to follow through with it. I walked out that door and vowed that I would never set foot in that house again and I am happy to say I didn't. I left so much of my stuff behind but it was worth it.

He then stalked me for a bit over 10 months - it was just a drama. I nearly got fired from my job because of it and trying to pretend to my family (who thought it was a bit weird that he kept calling to speak to them about me) that everything was ok was finally getting to be too much. It reached the point where I really didn't think I could handle it anymore. The only thing that stopped me from killing myself was the part of my personality that reminded me that I wasn't ready to die. If death was the only thing that was going to end this, it sure as hell wasn't going to be mine. It was at that point that I put the car in reverse, drove away from the cliff and called him.

I told him that until now, I hadn't told any of my umm… 'other' friends (ie. the dealers, the hitmen etc) (what can I say, I know an interesting cross section of society) or my sister what he was doing, but that would change if he didn't back the fuck off. I then explained the consequences of ignoring this warning.

All of a sudden it stopped.

I was finally free of fear and it was about then that hate came to visit. I was so full of rage and hate it was scary. I developed a hair trigger temper and would lash out at anyone for the slightest reason. My family was utterly bewildered as to where this had come from. There can be a sick satisfaction in reducing someone to nothing because that’s how you feel inside yourself.

There were times where it was like I was standing to one side watching myself break someone down and wondering where the hell this was coming from - what were these words pouring out of my mouth with no control or conscious direction? My best friend B would often look at me, shake her head and sigh 'You have so much repressed anger' which invariably drew the snarled response of 'I do NOT have repressed fucking anger!!!!!'

Which was actually quite true - it wasn't very repressed at all - it was bubbling dangerously close to the surface but I still couldn't admit it. Hatred, fear and anger are this never-ending cycle - they feed off each other and grow progressively more self-destructive.

I had always dabbled with drugs socially and cocaine has always been my drug of choice but it was at about this time that my coke habit started to get a bit out of control. As a result, I no longer touch the stuff - or very rarely. I was just very lucky - most girls would have had to turn to prostitution or dealing to support the habit I developed, I had a friend who was a dealer and he let me take whatever I wanted, no strings attached. Kicking that habit when the time came was actually remarkably easy for me too - one day I decided that I didn't want to do it anymore so I stopped, just like that. if I hadn't been able to stop when i wanted, I think it would have taken me even longer to reach this point.

The turning point for me emotionally came, of all things, from a Cosmo (or Cleo - who the hell knows what it was) that I was reading one day at my desk at work - I had borrowed it off a friend to read and came across an article about domestic violence and emotional abuse.

As I read it, a little voice in my head piped up with 'Ah HA! So this is what happened' Voice 1 however was quickly drowned out by voice 2 'Don't be ridiculous - things like that don't happen to me!'
V1 - 'Really, well guess what genius, you're fucking wrong - it can & has'
V2 - 'Why are you such a drama queen!?? He never really hurt you, you can not compare yourself to these women!'
V1 - 'Ummm... helloooooooo where have you been? In denial much??'
V2- 'C'mon - 1 little slap & then you threatened to kill him the next time he went to do it!'
V1 - 'that was totally justified and the mental torture went on for far longer and was far more damaging'
V2 - 'I am not going to argue with you, this did not happen now get back in your box and don't you be offering an opinion again, d'you hear me?'
(Scuffle ensued which finally ended up with V2 being stuffed back in its box with V1 sitting on the lid to keep it in there..)
V2 - MMMFRHP NNTPH OOT !!!!
V1 - (with hands over ears) LA LA LA - I can't hear you !!!!!!!'

(Just to clarify, in case any of you were seriously thinking that I really 'heard' that conversation...no, I don't really think that I have 2 little voices in my head. I took a lot of drugs, but not that many. But if I did have 2 little voices in my head, that’s pretty much how it would have gone. )

So I gave the magazine back to my friend & then went & bought one for myself, I took it home & read it again then very carefully didn't think about it.

Then a day or so later I read it again and then I started thinking.

V2 was definitely fighting a losing battle but hey, it put up a good fight. Eventually however, V1 won the war.

The amazing thing is that it took me so long to get there. We were together for a year, then he stalked me for nearly a year and it was another year after that that I finally admitted what had been happening to myself.

And when I finally realised this I realised just what I had become - I had let myself become a victim.

I fucking hate victims.

All that anger and rage was preventing me from admitting it and dealing with it and it was holding me back from facing the biggest problem of all, I not only let him treat me like shit and ruin a year of my life, I was still letting him do it 3 years later. And it was fear and shame that was behind it all. Shame because I didn't have to let him treat me like that - I allowed him to do it. I let him reduce me as a person in my own eyes (the only ones that really matter). I could have walked away but it was 'easier' to close my eyes to what was happening and tell myself it was normal.

Easy isn't always easy.

Then too, I also realised just how damn lucky I was - some women are beaten so badly by their partners that they end up in hospital or dead. Many will never break free and will spend the rest of their lives cowed by those men. However, you can't compare your private hell with someone elses. The worst thing that has ever happened to you is still the worst thing that has ever happened to you. You just have to try to retain some sense of perspective and remember that it could have been worse.

Emotional abuse somehow seems less damaging because there are no scars and no hospital records to prove that it was real. I was so lucky - I not only got out before it got any worse, I also stayed strong enough not to go back and my awareness of that fact made it harder for me as I felt ashamed to call it 'domestic violence' because I felt it trivialised what those other women go through. To this day I still will not call it that. Ever. Because I don't think its fair to those people.

I not only allowed him to drain me of all life and reduce me to a shadow of myself, I also allowed him to ruin my health (I put on 25 kgs while I was with him, try shifting that sometime...) and to destroy my faith in myself and in other people. The loss of hope was the hardest. I have always been a very sunny person and while grey is a nice colour for a suit, its not a nice colour for an emotional landscape. I was in deep freeze for years. I said before that I do not deal well with negative emotions - its something I am working on but its a hard pattern to break.

It took me a long time to work through it all and get it straight in my own head and then, just as I reached the point where I had forgiven him for everything he had done and I was able to admit that there had been some good times in the beginning, I found out that he had driven one final knife into my heart and I hadn't even been aware of it.

Now I have mentioned before that my sister and I are close - cut her and I bleed and vice versa. Just as I finally forgave him, my sister and I, having finally managed to rebuild our relationship to the same level of trust it had always been, were sitting up one morning after a big night out and she asked me why I had never told her that I had been raped.

Now this was a bit left field for me because you see, I haven't been.

He told my sister that I had once been raped in her house by a friend of ours. As near as I can figure it out (the timing would be about right) he did that the day after I considered killing myself & instead told him that enough was enough.

I forgave him what he did to me but the pain in her voice and the look in her eyes as she confronted me about it were pure fucking agony for me - to realise that she had been carrying around this totally unnecessary burden of guilt for those years pretty much brought me to my knees. I still haven't managed to convince her that it didn't happen and so she lives with a guilt that has no basis in fact and I live with the knowledge of her pain - its the ultimate mind-fuck and this was his final (and I have to admit, perfect) revenge on me for not giving in and going back to him and for daring to threaten him (never mind he'd threatened me many times).

Unfortunately my sister didn't confront me at the time (because we weren't on our normal footing) - she did however cut that friend out of our lives completely and I never really understood why until that morning years later when somehow the topic of PB came up and she told me what he had said.

The pain and upset that he caused my sister with that one lie was astronomical - for her to think that I had been raped in her house by our friend and that I hadn't trusted her enough or that I had been too scared to come to her and tell her was torture for her. She feels that she failed as a sister because its always been her job to protect me.

Thanks to that psycho my sister lives with her guilt, we both live with her pain, my brother in law lost one of his best friends (the guy that PB accused was his best friend from primary school) and the accused lost his friends and was cut with no reason given.

Pure Evil.

I found out purely by chance recently that he has a degenerative disease and is seriously ill. He has also been having fits and they don't know why. I take no pleasure in it but I can't feel sorry for him either. If I feel anything I think its pity, but precious little. Karma baby... sometimes it takes years, but the universe gets a little busy sometimes...

Its been 6 or 7 years now since we split and I still have trouble trusting people, particularly men, because my own judgement let me down so badly once before that it's been a lot harder to regain that then I thought it would be. I used to love meeting new people and for ages i hated it, I am starting to enjoy it again though I feel so socially inept sometimes and painfully shy which is something that I had never experienced before.

Learning to let go of my defences is going very slowly as is learning to express hurt as hurt rather then anger, learning to open up and to express what I am actually feeling rather then bottling it all up and pretending.

I panic if my partners are too demanding and fight like hell if I think they are trying to cage me. It does however make me very accepting of the fact that they sometimes like their space as well.

I am laughing more though, not as much as I used to as a child but I am taking joy in my life and sometime soon I may even start singing again. I'm finally living in colour and its wonderful.

I have learnt that I am stronger then I ever thought I was and I have now developed a brutally realistic side that tends to balance out my idealistic tendencies. It's probably for the best - I was far too naive before. It's also made me very protective of anyone who I think is 'nice' or 'good'. I can be vicious in the defence of the people I love or who I feel need help. I love an underdog more then ever now because I know how important it is to have someone strong in your corner when you can't carry the burden on your own.

I have learnt that having sex with someone you hate is one of the most soul destroying things you can do and its because of all the months I did that, I am now unable to take sex lightly. When I am having sex is the one time I don't hold any barriers in place and its very hard to ressurect them with someone afterwards, so for that reason I have to totally trust my partner.

I have learnt that sometimes bad things happen to good people and you can't control that all the time, but you can control your response to the situation. I have also learnt that my friends are pretty amazing people.

One of the most important things I have had to re-learn is that faith in other people is often a self-fulfilling prophesy - if you expect the best from people, they will very rarely let you down. Or they very rarely let me down anyway.

I have only ever discussed the details of this with 2 of my friends, the others know I had a bad relationship but they don't know the details as I don't feel comfortable talking about it. I don't like being thought of as a victim. I'm stronger then that.

Aabout a year ago C said to me something about how much it affected my life and how long its taken me to recover. She wished that I had never met him or that she had fought harder to get me to break up with him when we first started going out (She never liked him but not because she thought he was like that). I told her that there can be no regrets for either of us. If it hadn't been for him, I would be a completely different person to who I am now… and who I am now really isn't so bad.

Lucky for her, she agreed. :-)

I have hope, I have faith and I know I am loved - everything else will come from there.