Behind closed doors, there’s an epidemic. 1
in 4 women will be affected by it. UK police receive one call about it every
minute, an estimated 1,300 calls a day or over 570,000 a year, though less than
40% of cases are reported. No other crime has a rate of repeat victimisation so
high(1).
I am talking, of course, of domestic violence.
Domestic violence can happen to anyone.
Imagine for one moment that it’s you that
it’s happening to. You dealing with the carnage.
Until you look back, you don’t even identify
it as domestic violence: that’s something that happens to other people, right?
You don’t use words like ‘abuser’ or ‘beaten’ or ‘raped’. That sounds so
serious! You use minimizing language, always. And you’re so confused: tired and
scared and confused. Hell, the confusion! He’s so attentive to start with, so
thoughtful to start with, you don’t even notice things, or at least nothing to
put a finger on until it’s got Bad, by which time it’s too late. Then it gets
Worse, and the language ends: you have no point of reference; you stop speaking.
It begins with the odd comment about what you’re
wearing. A few snidey remarks about your friends. Then: jealousy. Full on. He says you’re flirting with other men and though God knows
that’s the last thing on your mind, you feel confused. You don’t meet your
friends to save the arguments so there’s no one about to question his behavior,
to get an opinion from, to back you up. You think - maybe I am flirty though I
don’t mean to be.
I’ll try harder.
There’s been a gradual chip, chip, chipping
at your self esteem. You were always a little unsure of yourself and now that’s
become a yawning chasm of lost-ness. He tells you he loves you but he
criticizes you, he gets angry, he gets so angry these days but he says it’s
your fault and maybe it is. The things he seemed to like about you to start
with, your rebelliousness, your intelligence, now seem to annoy him. You drink more
to help with the feelings. Sometimes when he’s shouting it doesn’t feel like you’re
really there at all.
Then it gets physical.
This is when people will tell you you
should have left. People are full of helpful advice like that after the fact.
I’m sorry, did I say advice? I meant judgment. He tells you it’s your fault and
these people, the people you used to think would help you, hospital staff, they
say the same thing. Look at her going back to him! He told you people couldn’t
be trusted and you know what, he’s right. At your lowest point people have
exempted him and blamed you.
You feel like scum.
You feel like you’re going crazy, and you
know the drink’s a problem, the drugs are a problem. Together with the self
harm they were things that helped you to feel in control even if only a little,
to make it a little less painful, the self inflicted damage a means to ease the
suffering in your head. He tells you you’re fucking lucky to have him, and you
believe him. You look crazy but he doesn’t, you sport the bruises from the last
beating and end up hiding at home, ashamed to be seen, afraid to be judged. He
goes where he likes when he likes, he sees other women, and he’ll tell you all
about that and how much better they are than you when he gets home.
You’re afraid you’ll be sectioned.
He used to be so sorry and upset when he
hit you, but it wears off. His anger fades quicker than the bruises but can be
triggered in an instant. You feel yourself splitting, mind and body separating
out during the beatings, during the violence.
You are so, so lonely. And scared. Everything that’s
close to you is broken and destroyed, and at some point you realize you’ve lost
even yourself. You see it in the eyes,
in your eyes: an emptiness that speaks of exhaustion and pain and fear and hurt
almost above and beyond human endurance. You’re here in body but it’s less
clear how present you really are in any meaningful sense.
Things are happening that you didn’t know
went on. Sex-wise he’s opened your eyes to a whole load of stuff. Did I say it
gets confusing? It gets a little confused. He’ll be nice then he’ll be nasty,
taunting you for being frigid, for not doing what ‘real women’ do. He shows you
magazines and dvds to teach you how it’s done, and you’re scared to say no. You
used to say no, but the rows and the violence mean you don’t say too much these
days, and it doesn’t stop him anyway. Anything you say can tick him off and
make his fist itch.
It’s painful and degrading but it'll get worse.
He breaks your boundaries one by one. He
wants anal sex. He wants to use toys. He wants to take pictures. There are certain
points where lines are crossed and power shifts to him. You both know it though
it’s unspoken. After the pictures he has it in his power to humiliate you
publicly.
Now he brings in other people.
These ‘friends’ of his, his dealer plus
entourage, he wants you to ‘look after’ them, and you’ve learned what that
means. Outsiders will say if it was that bad you would have left, but it’s not
that simple. Just because you’re still here doesn’t mean you want to be. If you
could walk away, you would, but the last time you tried that, you got caught
and by the time he’d finished with you, you weren’t walking anywhere anytime
soon. He tells you he’ll finish the job off if it ever happens again. He
doesn’t let you leave the house. He has the money and the car keys. You have a
serious addiction and you’re in trauma. You have PTSD and it makes you easy to
manipulate. Sometimes you can’t move, sometimes you can’t speak, sometimes it’s
like he’s shouting at you but there’s actually no one there.
Choices? Clear thinking? I might have said
it before but it gets confused.
Memories are fractured and best forgotten.
You can’t take tomorrow for granted. The mind is resilient, the body resilient,
until it isn’t. Fainting. Chest pains, wrist pains, leg pains, abdo pains,
heavy bleeding, sickness, gashes, bruises, eyes so swollen you can’t see for a
while, will never see as well out of after. The vision returns, but it’s not
the same. Head injuries. The drugs and drink help the forgetting, the head injuries
help the forgetting. You don’t half bleed a lot from your head. You take care
of the body as best you can, you lie awake some nights scared to sleep in case
you don’t wake up, looking at the belt draped on the end of the bed, a dark
reminder.
If he lets you eat, you eat. If you keep
these men happy, maybe he won’t hit you. Maybe not tonight anyway. You hurt all
the time, from the beatings, from the fucking. Words like ‘pimping’ won’t come
into your vocabulary until much later, and even then they’re hard to say – too
real, too painful. Instead you think in colours and numbers, in rhymes and
letters. Anything not to let the reality in. You need safety, everybody needs
safety, but no place is safe. You tell yourself: I’m not really here, it’s not
really me, it’s just a body but I’m not that, I’m someplace else.
You develop different headspaces.
Time passes and then, miracle of miracles,
you manage to escape.
A happy ending? Not quite, not yet. If you were looking for a movie ending, riding off into the sunset, you'd be disappointed.
This is just the beginning. You try to fit
in, to act ‘normal’ but you don’t know how. Your recent experiences have geared
you to survival rather than living, have left you with massive trauma that
confuses everything, the past seems more real than the present at times with
the PTSD, stuff triggers it all the time and you feel disorientated and lost.
The loneliness continues, even in company. You begin piecing stuff together,
trying to figure: what the fuck happened here? You’re scared to talk about it,
afraid of more judgment, knowing from past experience that people will take it
more as a reflection of you and your character than a reflection of him.
The pain and the realization of what went
before, what you couldn’t let yourself know, it catches you up. Denial kept you
alive and it’s fucking hard to give it up, especially now you’re off the drink
and drugs. You get nightmares and flashbacks, wake up soaked in sweat, you
throw up, you cry sometimes but more often you don’t. You have scars, you don’t
trust, your body upsets you, constant reminder that it is of where you've been,
of what they did. You start to see how it could have been, how it should have been, and the stark, painful
contrast of how it actually was.
Feelings and images burned into your body
and mind, replaying.
You’ve seen stuff you didn’t want to see,
that no one should ever have to see, experienced stuff that makes vocabulary
seem redundant, and you realize that scary as it is to talk about it, you’re
gonna have to find someone, try and do it somehow, because it’s too much on
your own. You can’t do it on your own anymore. Images you’ve tried to bury and
forget forcing their way out. They make you sick, the words make you sick and
the prospect of trusting someone with stuff so close to you that sometimes it
feels as if it is you makes you sick.
But what are the options?
That was me. That was how it was, how it
is, for me. It was me but it could have been you. It’s an epidemic. 1 in 4
women will be affected by domestic violence. The stories vary but the themes
are the same. Being raped, being pimped, pornography can happen to anyone.
Don’t see this issue as something that doesn’t concern you because it does. My
ignorance was bliss until suddenly it wasn’t. We’re all in this together. The
abuser needs to be made visible. Blame shouldn’t fall on an already traumatised
victim. Women shouldn’t be living in fear of being abused, whether that be
inside or outside the home. Every time we blame a victim of domestic violence,
we exonerate her abuser. Every time we shine the light of judgment on her, we
let him continue to live in the shadows.
On average, two women a week are killed by
a violent partner or ex-partner (2). People are dying and it needs to stop. And people are
surviving and dealing with judgment and willful misunderstanding on a daily
basis. That needs to change too.
It was me but it could have been you.
(1) See www.womensaid.org.uk
for statistics
(2) (Povey, (ed.), 2005; Home Office, 1999; Department of Health, 2005.)
Also thanks to Rebecca Mott for ending my writing block!
Also thanks to Rebecca Mott for ending my writing block!
