Constant Harassment

Life has not turned out the way I imagined. It isn’t even remotely close. Life for me is an endless story of pain, grief and seclusion. The more I fight it, the more of a recluse I become.

Currently I’m being subversively attacked by a couple using intellectual warfare to wear me down. People are so focused on the physical side of domestic violence that they over look the mental abuse that happens just as frequently. Even after removing myself and my children from the home of my attacker 9 years ago, the relentless attacks upon me continue. There seems no end in sight until my youngest child turns 18, but even then there is no guarantee  he and his wife will stop.

They are on a campaign to ruin my reputation. They have isolated me from some family members and lost me friends. The constant lies they tell those closest to me are beyond vile. Its repugnant the stories they tell. Yet they continue to try and paint me as the hateful woman. The mother not allowing her children to see their father. They paint me as the attacker, the abuser, the wretched parent who beats her children. They make me out to be some vengeful harpy, intent on revenge.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Am I glad my children are refusing to have contact with their father? Bet your bottom dollar I am. Now I know they are safe, but this doesn’t give me any sort of sick pleasure. I find it saddening that they have no father they can love and look up too. That they are missing out on all of the extended family from their father’s side, makes me want to cry. Family should mean so much to each other but in cases of domestic violence family takes on a whole new meaning.

My children are not so trusting of people, they are quiet and reserved in new situations. Always analyzing for a threat. It takes them a long time to truly warm up to new people but due to the scars they bare, they never fully give of themselves. As a mother watching them always being on alert breaks my heart.

So I do my best to hide the attempts of control from their father, the attacks he makes on my character to all those who will listen (even forced too in some circumstances). I don’t tell them when he demands things or uses their school as a way to try and undermine me. I don’t tell them he has been in the area dropping things at the school to play the ‘poor father’ card. I hide the endless threats from his lawyer.

My daughter only recently learned of the physical damage I received from him by accident. As she was too young to remember when I left, she has no memory of his abuse, just a vague feeling that not everything was right. The knowledge that her father had physically harmed me, left me with a permanent injury made her scream in torment. She cried and ranted, stormed around the house slamming items down on the table. Her rage, her pain was more than she could handle. It made her more adamant she never wanted to see him again.

In her mind that was over stepping the line. Her father had no right to harm me just as no one has the right to harm her. Now every time I drop a glass or can’t carry the shopping she curses her father. This is not healthy for her and I wish she would let it go for her own mental state. But the slightest show of pain or discomfort from me has her face turn to stone as the fire of loathing burns within.

So now I wait……wait for the next round of the assault.  There is no protection for women in my situation. Just an endless cycle of highly intelligent attacks.

 

P.T.S.D. and me

It has been 19 years since his hand clenched my throat. 19 long years, but it still feels like yesterday. I can still feel the pressure of his hand as he squeezed. I remember the fear, the difficulty to breathe. The only difference now is, I don’t let that fear, that crushing feeling of fear to over whelm me.

Some would ask what I did to deserve such treatment, or why I haven’t gotten over it. I can never forget it. I have tried and as for getting over it, I have in a manner of sorts. I sit here typing while I feel the all too familiar pressure on my throat. I haven’t buckled at the knees or become a weeping mess. I carry on as normal but every time I think of that moment, the pressure returns. You wouldn’t even know it does, as I have become very good at covering up my emotions.

As to how it happened let me tell you.

I had a very stressful pregnancy with my 2nd child. I was in and out of hospital, had doctors visiting me during the middle of the night and my partner being very adamant he didn’t want another child. We were living in the same house but leading single lives. I slept in a little storage room across from the toilet and laundry. It had enough space for a single bed and nothing more. The cold air from the laundry window seemed to find ways into my little room, no matter what I did. It was cold and bleak. I could of bunked in with my almost 2 year old bub, but as I was often up and down all night I didn’t. He was already such a handful that I didn’t want to add anything else like lack of sleep to his already existing behaviors. A Doctor scorned me for living in such conditions. He couldn’t believe I was being treated this way, but it was either I slept in that little room or try and sleep in a bed with a man who hated me. Safer in the little room.

Needless to say the pregnancy was horrible, my situation was awful and family and friends didn’t really help. They all tried to help in their own special ways but ultimately they pushed me back into the arms of the man who would later strangle me. I don’t blame them, I just wish one of them, just one person asked me what was really going on? Instead I was given the advice ‘think of the children, they need both parents’. What support I really needed was ‘it is ok, we will support you to raise the children alone’. Even now I’m scorned when ever I mention the kids are better off without their father or when my son calls his biological father ‘sperm donor’. It isn’t my words, it is all my son’s. He believes the title of father or dad is only for those that deserves it. But I digress. That may be a topic for another day.

I was pushed back into a relationship with my abuser by well meaning people. I was too weak, too lost to stand up for myself. I had no fight left in me. Soon after my beautiful baby boy was born and I was in mothers bliss. I loved everything about him from the very first moment I held him in my arms. He was perfect to me. He could of had 10 limbs and 3 eyes and rainbow coloured but I wouldn’t have cared. I had wanted him so badly, so selfishly that just to hold him was worth all the risks.

A few weeks after he was born he was sick. I was up all night trying to soothe him and then up all day looking after a 2 year old who was reacting badly at having a baby brother take away every ones attention from him. A week of this left me totally distraught. I had no help, hardly any sleep and my partner being very grumpy because things were not being done. The washing, meals, housework, absolutely everything was to much effort as I had no energy left. Then one night after 3 or 4 hours of pacing the floor with a baby I could not calm, I burst into tears. I cried with my baby. I cried tears of a mother helpless to easy her child’s suffering. My tears turned into sobs. This woke my partner.

He stormed into the living room yelling at me to shut up. I tried to explain I was beyond exhausted and very distraught that I couldn’t help stop my baby’s pain. He asked me what I expected him to do and I replied “help me”. At this he charged at me, grabbed me by the throat as he pushed me up against the mantle. The power in his hand was closing off my airway. I was terrified. I still had my baby in my arms. What would happen to him if I passed out? I stiffened, something deep within me took over, my survival instinct. I froze, didn’t say a single word, didn’t move, kept taking in any air I could and most of all made sure my little baby was safe in my arms, away from the anger of his father. I feared for both our lives.

He continued to scream at me only inches from my face, his hand pushing on my throat while I still tried to breathe.

“I have to go to work in the morning so shut that fucking baby up” he screamed. Then he stormed off back to bed.

Tears broke free, I could feel the overwhelming emotions from being attacked. The fear, the hurt, the shame. Quick as I could I went to the room furthest away from him, the laundry, where I sat on the floor with my sick but safe baby and did my best to control the sound level of my sobbing. I stayed there all night rocking my son. I was too terrified, too shocked to do anything else.

To me it felt like his rage lasted forever, not the few short minutes it did. His actions though have lasted these last 19 years and will probably be with me for the rest of my life, as do many of the other things he did not only to me but my children. I have been told I have PTSD because of the abuse I suffered, mainly psychological abuse but with moments of physical. It all still haunts me to this day.

I jump at shadows, run from men, undervalue myself and still don’t give myself permission to do the things in life I enjoy. I hide at home so that no one can hurt me again. Memory triggers can make me go quiet or run away. The one thing I’m trying to overcome is his hulking presence in my everyday life. It is hard to do when for years you were told you were not good enough at anything or for anybody. I’ll win this battle eventually. He might of frightened me half to death that night, but I’m taking control now. My life is my own, not his.

19 years ago he took more than my breathe, he destroyed a large part of me. Now I intend to sow the seeds in my life garden, tend to them and watch them grow as I finally grow into me, PTSD and all.