How to support me

Its not enough to want to support me. You have to listen to what I am saying, me the real person that I am. If it is me that you truly want to support you have to understand that I know what is best for me and respect that by doing as I ask. It hurts like no other pain I know making you go away from me. My heart is broken and I do not know if it can recover. I do not want another relationship. I can not imagine that I will ever trust another man again, that I will ever be able to be alone with a man again. You have done this to me, you are responsible. How can it help me, support me, to have to spend time with you. Face this truth about yourself, and act on it willingly, kindly, gently, without reproach, if you have truly changed, if you want to support me.

When you ask me repeatedly if you can help decorate the house, and I repeatedly tell you no, what I see is a man who wont take no for an answer. When you talk about wanting to support me, wont take no for an answer, What I see now is a man who wants his own needs met. When you say that you have dome all that I asked of you, that you have faced up to what you did, yet you expect me to be able to work together with you after so short a time, it says to me that you do not understand at all, what you have done to me. If you really understood the effect of your actions on me you would understand that it is far too soon for me to be able to ask you nito my home again. You talk about us being friends spending time together as a family, given time. How much time do you think it takes to heal from domestic violence? Have you educated yourself? Read any resources on it? Do you know what you are asking me to do? What have you done to reasure me that I am safe?

How will I live now that I am free

How shall I live now that I am free
Now that I no longer have to justify prefering two spoons of jam to one
Now that setting the table is a job I leave undone

How shall I live now that I am free
Now that I no longer find comfort in stolen moments alone
Now that I do not flinch in fear at the sound of the key in the lock

How shall I live now that I am free

I am Invisiable

I am disabled, I am invisible
I am middle-aged, I am invisible
I am the victim of domestic violence, I am invisible
I was abused by my mother, I am invisible

I am sick, I am invisible
I am tired, I am invisible
I am angry, I am

My anger

My Anger

My anger is a howl in the dark
My anger is a wimper in the night
My anger is bottomless, fathomless, endless
I have no rest from its unceasing hunger and want
I have no time for ordinary joys and sorrows
I have no patience with those who would have me be patient
My anger demands vengence and it demands it now

Angry Update I

I cried myself to sleep last night, you bastard. While you are off at denial camp, I'm dealing with all the shit you piled on me for years. While you are out saving the planet and being a hero to the dumpster divers and peace protesting youth, I'm in our middle-class semi, stripping wall paper and choosing paint. So that our house sells. While you paint rainbow fences, I'm struggling to keep my job to provide for our kids and see them through university. While you are spending time with your new girlfriend I'm dealing with our 18 year-old's pain that you still dont even fucken see her for who she is. She doesnt like camping, she doesnt want to see you in a grotty caravan, you are supposed to know that by now you idiot. She is not just your daughter she is a wonderful, beautiful person in her own right, a person who doesnt like dumpster diving, and her dad living on the dole when he could get a job. You idiot.

My abuser III

You are a hypocrite. You are a hypocrite. You are a hypocrite. You are a hypocrite. You are a hypocrite. You are a hypocrite. You are a hypocrite. You are a hypocrite. You are a hypocrite. You are a hypocrite. You are a hypocrite. You are a hypocrite. You are a hypocrite. You are a hypocrite. You are a hypocrite. You are a hypocrite. You are a hypocrite. You are a hypocrite. You are a hypocrite. You are a hypocrite. You are a hypocrite. You are a hypocrite. You are a hypocrite. You are a hypocrite. You are a hypocrite. You are a hypocrite. You are a hypocrite. You are a hypocrite. You are a hypocrite. You are a hypocrite. You are a hypocrite. You are a hypocrite. You are a hypocrite. You are a hypocrite. You are a hypocrite. You are a hypocrite. You are a hypocrite. You are a hypocrite. You are a hypocrite. You are a hypocrite. You are a hypocrite. You are a hypocrite. You are a hypocrite. You are a hypocrite. You are a hypocrite. You are a hypocrite. You are a hypocrite. You are a hypocrite. You are a hypocrite. You are a hypocrite. You are a hypocrite. You are a hypocrite. You are a hypocrite. You are a hypocrite. You are a hypocrite. You are a hypocrite. If you want to end violence, deal with the fact that you are an abuser.

My Abuser II

A mother who abuses her daughter, a mother who sexually abuses her daughter is a monster. Right? That is how such women are always described, that is how society thinks of them. Well society has it wrong. I know. I've been there. Its wrong on so many levels. First, there are no monsters. Just people. Call the abuser a monster and it implies we will see them coming, recognise them on a dark night, on a tube train, in our kids scout meeting, when we meet them in a pub. Call an abuser a monster and it distances them from us ordinary decent folk. You wouldn't ask a monster round for tea, or to baby-sit your kids, or to marry you and have kids with you, you would know better. So call an abuser a monster and you blame the victim. second, it means it should be really easy to realize that you have been abused. Call an abuser a monster and it means that the family of an abuser has been living with a monster, and that's not the kind of thing you miss, in an ordinary boring house, in an ordinary boring street. So call an abuser a monster and you blame the non-abusive parent. Third, they just aren't. My mum was an ordinary, middle-class lady, who went to coffee mornings, did voluntary work, had her pals over. She had a quirky sense of humor. She liked to go shopping. She loved a bargain. She bought premium bonds and dreamed of the big win and buying a big house and living quietly in the country. She was loved and admired by her husband and three sons. She cared deeply about her children, and worked hard to ensure that they did well in school. She helped me with my homework. She cooked us nutritious home made meals for lunch and dinner. She was an excellent baker. I loved her and she abused me. It took a long time before I could face that, name it. Because she wasn't a monster, no one else saw the abuse, and I found it hard to see it for what it was. So next time you are about to call an abuser a monster, don't. Not because they deserve your sympathy, they don't. What they do is monstrous, and whatever their past, they choose to do it. So you should be angry and outraged, but please think of the weight your words carry.

The Real Choice II

Okay so I stayed with my abuser because I couldn't risk him getting visitation rights if I left and I thought I could protect them better from him if I was there. Of course as in all things this was just one factor, but it was the one thing that always stopped me. Yes, I hoped he would change, yes I tried to get him to change, yes I still loved him. I still do. So it wasn't some cold calculated step on my part. It was the final deciding factor. So many times people outside an abusive relationship make judgements about what the person being abused should do, without necessarily thinking through the possible consequences of those choices. Many women stay out of a very realistic fear that they will be killed if they try to leave, or that their children will be forcibly taken from then and they will never see them again. Many with children leave and find that their relationship with the children's father worsens and the father takes it out on the children. These are not easy choices and those who judge really don't know what they themselves would do when faced with such choices

The Abuse

Things he did:

1. Threw one of our puppies across the room, infront of our 12 year-old daughter. For about two years, everytime he raised his voice after that the puppy peed herself.
   
2. Rushed at me as I was sitting at the dining room table, and knocked me, the chair and the table over.
3. Pushed me up against the wall, bruising my arm.
4. Called me a f*cking b*tch.
5. Screamed at me a list of all the things I'd ever done, that he thought were wrong.

Things that set him off

1. Forgetting to put the pepper on the dining room table
2. Telling him I couldn't reach the cupboard he had tidied
3. Finding a rotten courgette in the fridge
   
4. Not getting a job he applied for
   

The Real Choice

In order to understand why I stayed with an abusive husband for over 20 years, you have to understand what my real choices were. The nature of his abusive behaviour was such that I didn't have a chance of winning sole custody of the children, without visitation rights. He never hit them. He pushed and grabbed me. He shouted at me in fits of rage that made his face turn purple, snot stream from his nose and spittal fly from his mouth. He called me names. He had tantrums over the mundane annoyances of everyday life. He blamed it all on me.

It was abuse. It was wrong, but it wasn't enough to keep him from the kids if I had left him. So what were my choices?

1. Stay and try and make the best of it for my kids, acting as a buffer, telling them what he was doing was wrong and that I was trying to get him to stop
2. Leave and accept the courts decisions, which would have almost definitely resulted in his getting some form of regular contact with them
3. Leave and take measures to keep him away from them

I rejected choice number 3, because I knew that he was controlling and resourceful and I didn't judge that I would suceed in alluding him. I rejected choice number 2 because I was sure that if I left him he would be very angry and that he would not cope well with the children on his own. At this point I figured he would either totally lose it and do them or me real physical damage or he would keep his behaviour under enough control that the courts would continue to allow contact.

So what it boiled down to was a choice between staying with him and helping them cope with his violent rages, or leaving him and leaving them to cope with his violent rages alone. For me there was no choice. I stayed until both my daughters were in there late teens and could make their own choices about contact.

Hey Sisters: Let me tell you why you don't understand

You don't understand why, you don't understand why we stay. You don't understand why we stay through the shoving and the name-calling. You don't understand because you don't listen.

You don't listen. You don't listen when we tell you, when we tell you the truth. You don't listen when we tell you that we stay because we love him, that we think he is a good man at heart, that he is really sorry and wants to change. You are so busy trying to get us to leave, that you drown our voices, with your earnest cries to get us to see things your way.

So we never get to speak, to finish our thoughts, to go the next step, to really see for ourselves why we stay. Did you ever stop to consider that you really don't know best. With your feminist analysis, and your theories of male violence, did you ever stop to think that you don't know best.

My abuser

For over twenty years he practiced domestic violence against his wife his kids and the two dogs. He's living in a peace camp now, practicing non-violent reistence to the nuclear threat. what makes him think he can change the hearts and minds of the keepers of the nuclear arsenal, when he couldn't change his own behaviour, couldn't wage peace in his own heart, in his own home.

Question that wont quit

Why did I stay with an abusive man for 27 years?

Where did it all go wrong?

How can a couple go from bothe being committed to feminism and having an equitable relationship, to him running at me and knocking over me and the chair I'm sitting in, screaming and yelling a litany of my faults, calling me a bitch?

Why do I still want him to see, to really see what he has done to me?

How could I have been abused by a Peace Activist?

5 Things I've never said to my abusive husband

1. You are not a feminist. You cant shove your wife up against the wall, holding onto her arm so tight it leaves bruises and be a feminist.

2. Its not a two way thing. You abused me. I was infuriatingly untidy. Abuse is different from being annoying.

3. What you did to me was domestic violence.

4. I dont care if the other kids taunted you and called you smelly, I'm never going to sleep with a man who doesnt wash

5. Just because your father abused you, doesnt mean you understand how I feel. You see you grew up and the power imbalance between you and your Dad ended. He stopped being scary when you became a man. I never stopped being scared of you because you will always be 6 foot 2 and bigger and stronger than me. I never stopped being scared of you because you are scary.

i'm not on a journey

i'm not on a healing journey, i'm not on a journey from victim to survivor, i'm not on any kind of journey. Thing happen, some of them suck. Some very sucky things happen to me. Now I live with the pain they left me every single day. I cant get a bus and take a trip and excape that pain.

I dont have baggage to dump or issues to work through. I was abused by the people I love the most. It hurts, it hurts a lot. I'm angry and I want the abuse to stop. I want people who abuse the power they have in their homes over children and wifes and girlfriends and husbands and lovers and sisters and brothers to be stopped.

survival is not enough

Its just another sop from people who think they understand. As if changing our name from Victim to Survivor will make it all okay.

Well I am a Victim, a Victim of childhood sexual abuse, a Victim of incest and a Victim of domestic violence.

I did not survive these things intact. Calling my a Survivor makes me sound noble. It ignores the blood that runs in the gutters, the blood of the children who died, the blood of the wifes and girlfriends who died. It ignores the silent screams of the souls locked in the torment of mental and psychological disintigration. It buys into the idea that surviving abuse makes people stronger.

Abuse didn't make me stronger. It wrecked my immune system. I have two separate chronic neurological conditions. I walk with a cane. I'm afraid of the dark. I cant sleep at night.

People talk of empowering victims to become survivors. But that is not enough. Survival is not enough. Being a victim is not wrong. Moving from being a victim to being a survivor is not progress. I will always be a victim and yes I will always be a survivor in the strict dictionary definition of the word. I didn't die from the abuse, I survived it, but that doesn't define me any more than being a Victim of abuse does. I'm a Victim and a Survivor and I'm angry and I want more. Survivalk is not enough.