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heatherleeson-blog1 · 7 years ago

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why do we hate domestic violence survivors so much?

A few weeks ago, while I was staying with my parents, my younger brother was asked by a good friend of his to help her move. For the last couple of months her ex-boyfriend had been verbally harassing, threatening and intimidating her, and trying to trash her reputation around our home town. He spent a lot of time and energy calling her a whore and a slut, both to her face and behind her back, inconsolably furious as he apparently was, that she had the nerve to continue existing after they had broken up. This culminated one night when he threatened to send a group of his mates around to her place to ‘bash’ her. A bunch of guys actually did turn up in the middle of the night, and while they didn’t get physical, they screamed abuse at her from the lawn while she hid inside with her female house mate. She decided to move out shortly after.

A couple of nights later, while my brother, his girlfriend and I sat in his parked car outside the local Indian restaurant waiting for our take away, we talked about what happened. We were disgusted but sadly unsurprised. It wasn’t the first time any of us had witnessed domestic violence or partner abuse. Nor will it be the last. As my brother discussed their plans to move her belongings over to her parents’ house, I sat in silence, still reeling from what I’d just heard. Another friend, another incident. Another shitty, abusive partner. Another woman fearing for her safety, turning her life upside down to keep herself from harm. Because she had the misfortune to date someone who would later turn out to be a piece of shit. She’d done nothing wrong and was suffering 100% of the consequences. It’s a story I’ve been told over and over and over again, from friends, family members, co-worker and strangers on the internet; I’m no longer shocked but it never fails to make me feel sick.

When confronted with an incident of domestic violence, I always assumed most people would have the same reaction as me: disgust, anger and outrage. Being threatened, abused or harassed by a partner or ex-partner (or anyone for that matter), is never ok- right? Yet when my brother told our father he’d have to cancel their plans that day so he could help his friend move, my dad seemed more annoyed than anything else. Why did he, specifically, have to be the one to help her move? (they’re best friends). Why didn’t she just call the police? (she had). Hadn’t something like this happened to her once before? (…so?) The incident was immediately waved aside as something “not to get involved in” as my father picked apart the story while demanding to know whether my brother’s friend, the victim, had “done the right thing”. Not once were the actions of her ex-partner mentioned at all.

After briefly considering screaming at my dad and thinking better of it, I went to curl up in bed and think about what I’d just heard. This woman, who after being harassed, intimidated and abused had done nothing other than try to protect herself, now had a total stranger questioning her like a criminal on trial. Time and time again, I hear people (who, I might add, have no first-hand experience with domestic violence or abuse) talk about what domestic violence victims should do. What they would do, if they were in that situation (if you’ve never experienced domestic violence, I’m happy for you and I can say with 100% certainty that you have no idea what it’s like or what you would do in that situation). This woman actually had done everything “right” - she’d gone to the police and was leaving the house immediately to try and avoid any future incidents – and yet her story still invited scepticism and a total lack of empathy from my father. I thought back to when I first left my own abuser and my dad telling me to come to him for help if I ever felt unsafe or threatened by him again. Would he be saying these things about my brother’s friend if that were his own daughter? Did he lose respect for me when he found out I had been a victim of domestic violence? Did he not realise that all DV victims are, after all, someone’s child? ��

It got me thinking, and I wondered why we treat victims of domestic violence so harshly. I’ve never heard someone talk about a victim of say, a car crash or a burglary, with the same disdain as most people do victims of intimate partner abuse. I always hear people insisting that if someone is a true victim of DV, they should come forward immediately, tell their friends and family and go to the police. That’s what I’d do, they say. But who does that actually help? From my personal experience, the most common responses to allegations of domestic violence tend to range somewhere between disbelief and indifference.

When I left my abuser 4 years ago, I specifically tried not to “make a fuss”. I had just left a terrifying situation with no idea where I was going to live or what was going to happen to me. I was scared, confused and ashamed. I didn’t want to call any more attention to myself than I already had. I told only the people closest to me the barest details of what had happened. I certainly never told any of my abuser’s friends or family, and I never even considered going to the police. It would be a long time, after lots of therapy, before I even dared to use words such as “rape” or “domestic violence” or “abuse” to describe what had happened to me. All I wanted was for everything to be over. And yet I still found myself on the receiving end of a constant barrage of unfathomably rude and upsetting comments, from both strangers and people I thought were my friends. Over and over again I heard about how I should have done this, or said that. The tiniest details of my story were pulled apart and inspected, as over and over again I was expected to re-tell, and re-live the worst moments of my life.

Why do we have such little collective empathy for domestic violence survivors? What is it about this particular form of violence that provokes such vicious criticism of its victims? Why don’t people give a damn when they hear about stories like my brother’s friend, like mine? Why do I keep getting shitty comments from people who wouldn’t know me from a bar of soap, telling me why it’s my fault for not leaving? Why is domestic violence considered a ‘personal matter’, while a random assault on the street is considered a crime? Why, after millions of women and non-binary people gave example after example of sexual harassment, assault and abuse during #metoo, do people still not think this is a problem?

We are commanded to tell our stories, only to have them immediately thrown back in our faces and torn apart in the court of public opinion. We are told over and over again, to report domestic violence and partner abuse, to come forward, to tell the people we care about what’s going on, only to be met with disdain and discomfort. Our stories make people uncomfortable, because it forces them to admit that the world might not work the way they thought it did. It’s easy to hear about a random mugging or a drunk driving accident and point the finger at the culprit. It doesn’t upset our world view. It’s harder to witness abuse happening to a friend, or a co-worker, or your sister, or your daughter, and realise that domestic violence can happen to anyone. And it’s a lot harder still to reconcile the fact that the perpetrator isn’t some scary monster, but just a regular person. Someone you might work with. Someone you’re mates with. Someone not so different from you. When we hear about domestic violence it makes us uncomfortable. So, we either turn the other way, or we turn on the victim. Much easier than admitting we’re still living in a rape culture with a serious domestic violence epidemic.

Global estimates published by the WHO indicate that about 1 in 3 women worldwide who have been in a relationship have experienced some form of physical and/or sexual violence by their intimate partner. Domestic violence is also perpetrated against men and non-binary people in high numbers as well. I guarantee that you know someone who is, or has been, in an abusive relationship. Probably multiple people. People close to you, who you care about. It’s time to stop thinking about domestic violence as ‘someone else’s problem’ and start listening to survivor’s stories, even if it makes you feel uncomfortable. Whether you’ve been in that situation yourself or not, you don’t know anyone else’s story better than them. So stop judging, and just listen.

#domestic violence #metoo

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heatherleeson-blog1 · 7 years ago

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leaving

After living overseas for the past two years, I recently returned to Australia to spend a few weeks with family over Christmas. Even though I might not have realised it at the time, a big part of why I originally moved to Germany was to run away from everything that happened to me while I was living in Sydney. It was more than just wanting to get as far away as possible from my abuser; after a while I felt like I just couldn’t tolerate spending another second in the city where I lived the worst years of my life. I lived in Sydney for a bit under three years, about half of which was spent with my ex. The other half, after I left him and tried to start my “new life” on my own, ended up being an extremely tumultuous period, filled with depression, anxiety, an eating disorder and substance abuse. I only made the trip into Sydney a couple of times during the entire six weeks I spent in Australia, and each time I found myself wanting to leave as quickly as possible.

I’ve often said that, in some ways, the period immediately after I left my abuser was more difficult to get through than the abuse itself. The 18 or so months I spent living on my own in Sydney, only a few minutes down the road from my ex, were an incredibly dark time for me. People living in domestic violence situations are often told that the best thing they can do for themselves is leave their abuser, as if all their problems will magically evaporate the minute they change their address. Even though I was no longer living with my abuser, the aftershock of his abuse was still painfully disrupting my day to day life. I was extremely unwell and constantly terrified that my ex would find me. If you’ve never been through the process of leaving an abusive partner or family member, it’s hard to describe the confronting and bewildering sensation of suddenly being thrust out on your own and attempting to lead a “normal” existence, while trying to recover from the most traumatic experience of your life.

Domestic abuse victims should “do the right thing” and leave their abusers. If you stay, you’re only bringing more misery onto yourself. Or so the story goes. So why did the process of leaving my abuser feel so awful? Why were the following months and years such an exhausting and upsetting time for me? When I moved out of my abuser’s house, our house, I thought I was making the right choice. Friends and family members praised me, there were pats on the back and plenty of well-meaning comments about what a bastard my ex was. For a couple of weeks, it was all phone calls and friends popping by to check in on me and see how I was doing, or whether I needed anything. I had a lot of support from a few friends in particular, who helped me find a new place to live and got me back on my feet. Then, a month or two later, it all just… stopped. People found new things to talk about and since I was now living in my own place, physically separated from my abuser, everyone assumed I must have been fine.

What no one realised, what my friends, family, house mates and colleagues all failed to notice, was that every day was an intense struggle for me just to stay afloat. I felt like I was drowning, and I didn’t understand why. I’d done the right thing after all, so why didn’t I feel better? In theory, everything should have been fine. I had a new house, a steady job and friends and family who loved me and cared about me. I had a new boyfriend, who doted on me. I spent Saturday nights at the pub and Sunday mornings at brunch just like everyone else. Yet day after day, for months and months on end, I woke up feeling like I was going to die. I was in a near constant state of extreme anxiety, experiencing debilitating panic attacks during the day and terrifying nightmares at night, that left me exhausted and scared to sleep. The trauma of being repeatedly sexually assaulted caused my disordered eating tendencies to develop into a full-blown episode of anorexia and bulimia. I was barely eating and spent nearly every waking minute outside of work obsessively exercising. I tried to dull the overwhelming and distressing feelings I was experiencing with drugs and alcohol, which I consumed to excess every day, without fail, until I felt numb. From the minute I woke until I finally fell asleep, my mind was consumed with obsessive thoughts of my abuser- flashbacks about things he’d done to me or violent fantasies about hurting him. I had constant headaches, stomach aches and nausea. It felt like I was always on the verge of tears. I left the house as little as possible and walked the streets with one eye over my shoulder at all times, terrified of the possibility of seeing him. When I went out, I felt disconnected from my friends and found it hard to maintain an interest in relationships or a social life. I felt like a ghost, shuffling around as I went through the motions. Everyone could see me, but I wasn’t really there. I was a shadow of the person I had been before I met my abuser.

4 years later, I’m only now beginning to feel somewhat whole again. Recovery has been a long and exhausting journey, with lots of ups and downs. Those first two years were especially hard. I know now that what I went through back then was basically a normal reaction to a traumatic event. But, like most people, I had no idea that my experience was in any way typical for a domestic violence and sexual assault survivor. Like my friends and family, I assumed that “leaving” was the hard part. I wasn’t at all prepared for the emotional journey of recovery I was about to embark on, or just how difficult it would be. I don’t blame the people around me for failing to understand what I was going through. I didn’t understand it myself. But it worries me that the general public understands so little about the struggles of survivors or how to help them in the months and years after leaving their abusers. I’m so grateful I had all those people around me to get me through those critical moments just after leaving my ex. But survivors don’t just need help in the days and weeks after they leave; the effects of the abuse they’ve suffered can be devastating and life-long. In most cases, I believe survivors can benefit from ongoing therapy and counselling to help them slowly re-build their lives. And friends and family can be an invaluable support network, even if it’s as simple as regularly checking in with survivors and remembering that emotional recovery takes more than a couple of weeks. If you’re ever confronted with a situation where someone you know needs help leaving a domestic violence situation, keep in mind that their emotional wounds will not heal the moment they leave. Leaving is not the end of domestic violence- it’s simply the first of many steps to recovery.

#ptsd recovery

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heatherleeson-blog1 · 7 years ago

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accepting your fate?

The other day a news video popped up on my Facebook feed, talking about a former nurse who was convicted of sexually assaulting several of his patients while they were recovering from surgery and still partially anaesthetised. In the video, a victim using the alias “Mary” described one of the assaults and the fact that she was unable to fight back while still under sedation. She also talked about the long-term effects the assault has had on her quality of life and how she’s coping as a victim of sexual assault, saying “It has destroyed me, my life, who I am. It's destroyed me”. One comment in particular made me stop in my tracks, it resonated with me so strongly:

“I hope one day he feels the pain that I am feeling, and I just hope one day that they say, ‘you know what? This is your fate,’ because he gave me my fate and I didn't have a choice in it.”

I’ve never heard anyone articulate it in such a way before, but it’s a feeling I myself have been struggling to deal with for the last year or two. Being assaulted by someone in such a horribly violating way, when you obviously had no say in the matter, strips you of your agency in an instant. Not just in the moments of the actual attack, but for the years following the assault, during the long and exhausting process of recovery. It changes you for life, destroying the reality you once knew and setting you on a completely different path than the one you had envisioned for yourself. Being sexually assaulted at the age of 22 completely ripped apart any plans I had for my twenties, as I have spent the last 5 years attempting to piece my life back together. While my school mates and uni friends have since gone on to build their careers, travel the world, marry and have children, I’ve been in and out of therapy, struggling to cope with the symptoms of PTSD. When my boyfriend abused and assaulted me, he unwittingly handed me my fate for the rest of my life: ‘here you go, you’re a rape victim now.’

I’ve been out of that relationship for a long time now and I’ve already made a lot of progress in my recovery. I know I’ve come a long way from the girl I was 5 years ago and my life now is comfortable and happy, for the most part. But I have to admit I often find myself feeling extremely bitter and angry at the fate I’ve been ‘given’ by my ex. I didn’t choose to be a victim of sexual assault. I didn’t choose to waste my twenties dealing with PTSD, anxiety, eating disorders and substance abuse. If I could go back in time to before I ever met my ex, I often think I would. I spend a lot of time wondering what my life would be like if we’d never met, if I was never assaulted. What kind of woman would I be now, if I hadn’t had been forced into this life of a sexual assault and domestic violence victim? The abuse I suffered didn’t just change the events of my life- it fundamentally changed me as a person. It’s affected how others see me and how I see myself. Being a victim of sexual assault is part of my identity now, whether I like it or not.

I think it’s normal and healthy to mourn the loss of the life we wanted and had stolen from us by our abusers. It’s ok to admit we’ve been victimised and that the person we were before the abuse is in some ways gone. I’ve been permanently changed by the abuse I’ve suffered and that’s always going to be part of me. The life I live now certainly isn’t the one I envisioned for myself when I was 21 years old. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t worth living. As Mary says in her interview,

“I don't consider myself a victim. I consider myself a survivor of a really bad situation. I don't think I will ever be the person that I used to be. I think it is about discovering a new person now and this isn't going to be my story anymore.”

I may not have chosen to be a victim of abuse, but I can choose to survive it and I can choose the way I want to live my life after the abuse. While it still makes me incredibly sad to think about the things that have happened to me without my consent, I’m at least somewhat comforted knowing I have control over my recovery and the type of life I want to lead moving forward. I’ve (mostly) accepted my status as a sexual assault survivor, but that doesn’t mean it has to be my entire identity. I’m not the person I was before the abuse but I do get to choose the person I want to be now.

#sexual assault

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heatherleeson-blog1 · 7 years ago

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living small

I absolutely love crime shows, especially true crime. I love these shows for a couple of different reasons, but mostly because I’m an extremely anxious person who’s constantly worried I’m about to be murdered. Maybe it’s because I watch so many crime shows, but I’m 100% convinced a murderer is just around every corner and I’m always one bad decision away from being abducted, never to be seen or heard from again. For me, watching crime shows is a kind of masochistic thrill. So, when I saw the new true crime investigative series “The Keepers” pop up on Netflix, I immediately binge-watched the entire series in one sitting. The show explores the unsolved murder of Sister Cathy Cesnik, a Catholic nun and high school teacher in Baltimore, and the growing belief among her former students that her death was part of a cover-up of sexual abuse by a number of priests at her school, including one Father Joseph Maskill. It’s a really interesting, well-researched and sensitively-made documentary and I highly recommend checking it out.

However, while the show starts out as a run of the mill true crime series, it quickly turns into something else altogether. As the film makers delve deeper into allegations of abuse at Archbishop Keough High School, they begin to uncover a decades-long campaign of church-sanctioned sexual abuse and cover-ups, with the show eventually turning into a full-blown investigation into the Archdiocese of Baltimore. Some of the show’s most heart-breaking moments are delivered during a series of interviews with one of Maskill’s victims and former students, Jean Wehner. Now in her 60’s, Jean bravely and eloquently discusses the brutal abuse she suffered at the hands of Maskill, as well as her struggles to get the Archdiocese of Baltimore to admit they knew about and covered up the abuse. As a survivor of sexual assault, I found myself constantly nodding along to Jean’s explanations of the long-term effects the abuse has had on her life. But it was one small remark, made towards the end of the final episode, that momentarily took my breath away and remained stuck in my mind as I lay awake later that night pointlessly attempting to sleep.

Reading aloud from her victim impact statement, Jean succinctly and heart-breakingly sums up the major way in which Maskill’s actions have continued to haunt her long after the abuse had ended:

“How has the abuse affected me? I have lived small.”

When I heard these words, I couldn’t help but cry. These four simple words so perfectly describe the lingering pain of sexual abuse: ‘I have lived small. I have lived scared, anxious, cautious, never breaking free from the restrains of fear you placed around me all those years ago. My entire life from that point on has been lived with one eye open, a constant glance over the shoulder, too broken from the pain I have endured to take another risk, to go outside my (extremely small) comfort zone, to really live.’ That one small phrase neatly encapsulated the frustration and sadness I had felt for the last 5 years, as I saw myself letting life pass me by while I sat frozen in fear.

Of course, anyone who spends even 5 minutes watching Jean will quickly realise what a resilient, heroic and awe-inspiring woman she is. While the abuse has clearly affected her deeply, she is by no means broken-spirited and her bravery and candour in telling her story have no doubt comforted countless other survivors on their recovery journeys. But upon hearing those words, I found my heart sticking in my throat. Although I’ve been ‘in recovery’ for a few years now, and I’m no longer struggling as much with things like disordered eating, substance abuse or PTSD-related anxiety, I have been bothered for the last year or two by the feeling that I’m just not living my life to the fullest, not living it the way I want to. There is still something holding me back, a nagging fear that what happened before might happen again. I’m so sick of living small.

Nearly 4 years after leaving my abuser, I feel like I’m entering a new chapter in my recovery journey. I see how far I’ve already come, but I know I still have a long way to go. I believe my recovery journey will last my entire life. And I’m okay with that. I never want to stop looking inside myself and figuring out how to make myself a better person. In truth, my cautiousness in the way I’ve lived my life since leaving my abuser has served a very important purpose: it’s allowed me to feel safe and slowly regain confidence in myself as I gradually edge further and further out of my protective shell and back into the land of the living. But at some point, we do need to accept that we can’t always be 100% safe from harm, and a life worth living involves taking risks and bouncing back from trauma. It’s time for me to start letting go of some of that fear and anxiety that’s been keeping me from moving on from the past and beginning the rest of my life.

#ptsd recovery #thekeepers

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heatherleeson-blog1 · 7 years ago

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the pain of healing

In some ways recovering from trauma is so much worse than the trauma itself. I was with my abuser for two years, living with him for one, and have spent the last three trying to unravel the damage he caused. The sexual abuse has been particularly difficult to process. Considering the original assaults may have only lasted a matter of minutes, the trauma of being sexually assaulted has so far been an intensely difficult three-year long process of recovery, which is still far from over.

One of the hardest parts of trying to recover from being sexually assaulted, is that I can barely remember what happened. Most people assume that if something traumatic happens to you, you would remember the details with frightening clarity. We associate PTSD with distressing flashbacks, intrusive memories of the event and a pervasive fear and desire to distance oneself from anything that could potentially remind us of the original trauma. I’ve since learned that it’s very common for victims of trauma to block out or ‘lose’ memories of a traumatic event. This is a coping mechanism, when something has happened that’s too traumatic or distressing for the brain and body to cope with. Being raped or assaulted is so traumatic for a lot of people, we simply can’t process it at the time. So we block it out, forget what happened, or our memories get muddled or confused. To this day, I have very little recollection of 99% of the times I was raped. I have no idea how many times I was even assaulted, or what my boyfriend made me do during most of the attacks.

Another issue is that my boyfriend was a manipulative, emotionally abusive narcissist. Everything had to be done his way, and if I ever tried to stand up for myself or point out that he’d abused me in any way, he would fight tooth and nail until I ‘admitted’ I was wrong. He consistently used a tactic called ‘gaslighting’, where he would deliberately confuse me and lie to me, to get me to question my recollection of certain events. If I persisted in my account of how things had transpired, he would then accuse me of lying or going crazy. It’s an extremely common technique used by narcissistic abusers, and it worked. Over a period of a year, I completely lost all sense of time and reality and no longer trusted my own memories. I truly felt like I was going insane. By that point, he could basically say anything, and I would be forced to ‘logically’ concede that it must be the truth, although I felt in my heart that it wasn’t. It’s taken years of therapy, self-reflection and speaking with other abuse survivors to piece things back together. There are still months-long periods of my life I’m completely missing.

Then there was the secrecy. As I said, at the time I didn’t even consider what my boyfriend was doing to me to be rape, although I knew I hated it and it made me feel depressed, angry and suicidal. He, of course, maintained his innocence (and still does to this day). And I was deeply ashamed and humiliated by what he’d done to me. So, I told no one. Not my best friends, not even my own mother. The several other people living with us had little to no idea what was going on behind our closed bedroom door. I was seeing a therapist at the time, but my boyfriend had begun insisting on attending some of my appointments and I was so scared of him finding out I’d told on him, I didn’t dare say anything. I even stopped writing in my diary, in case he found it and got angry at me. Once, I felt so frightened and confused, I walked down to the beach near our house and looked out at the ocean, urging myself to say the words out loud, if only to the sea, just to get them out of me. I couldn’t even open my mouth. I really had no one at that time, and I felt completely and terribly alone. The fact that I was unable to even acknowledge that I’d been assaulted meant it took years and years for me to start processing the trauma and begin my journey of recovery. I still wish I had had even one person to talk to at that time.

The year after leaving my abuser was in many ways far worse than the actual abuse. Although I didn’t realise it at the time, my brain was starting to process what had happened to me. I was extremely depressed and anxious, struggling with a horrible mix of anorexia and bulimia, and abusing drugs and alcohol as a way of coping with the after-effects of the abuse. I was getting frequent terrible headaches and I seemed to feel constantly nauseated. I found myself fantasising for hours and hours every day, of the (often violent) ways I’d like to get revenge on my ex-boyfriend. At night, I had terrible nightmares of my ex-boyfriend raping me, where I couldn’t move or make any noise. I was extremely ill for around a year, before I realised I needed to make a change and start my journey of recovery.

It wasn’t until about 18 months after I left the relationship, when a therapist even suggested the word ‘rape’. I was adamant she was wrong. I didn’t think what had happened to me ‘counted’ as rape, and I’d convinced myself it was my fault for never saying no. I felt like I’d been raped, but at the same time, I felt so guilty about ‘causing’ my own assault, I didn’t feel that I deserved to call myself a rape victim. My therapist asked me one day if he’d ever kept going after I’d said no. I lied and said yes, and she told me I’d been raped. I went home in tears, feeling more than ever that I was not only pathetic for causing my own rape, but that I was a liar and a disgrace to real rape survivors.

After I started doing my own research on sexual assault and consent, and finally started to admit that I had in fact been raped, it was like a huge weight had been lifted off my chest. I started reading a lot of books on narcissistic abuse, gaslighting, sexual assault and domestic violence which have helped me understand that, yes, what he did to me unequivocally counts as rape. As I pieced together the web of emotional and sexual abuse I’d suffered and began to recover my pre-abuse sense of self, I seemed to feel lighter and happier every day. I was starting to let go of the anger, hatred and disgust I had bottled inside me, and I began trying to treat myself with kindness and tenderness. For a long time now, things have been better. My life now, compared to what it was 3 or even 2 years ago, is like day and night. I never want to go to that place again and I don’t think I ever will.

Still, even to this day, there are things that persistently bother me. I still often have nightmares. I’m extremely wary of being touched, especially by people I don’t know. Just recently a good friend surprised me by touching my shoulder while standing behind me and I was shaky and teary for the rest of the day. I have fewer and fewer flashbacks to the actual assaults, but I find myself terrified, and almost obsessed with the idea that I’m going to be assaulted again. I often find myself fantasising, to my own horror, about what it would be like if I was raped today, by a stranger, or someone else I know. It sounds sick, but I believe it’s my brain’s way of trying to process something that it can’t quite remember. Of trying to play something out in a different way to how it originally happened. In my fantasies, I am raped and it’s awful, of course, but I acknowledge what has happened, and I tell all my friends and family, who help me, and support me. I suppose this is what I really needed when I was raped three years ago. The fantasies disturb me but I’ve stopped trying to block them out. I know it’s just another difficult, but necessary, part of recovery.

In the years following my sexual assaults, I’ve found it difficult to recover many memories of that time, and I no longer particularly want to. I’ve spoken to a lot of friends and fellow survivors who experienced many of the same problems as me in their healing journeys. I’ve stopped blaming myself for my own rapes. I know what he did to me was wrong. But I’ve found it so incredibly difficult to work through the after-effects of the trauma and let go of the hurt it caused me. I know recovery is a journey, and it’s one I’ll probably be on for the rest of my life. I try hard not to get bogged down in what happened, and instead marvel at how far I’ve come. I have good days and bad days. All I can do is treat myself with kindness, patience and respect, and remind myself that I deserve happiness and love. Everything else will follow in time.

#ptsd recovery

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heatherleeson-blog1 · 7 years ago

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what counts as sexual assault?

When my boyfriend started assaulting me, I didn’t even think to call what he was doing rape. In my mind, and I’m sure a lot of people’s minds, true rape only occurs if the victim is screaming and physically resisting, and the act itself is violent and forceful. Of course, we have these awful terms like ‘date rape’ and ‘marital rape’, which imply rape committed by someone we know and trust is somehow less traumatic or hurtful than stranger rape. It’s now been shown time and time again, that most sexual assaults are committed by someone known to the victim. Simply being someone’s spouse, lover, friend, family member or acquaintance does not grant you automatic consent. I struggled for years to even admit that my boyfriend had raped me, despite clear evidence that he had, because I simply didn’t believe what had happened to me ‘counted’ as real rape.

My boyfriend believed it was my duty as his girlfriend to give him sex whenever, and however, he wanted it. From the very start of our relationship, if I turned down sex, either because I was tired, felt sick or just wasn’t in the mood, he would grumble and moan about it for hours. A few months into the relationship, I started saying no a lot more often, as his demands for sex became more frequent and he increasingly began asking me to perform sexual acts he knew I didn’t like or was uncomfortable with. The endless complaining and pleading would last for days. Sometimes, it really was easier to just have sex with him as quickly as possible, just to get him to leave me alone. In no way did I believe that this constituted sexual assault. After all, I had eventually said yes, albeit after intense and prolonged pressure from my boyfriend.

When I really started refusing, he began making threats if I didn’t comply with his demands. Threatening to break up with me, to kick me out of our house onto the street (at this point in our relationship, the emotional abuse had gotten so bad and he had so successfully isolated me from my family and friends that I truly believed I had nowhere else to go). I would eventually say ‘yes’ to sex, because I thought it was the only option at that point. It was awful and left me feeling sad and humiliated, but I didn’t think this constituted rape or assault. I still thought it was my fault for saying yes.

At the height of the abuse, he started asking me to do things I found painful, humiliating and degrading. I begged him not to make me. He started viciously verbally attacking me, insulting me and picking huge fights. Every time I refused, I would hear about how I was a cold, frigid, prudish bitch who just wanted to hurt him. For hours and hours, days and weeks on end. He had twisted the situation around so much, everything had somehow become my fault (this is an extremely common tactic of narcissistic abusers). I was the one who was hurting him, who didn’t love him enough. At one point, he actually convinced me I had deep-seated sexual issues and I began to seek professional help at his insistence. I wasted so much time, money and energy on research, medication and gynecologist and psychologist appointments to try and ‘fix’ my so-called sexual problems. Still, the threats continued. Every day he would threaten to kick me out or break up with me if I wasn’t ‘cured’ quickly enough. On multiple occasions, he actually got me to pack up my things and shoved me, sobbing, out the front door, only to allow me back in a few hours later, after I had ‘learned my lesson’. Later on, he even forced himself into one of my therapy sessions and demanded to know when I was going to get better. He set me a deadline: I must start having sex with him by the end of the month, or I would be out for good. ‘Agreeing’ to have sex with him made me feel disgusting, scared and angry. I was so depressed, anxious and stressed and, although I was unaware of it at the time, it was around this point that I started to exhibit signs of my eating disorder. I felt terrible all the time, and deeply hurt and betrayed by my boyfriend. In my heart, I knew what he was doing was fundamentally and morally wrong, but I did not believe I was being raped.

Then one night he started pressuring me, yet again, to have anal sex with him. It had become an obsession of his, and one which only grew stronger the more I refused to do it. I’d told him so many times how painful and uncomfortable I found it, but he told me I was being a frigid bitch by saying no. That night he finally managed to wear me down. I was exhausted from fighting him and thought it would be better for everyone if I just said yes. It was so obvious that I didn’t want to do it. I’d told him so many times. I was so upset and it hurt so much. I was wincing and crying out in pain. After he finished he told me it was hard for him to enjoy it when I was crying so much.

After that night, I basically shut down. I know now that at that point he had been raping me for months, and that night was merely the straw that broke the camel’s back. He maintained (and still does to this day), that what he did to me was fine. Not rape. I had said yes so what was the problem? I never technically said no, after all. So, I blamed myself. I was the foolish one for saying yes and it was my fault I felt this way. I was so despondent. There was a feeling inside me I hope to never experience again. An anger, a hatred, a disgust so intense, that was not allowed to be turned on its true target, so I turned it on myself. I felt like a prisoner trapped in my own body, the place where I’d been so intimately violated, and I wanted to die. It’s so clear to me now, more than three years later, that he raped me. Of course he did. He raped me, over and over again, because he could. Because I didn’t know I was allowed to say no. Because he never gave me that option.

30 no’s and a yes is not consent. Pressuring someone to say yes is not consent. Using any form of bullying, threats, bribes, manipulation or emotional abuse to force someone to ‘agree’ to sex is rape. Too many people, my ex-boyfriend included, are still stuck on this outdated notion of ‘no means no’. So many people seem to think that if the victim doesn’t say no in the moment, if they don’t scream or fight back, then it can’t be rape. After we broke up, I tried multiple times to confront my ex about assaulting me, but he refused to admit that what he did was rape. I think he knows what he did was wrong but I honestly don’t know if, even now, he would consider what he did to be rape. He just doesn’t see it that way. I’m sure the vast majority of people, if you asked them, would never admit to raping someone or even considering raping someone. But if you were to ask them if they’ve ever pestered someone for sex until they’ve given in? If they’ve ever complained, pleaded, bullied or insulted someone to get sex? If they’ve ever pressured someone into saying yes, after they’ve repeatedly said no, or continued with sex when their partner was clearly upset, crying, or in pain? I’m afraid more people than we’d like to believe have done this at one point or another. And it’s rape. Just because the person who assaulted you was your spouse, lover or friend, does not mean you owed them sex. True consent is a mutual verbal, physical, and emotional agreement that happens without manipulation, threats, or head games. It needs to be enthusiastic and able to be revoked at any time. Anything else is rape or sexual assault. And not enough people know that.

It’s taken me so long to admit that what happened to me was rape. Even though I knew in my heart, that what he did to me was wrong, even though I could feel in my body how he had violated me, I just didn’t have the knowledge or the vocabulary to contextualize my assault. I knew something was wrong, but I didn’t know what. I knew it wasn’t normal sex, but I didn’t think it counted as rape. And that not only hindered my healing process later on, but it prevented me from better standing up for myself at the time of the attacks. The more we educate ourselves on enthusiastic consent, the better equipped we will be to address the issue of intimate partner sexual violence.

#sexual assault

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heatherleeson-blog1 · 7 years ago

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survivors

Every now and then I meet someone I feel drawn to for no reason other than they seem to just… get it. There’s an understanding and softness in their eyes, their tone of voice or their words, that resonates wih me in a deep yet inexplicable and often undetectable way. They make me feel comfortable and safe in a way only a person who knows what it’s like to be in true discomfort and danger can do. I feel connected to them through a sense of validation that comes from a mutual understanding of an unspoken shared experience. Every time I meet one of these people, they turn out to be a survivor of some kind of trauma. An abusive parent. A sexual assault. Military conscription. There’s a kind of bleak humour in discovering your shared status as a ‘survivor’, and realising your personal connection runs a little deeper than most, because you’ve both been on the receiving end of something truly horrific. Something which nearly killed you but didn’t. There’s a reason why trauma survivors group together to support each other. There’s a catharsis that comes through sharing pain. A trauma shared is a trauma halved. But more than that. Those who’ve survived trauma seem to have a special softness in their hearts that draws them to others who may be in pain, or have experienced pain in the past. The stereotype of a trauma victim, especially an abuse victim, is one of weakness and fragility. But trauma survivors are some of the strongest, toughest people in the world. Our image of a survivor is often one of suffering, of post traumatic stress disorder, of a broken person. And not one of a person whose life has been so completely shattered by trauma, they’ve had to rebuild themselves, with meticulous care, tiny piece by piece. Who’ve had to recreate their sense of self from the bottom up. A survivor has been pushed to the brink and bounced back intact. They’ve seen the worst and the best of humanity. They possess an empathy and emotional intelligence that comes from being emotionally ripped to shreds by a traumatic event such as abuse and the strength and resilience that comes through the painful and exhausting journey of recovery.

#trauma

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heatherleeson-blog1 · 7 years ago

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intimacy after abuse

One of the worst things emotional abuse does to you is the way it completely destroys your ability to trust. To trust others not to hurt you, to trust yourself to be open enough to allow others to love you without freaking out or running away. Three years on and it’s still so hard to be intimate with others, to allow intimacy and love to enter my heart and get under my skin. I am curled up so tight no one can touch me.

Today someone I had been physically intimate with asked to take some photos of me while lying on his bed, half dressed and with sleep in my eyes. I surprised myself with how uncomfortable I became. What freaked me out the most wasn’t the nudity, or the unbrushed hair, or the lack of makeup, but the fact that someone was looking into my eyes. I got so overwhelmed I started to cry. Three years on and I still can’t stand someone looking at me. The simple act of making eye contact is completely overwhelming and way too intimate for me. I can have sex with someone but I can’t look them in the eyes.

Emotional abuse starts to destroy your sense of self until you don’t even know who you are anymore. That’s why it’s so hard to leave and start a new life. That’s why it can be easy to believe that it was something you did, something about you as a person, which caused the abuse. Which meant you deserved the abuse.

After I left my abuser the constant stress and anxiety I felt triggered my previously ‘manageable’ disordered eating tendencies into a full-blown battle with anorexia and bulimia. I believe eating disorders are in many ways a form of self-harm. Harming my body was like a way to eliminate myself- the self I had become during and after the abuse. While my ED is now somewhat under control and I consider myself to be ‘in recovery’, in some ways I am still continuing the old patterns of hiding myself away out of fear. Fear that people will hurt me, but more importantly, fear that I am not a good person. That the abuse inflicted on me was somehow a reflection of my character. That if I let anyone get too close, they will find out who I really am.

The love you accept is the love you believe you deserve. When I cried today I realised I still don’t believe I am worthy of love. Real love, not abusive love. Three years on and I still have a lot of wounds to heal. I want to make sure I don’t stay curled up forever. I’m ready to slowly unfurl my body and allow love and intimacy back into my life.

#intimacy

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heatherleeson-blog1 · 7 years ago

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the problem with victim blaming

I recently got into an argument with a former classmate on Facebook about the reasons some people ‘choose’ to stay in abusive relationships. His view was that he couldn’t understand “why someone would willingly keep themselves, and sometimes their children, in harms way” and that “there are no possible dynamics in an abusive relationship that would make me think it’s more understandable.”

This attitude of victim-blaming scares me, not only for its total lack of human empathy, but also because it makes me realise how little the general public really understands about the nature and power dynamics of abusive relationships and domestic violence situations. What my classmate failed to understand is that it’s not as simple as someone ‘willingly keeping themselves in harms way.’ No one wants to be abused, but there are a host of reasons why a person might choose or otherwise feel compelled or forced to remain in a domestic violence situation. It’s statements like that which continue to put the onus on the victim to stop their own abuse rather than on the abuser to stop abusing, and which only further stigmatise DV victims by placing the blame on them, meaning less victims will be willing to come forward and seek help. The amount of shitty comments I got from people I thought were friends asking me why I stayed so long or why I let him treat me like that was unbelievable. Even though I did the ‘right thing’ and left.

I believe knowledge is power. The more we understand about how abusers manipulate, dominate and control their victims, the better equipped we are to stop and prevent partner abuse. Here are a few points to remember the next time you hear someone say “why didn’t they just leave…?”

1. It’s been well established that the most dangerous time in an abusive relationship is when the victim tries to leave. This is when partners and children are murdered. Often times the safest thing a person can do for themselves and their children is stay.

2. It’s no where near as simple as: normal healthy relationship turns bad overnight with a random act of violence. Abusers work according to a well documented pattern of emotional manipulation and gaslighting which leaves the victim feeling trapped and unable to leave, or that they would be in danger if they did so. By the time the victim realises the relationship has become abusive, the abuser has already laid down the foundations to make it as hard as possible to leave. Controlling their daily routine, checking their private messages, isolating them from friends and family, controlling their finances and threatening to hurt or kill pets and loved ones are just some of the tactics used.

3. No one wants to believe they are being abused. No one wants to admit that the person they love is hurting them. So even if something happens that is ‘obviously’ abuse (like physical violence) it can be super hard to admit that you need to leave. That and the fact that our society tends to shrug off if not down right romanticise abusive behaviours. How many times have we seen in movies/books/tv a guy stalking, harassing, yelling, punching walls, whatever because he’s jealous or just “so in love” he can’t control himself. So when these things start small it’s very easy to shrug them off as a one off, especially when the relationship follows the usual roller coaster pattern of abuse followed by reconciliation, with the abuser making a special effort to win back the trust of the victim following an incident.

4. Often when friends/family/coworkers etc witness abuse or believe abuse is occuring, they err on the side of not saying anything out of fear of “intruding” and because we as a society believe domestic violence is a “private matter” rather than the crime it should be treated as. I had several friends tell me after the fact that they knew my relationship was abusive but they chose not to say anything to me because it was awkward. Add that to the fact that you are already being emotionally manipulated and gaslighted to mistrust your own memories and instincts, and it can be hard to rationally believe you are being abused even if you feel it in your gut.

5. Domestic violence is never just a series of isolated incidents that one could point to and say “that was when the abuse started, that’s when I should have left.” It’s an extremely complicated web of emotional manipulation, gaslighting, threats, bribes, control, and so on that slowly take over your life. The best way I can describe it is like waking up in a nightmare that I had no idea how to get out of. Like I said above, no one wants to think they could be abused like that. I went into my relationship with the completely false notion that “that could never happen to me.” Then one day I realised, shit it’s happening and I have no idea how to stop this.

6. The after-shock of the relationship can go on for years. I hate this idea that once the victim leaves everything is somehow going to be fine. In some ways the year after I left was worse than the actual abuse because I had been left so broken and unable to care for myself and I was constantly terrified he was going to find me. I ended up spending the following 2 years battling serious depression, anxiety, eating disorders and substance abuse, and got straight into another extremely toxic relationship. It makes me so so angry when people say: why didn’t they just leave? And then do absolutely nothing to help victims of domestic violence once they have left. It’s coming up to three years since I left and I still think about him every day. I still have nightmares. Simply leaving is not enough to heal the wounds left behind by domestic violence. Just something to keep in mind if you’re ever wondering, “why don’t they just leave?” it is so. fucking. hard.

#domestic violence

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heatherleeson-blog1 · 7 years ago

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a letter a therapist had me write to my abuser about two years after I left

Dear J*****,

This is a letter to say goodbye. I never want to have anything to do with you ever again. I want to be free of you forever. Living with you was the worst time of my life. You hurt me more than anyone has ever hurt me and in ways I’ve never been hurt before. You’ve wounded me in a deeply unsettling and permanent way. I won’t lie: I know I also caused you harm, I hurt you, knowingly and deliberately, in many ways. I won’t pretend I was blameless in the breakdown of our relationship. But the things you did to me are unforgivable. I’ll move on from this and eventually the pain will subside and I’ll be a stronger and wiser person in spite of, or perhaps because of, the grief you inflicted on me. But I will never forgive you. I’m not interested in hearing your side of the story. I don’t care what your reasons were or what pain there is inside you that may have compelled you to act the way you did, towards myself and others. I’m sure there’s a lot about you I’ll never understand, and I’m not sure you will either. You obviously have a lot of issues to work through, and despite your veneer of confidence and your constant show of bravado and aggression, I believe that at your core you’re an extremely frustrated, anxious and scared little boy. Not that any of this should make a difference. You always told me such things were ‘an explanation, not an excuse,’ and I’m holding you to that. I’m beyond the point of attempting to rationalise or justify your actions. Now it’s time for me to push you aside and move on with my life. This letter is my chance to say the things you never let me say and then turn around and walk away.

I remember the day I met you, at your beach house in B*****. My first real boyfriend and I had broken up about 6 months before, and even though I made a big show about being ‘over it,’ I was still extremely hurt by what had happened. Unlike you, he’d always been a good friend to me, and although we both knew it had to end, I was sad and lonely and feeling unwanted and unloved. My self-esteem was so low. I’d been feeling depressed and even though I didn’t know what it was at the time, my anxiety was at an all time high. I tried to make myself feel more confident by losing weight and meeting new people—tried to invent a ‘new Heather.’ One of those people was your ex S*****. Right from the start, she told me how messed up you were and how badly you had hurt her. By the time I met you, I had really heard nothing but bad things about you for months. When she invited me to a weekend at B***** I was nervous but quietly excited to meet new people and potentially find someone to hook up with—a dumb attempt at boosting my self-esteem. When I met you, you turned on the charm almost immediately: the pet names, the cheesy pick up lines, the obsolete slang you thought made you sound world-weary and well-read. You seemed cocky and sure of yourself to a point my rational side found repulsive. In hindsight I was desperate for attention, any attention. Despite the fact that I didn’t particularly like you as a person, my submissive side was drawn to your aggressive confidence and slimy charm and I desperately wanted to feel loved. Within weeks of hooking up, you asked me to be your ‘bird.’

I can’t pin point when it started to get bad. Maybe it was when I moved in and you started treating me like your maid. Maybe it was when you started taking out your frustrations and huge feelings of inadequacy on me. Maybe it was when you grew angry at the thought that you weren’t ‘getting enough’ sex, so you started taking it from me. I’m not sure. It felt like I woke up one day and realized I was trapped in a terrible nightmare that I couldn’t escape from. I still don’t understand how it happened.

Did you plan it from the start? Have you always treated girlfriends this way? Your disgusting behaviour towards the majority of your friends and family, and your utter contempt for almost everyone you encounter would suggest that this is your standard mode of operation. It certainly seemed that over the course of our two-year relationship, you became increasingly angry at the world. You seemed to feel that everyone was ‘wrong’ all the time, that if only they would listen to you, subscribe to your bizarre line of thinking, the world would be better off. I could see you becoming more tightly wound and withdrawn. I saw you doing poorly at uni. The frustrations with the job you had but didn’t want. The flippant comments about how you didn’t really care about your law degree, to hide the fact that deep down you knew you weren’t achieving the grades you needed to succeed, weren’t up to standard, weren’t doing as well as your class mates, who you wrote off as wankers and conformist idiots. You were obsessed with the idea of non-conformity, as if to hide the fact that you never really fit in. They say, if you meet one asshole in a day, you met an asshole. If you meet ten assholes in a day, you’re the asshole. I hate to be the one to break it to you, but you are a major fucking asshole. If everyone you meet is in constant disagreement with you, you’re probably wrong. And yet you persisted in acting as though you were the authority on every subject in the book. You were constantly angry. You made a big show about being a hippy, a bohemian, a happy stoner, yet you’re one of the most tightly wound, aggressive and malicious people I know. You took out your bad feelings on me and it made my life a living hell. Maybe you really meant to hurt me. Maybe I was just a convenient target, an innocent bystander who got caught in your cross hairs. I don’t care and it doesn’t matter—what you did to me was, and always will be, inexcusable and unforgivable.

What you did to me was abuse. Emotional, physical and sexual abuse. When you made fun of me and belittled me, that was abuse. When you isolated me from my friends and family, that was abuse. When you told me nobody cared about me, that nobody would care if something bad happened to me, not even you, that was abuse. When you constantly lied to me, manipulated me, confused me, gaslit me, that was abuse. When you undermined my self-esteem, my sense of self, my sense of reality, that was abuse. When you preyed on my obvious eating disorder and told me I should lose weight, that was abuse. When you told me I was crazy, that I was making everything up, that was abuse. When you screamed in my face, that was abuse. When you called me names like ‘stupid bitch’ and 'cunt’ and 'pathetic,’ that was abuse. When you punched the wall next to my face, that was abuse. When you told me it was my duty as a girlfriend to have sex with you, that was abuse. When you bullied me into having sex with you when I didn’t want to, that was abuse. When you threatened to throw me out of the house if I didn’t have sex with you, that was abuse. When you continued having sex with me while I was crying and saying 'no’ and 'stop,’ that was abuse. When you told me you couldn’t enjoy sex if I was crying so much, that was abuse. When you gave me a vaginal infection caused by repeated injury and forced penetration, that was abuse. When you repeatedly threw me out of our house and told me to pack my bags, only to 'allow’ me back in after a few hours, that was abuse. When you made it so that you were the only person I had left, that was abuse. When you made it so that I had no one else to turn to, nowhere else to go, that was abuse. When you lied and told me I was going insane, that I needed professional help for my mental issues, that was abuse. When you forced yourself into my psychologist’s office and demanded to know why she hadn’t 'fixed me’ yet, that was abuse. When you humiliated me in front of my friends and family, that was abuse. When you called my friends and family and told them I was a lying whore, that was abuse. When you told me I was a broken, worthless, pathetic person who could never be saved, that was abuse. When you made it so I didn’t care anymore, that was abuse. When you made it so I wanted to die, that was abuse.

I know this now. I’ve spent the last two years healing myself, reading, researching, receiving therapy, talking, listening, growing. I see now, clear as day, that what you did to me was wrong. Categorically, fundamentally wrong. I see now that I was vulnerable. Lonely. Unsure. Naive. Eager to please. Desperate for love. I was the perfect victim just waiting for you to swoop in and pick me up. To charm me. To blind me. To use me and discard me. Maybe it was inevitable, unavoidable. Maybe it was meant to be, if not then, than at some other time, some other place. If it wasn’t you, perhaps it would have been some other man. If it wasn’t me, perhaps it would have been some other woman. I know now that you’re a narcissist and a bully. You display the classic symptoms of a person so disordered in their thinking, they cannot comprehend the notion that they could ever be wrong, that the entire universe doesn’t revolve around them. All I ever was, was a side character in the drama of your life, playing the role of whatever you needed me to be to maintain your ridiculous fantasy. Back then I was your perfect princess, the only one who truly understood you. And you needed me to be perfect, because you needed me to be a reflection of you. You wanted to look into my eyes and see yourself staring back at you. The perfect man must have the perfect wife. And with a girlfriend this lovely, no one can accuse you of being mad. You told me you were attracted to my wit, my humor, my intelligence and my ‘moxxy’. Pretty and with brains to boot. The shiny trophy to hold up for everyone to see, and say, “see? I told you I wasn’t crazy!”

But that’s not how relationships work. You can’t ask another human being to be the support act in your bullshit fantasy. You can’t shove someone in a box and tell them to shut up and play nice, pulling them out now and then to wipe the dust off and play with them until you get bored, before chucking them carelessly back in the corner. You can’t get mad when it turns out they have their own story to tell, one in which they’re the protagonist, with their own dramas, their own desires, hopes and fears. You can’t act surprised when they’re not a perfect princess. Suddenly, the things you used to love about me drove you to despair. I was a little too opinionated, a bit mouthy in fact, and why was I talking so much anyway when there was dinner to be made? So you wore me down. You wore me down over months and months until I was so red and raw I couldn’t stand it anymore. You wore me down until I caved, until I knew it was easier to relent than face another round in the ring with this infamously argumentative nightmare of a person. Until I was a shadow of the person I once was. When you picked me out all those years ago, when you told me I was the special one, the chosen one, you wanted me to reflect the sparkling self-image you so desperately projected. By the time you were through with me, I had started to look a lot like the person I now know is hiding deep, deep down inside you, where you pray no one will ever find him: broken, scared and miserable. And now that you’d played with me so much that all the veneer had worn off, you threw me away for good. It’s classic narcissism. The pattern of abuse is undeniable. I was shocked, when, in the months and years that followed, I would read books about narcissistic personality disorder and discover the abuse you’d enacted upon me described with frightening accuracy within their pages. When listening to a friend confess that they too had been caught in the throes of an abusive relationship with a narcissist, I heard your words echoed back to me almost verbatim in the statements of another abusive man. It all made sense now. It fit the pattern to a T. After all that effort, you’re not even original.

But I’m not here to pathologise your behaviour or rationalise your excuses. That’s not what this is about. After all, you’re not even going to read this. In the end, it doesn’t really matter why you treated me the way you did. The important thing, for me, after so many months and years of denial and guilt is to finally speak up and say: yes, this happened to me. It wasn’t my fault, I’m not ashamed, this has hurt me and changed me but it hasn’t killed me. My spirit hasn’t been broken. This is an opportunity for me to make a radical statement- to myself, to you, and to the world- that I’m still alive and I’m still here. And I’m not going away.

#abuse

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