paper-snow-a-ghost:
I am sick to the brim of people going “you don’t know what it’s like to receive a bruise, you don’t know what a domestic situation is like, you’ve never had a real broken nose”. Nothing usually angers me but a bunch of self-righteous assholes reblogging that post that adding on their various tales of woe, their own domestic relationships, seeing it happen as a child, having a best friend go through it, then adding a snide passage insulting me in a hideously patronising manor as if I have no clue what I’ve done has really tipped me over the edge.
I’ve remained cool headed throughout this entire debacle. I’ve accepted the insults, I’ve provided evidence (which I felt was necessary due the momentum the post gained and the amount of people vilifying me) and I’ve not let it affect me. I’m not going to delete my blog, delete the post or change my URL because doing that would fuel the fire of people saying that I’m lying.
But I am going to say one thing. I know what it’s fucking like. I didn’t feel the need to share this because it’s not about what I went through, but I looked at that girl and I saw myself three years ago. She was incoherent from grief at the thought of her partner leaving her despite the abuse I witnessed. I was the only person at that bus stop while it was happening. At the end of the confrontation, which lasted 20 minutes, there was another male there, but he showed no reaction to the situation, and didn’t even meet my eye when I was holding my face asking saying ‘ow’ and crying after the couple had walked off despite me trying to keep her with me. When I saw the abuser spit in the young girls face right in front of me I stepped in without even thinking. In my mind there were no consequences to consider, I was overcome with unbridled rage and would not see this girl publicly humiliated like I had been so many times. My reaction wasn’t calculated, I didn’t even think.
Just over three years ago I was going out for a meal with my friends who were in a football team and their girlfriends, one of which was my best friend. I had been friends with them all for about three years. I’d asked permission to go out. I’d had my outfit scrutinised. I’d been questioned on who was there. The meal happened without incident and I got a taxi home with a female friend who lived a road before mine. We both got out at her house and I walked back to mine. I opened the door and instantly received a blow to the face and fell into the wall.
“Who was that boy you were in the taxi with?”
I was confused. There was no way he would have seen the taxi, and besides, it was only myself and my female friend.
“Don’t you fucking lie to me.”
I was picked up and thrown into the bathroom where my head smashed against the toilet. I had by clothes physically torn off me. My underwear was ripped into two. He emptied my bag and took my bank card (which he knew the pin to to make sure i didn’t spend more than £30 per week) then slammed my head on the floor. I blacked out.
I must have been out for about five minutes. I woke up and instantly vomited. It was pitch black and I wasn’t aware of my surroundings. As soon as I awoke I was filled with not the sheer horror not of my injuries, but with the horror that he had left me. I tried the front door but I had been locked into my own house. He had taken my keys. He arrived back a few minutes later, throwing me to the floor again and accusing me of spending all of the money in my account. I knew there was just over £200 in my account, but he brandished a printed receipt showing me there was nothing in there. Again I was absolutely baffled and promised I wasn’t lying. He told me he’d put my mobile phone down the drain. I was pulled across the floor into the lounge by my arm and spat on. He smashed the landline phone against the wall.
“You are pathetic, you’re a dirty little slut who would be nothing if your whore of a mother hadn’t died and left you that house.”
A taxi pulled up outside my house and he left to get in, along with the majority of his belongings he had packed before I’d got home. I ran outside and pleaded with the driver to help me. I said that I’d been hit and I was very hurt and please could he help me. The man in the passenger seat laughed and told to shut up.
“Don’t listen to her mate, she’s mental. I just caught her getting a taxi home with another bloke and she can’t accept the fact I’m leaving, the dirty little whore.”
The driver just looked at me, my face a mess, standing holding a towel around me and went “sorry love, I don’t wanna get involved” and then drove off.
I didn’t know what to do. My head was throbbing. I couldn’t see very clearly. I was overcome with grief that this was it, he was finally gone. Usually after a beating he would hold me until I stopped hurting and would explain to me in a loving and kind voice that if I didn’t behave the way I did he wouldn’t have to hurt me. But this time was different, I felt like I’d been hollowed out. He had gone and I could do nothing to get him back.
I had an old mobile phone on a drawer somewhere. I found it and put it on charge, then unraveled a list of phone numbers I kept in my underwear drawer. I phoned my friend and said something had happened, and asked him to come over. I had confided in him before but he lost his patience with me when I kept retracting my statements with the police. Nevertheless he came to see me and didn’t ask what had happened. I fell asleep shortly after his arrival and he left in the morning without really saying anything. As he left, my neighbours came round. They said they’d heard shouting and crying but didn’t want to get involved. I explained to one of my neighbours what had happened and urged me to contact the police. I had nothing to lose. Maybe if he saw what he’d done to me he’d be sorry and come back? I obliged, and I gave a rather shoddy statement a few hours later.
My injuries were photographed over the next week as they worsened. I was humiliated to go out in public with them. He was arrested. I had said I didn’t want to press charges but due to my injuries it was out of my hands. He was arrested and we were to have no contact with each other. An injunction was placed on him. He wasn’t to come within 100 meters of me, my house or my work. His mother collected his belongings, whilst screaming obscenities at me.
I would like to say that things ended there. I would like to say that I realised the dangers I was putting myself in and just walked away. But that’s not what happened. I would phone him from a withheld number just so he would pick up and I could hear his voice. I pretended to be his sister on the phone when I rang his work. I retracted my statement. Nothing came of it. And I can’t explain the twisted relief I felt when he came back to me. I told no one, I was either with him or waiting for him to finish work.
I escaped the relationship four months later after he went through my mobile phone and saw harmless text messages from a male friend. This time, he left instantly and went to the police station to say I had assaulted him. He had ripped his t shirt and clawed his own chest. The officer who arrested and interviewed me was luckily on my side and believed me. She had dealt with domestic violence herself and understood what was happening.
That was the last time I saw him. I retracted my statement and decided i just wanted to forget the whole thing and move on. But even months later when I was in a new relationship I found myself pining for him, wanting his approval still. Wanting to know why I wasn’t good enough, why I’d been hit, if I’d behaved differently he might have stayed. I only really got completely over it in January of last year, when a girl messaged me on Facebook asking me to help her. She was in a relationship with him and had been for eight months of he and I being together. She was who he was with that valentines night I spent alone and confused because he’d said he was working yet his boss told me he wasn’t there. He had convinced her that I was some crazy girl who kept getting him arrested because I couldn’t accept the fact he had left me. I helped this girl leave him, and it gave me closure and made me realise what had happened to me. It took months, and as she and i spent more time together i truly began to hate him. I could admit I was over it and I realised the horrible situation I had been in. I was relieved I had gotten out if it.
And that’s what I saw in the girl. 18 years old, skeletal because she believed she was fat, terrified out of her wits that he would leave her. That is why I stepped in. I wouldn’t stand for this girl to continue feeling the pain I knew only too well. I was overcome with this mothering instinct to take care of her, to get her away from this man. And because I had fought with my demons and laid them to rest, I wasn’t afraid of the man.
I’ve been told that she is now back with family and she is unharmed physically. She’s been assessed by doctors and is on the road to getting the help that she needs. Whether your opinion of me stepping into the situation is for or against, I could not control my reaction when I saw what was happening.
So for those of you telling me I am attention seeking and I am disgusting and have no idea what it’s like - I can promise you that I do, and that’s why I got involved.
I absolutely had to reblog this, not just for the sake of this needed to be said, needed to be put out there, but because I also really feel the need to chime in here.
This same situation, in so many ways, is exactly what I went through. As many of you know, I was in a relationship with a guy that I was madly in love with, and was also raping me as much as five times a day for months on end. When we broke up, and I had moved away, he got together with another girl.
A absolutely, breath taking, BEAUTIFUL girl.
Despite being in a relationship with Jeff at that time, I was completely devastated.
Furthermore, I felt like because of this, suddenly nothing abusive about that relationship was valid any longer. I felt like the two of them were happy together, they had moved in together, she left her home eight hours away to be with him. A friend of mine who knew what I went through had e-mailed her telling her to get out, and she just flipped shit. My boyfriend had told her I had psychosis problems, that I had been admitted to a psychward before, that I had no idea what has happening— ever.
Of course, none of that was true. None of it at all, but why wouldn’t she believe him? She had no idea who I was, and that was someone she loved and admired telling her those things.
I almost started to believe it, weirdly enough. I felt like I was over exaggerating that entire relationship, or in the very least, maybe it was all just me. Maybe it was really my fault. Maybe if I had been less sexual as I was sleeping, or if I had dressed more conservatively, none of that would have had to have happened.
Sure enough, a year later, he breaks up with her, and immediately is in a relationship with another girl.
A friend of mine messaged me in a bit of a panic, worrying about this girl he’d never met. He wanted me to get in contact with her somehow, and just ask if she was okay.
So, I did. I messaged her over Facebook, as non-prying as I could, and just said “Hey. I’m not doing this to start anything, to butt into your life or be rude— I’m doing this because I’m simply concerned. I’m not going to tell anyone I contacted you, I just want to know if you’re okay.”
She messaged me back. She wasn’t okay.
Turns out, he had done the same thing to her throughout the whole relationship. We became really quite close, we still are, but it was a struggle through the next few months to follow that to try and keep her out of the relationship. She was glued to him. Even though he had assaulted the girl he left her for as well, even though he had done this to many girls, she was still pining for him.
I knew that feeling well, and I did all I could to help her.
Eventually, we all ended up reporting. Nothing was done about it, unfortunately it’s not that easy here in Canada. But, the important thing is, is that it’s there. It’s in his file, all these reports that were made from girls I didn’t even know, so hopefully as it continues happening eventually someone down the line will have enough to bring him to court.
But, she still wanted to be with him. She knew it sounded ridiculous, but she almost felt like everyone else was just lying, exaggerating, trying to push her away so they could have him all to themselves.
So, I developed The Five - Single Challenge.
The Five - Single Challenge is much like the 9-0 challenge. Except, instead of abstaining from alcohol for nine months in support of soon-to-be mothers, you stay single for five months in support of all those in abusive domestic situations.
Five months on average is about how long it takes for your brain to register having been abused, raped, etc. It allows you to break through a co-dependence, have some time to heal, and figure out what you really want and need. It strengthens friendships, and most importantly allows you to understand that you are NOT alone, and you CAN be single.
So, I ditched my boyfriend of the time. I told her I would be single with her, she didn’t have to face this by herself.
So, she did it. She broke up with him, she stayed broken up with him, and now she’s happily engaged and currently with-child with a lovely, lovely man who cares for her deeply.
For all of you saying “omg you don’t know what its like”
Stop.
Because YOU do not know what they’ve been through.
