The Perils Of Keeping Quiet

After the first few times, while I lay battered and bruised, he would apologise. Not that it made any difference. His words meant nothing. I knew that even then. At seventeen I knew I had jumped from the frying pan into the pot. The strange thing is I never challenged him about it. I never demanded apologies or explanations or promises for it to stop. I just wiped up the blood, put the clumps of hair he had pulled out of my scalp by dragging me room to room by the roots of my hair and slapped makeup on the bruises. I wore purple eyeshadow for many years, 'Miss Selfridge' did a perfect bruise covering colour long since discontinued. After the beatings we would both pretend it had never happened. If domestic violence was ever shown on the TV or reported in the newspaper he would be very vocal in his disgust for the men who did this. 'Scum' he would call them. He would also speak with hate about his father - who he blamed for his mothers suicide - 'he killed her, with his beatings and threats'. Yet the beatings he gave me were never mentioned, it was as if they were of no consequence. I suspected that they actually gave him pleasure, or at the very least, a measure of relief from whatever was raging inside him. We were the perfect match, him - with the need to take out his frustrations on someone and me - with the belief I was worthless and deserving of every blow. But I still hated him at the times he showed contempt for the men who acted as he did, more even than when the blows were raining down on me.

The first time it happened I can remember being shocked at how much it hurt. My mother had beaten me regularly most of my childhood but compared to the ferocity of his beatings those inflicted by my mother were half hearted and amateurish. He used tools to beat me with. A hammer, a rolling pin, whatever was at hand. His left me black and blue and often bleeding. He broke my bones. He blacked my eyes. He knocked me out by kicking me in the head.The other difference is that he never harmed me with his words. When I lived with my mother she would tell me most days that I was ugly and stupid. That I had ruined her life. That she hated me and that she wished she had been sucessful on the many attempts she had made to abort me. That  no one would ever love me. Then she would suddenly be nice to me, when she was drunk she sometimes even told me that she did love me - it was just that she should never have been a mother, she had intended a different life. He rarely used harsh words just maybe some name calling during the beatings. In fact he would tell me I was beautiful. That I was smart. That  he loved me more than anything and  that I was the best thing that had ever happened to him. And I was pathetically eager to hear those sentiments and kind encouraging words and  maybe the price I was paying was the cost of love.

Once, when I was pregnant with by son, he left me unconscious. Each time I came round he would be back to pretending nothing happened and I pretended too. He put me back on his pedestal until the next time he would knock me off.

It became second nature to anticipate the beatings and I became adept at avoiding the triggers that would make him want to hurt me. I stopped disagreeing with him. It was safer to keep my opinions to myself. I made sure his shirts were ironed just they way he liked them
and I buttered his toast to the very edge. I discovered a hundred different ways to make him happy, to adapt to his moods and I put the 'real me' away in a box.

Over the years the beatings became less frequent although they still occurred from time to time. The last time he hit me was the final straw. It wasn't a beating. Just a punch on the chin. We had just come out of a restaurant having enjoyed a lovely meal which was the climax of a lovely day spent roaming the countryside. When we got in the car he was having trouble with the steering lock and was getting angry. I said something like it would be OK, I often had a struggle with it after he had parked the car and suddenly he punched me on the chin. I literally saw stars and had never felt such humiliation. We drove home in silence. When a couple of weeks later, at my sisters, he rose from the sofa and made a move to punch me (why I can't remember) I quietly said (so my sister, who was in the kitchen, wouldn't hear) 'if you hit me one more time that's it, you will never see me again'. He stopped in his tracks, a look of shock on his face, and sat back down. He never laid a finger on me again.

Who'd have thought it would be so easy? All those years of saying nothing. All that Fear. All that Shame. The Self Disgust. The Pretence. The years of getting my own back in the only way I knew how. I could have stopped The Sentence with one sentence.

There is little point in wondering why I stayed with him for as long as I did. Domestic Violence is complex and is about so much more than violence. It is about the imbalance of power, a lack of self worth. It is about terror, shame, self loathing, anger, hate, love, duty, helplessness, naivety, low expectations and acceptance. Even knowing all this I remain ashamed and embarressed about accepting that from someone who was meant to be my friend and lover. The women who make a stand and challange this behaviour, women who run away from these men are the bravest women you could meet. I wish I had been as brave as them rather than getting my freedom as a result of circumstances. I just got lucky.