In the middle of my life... PART 2
Updated: Aug 1, 2019
I want to help people who cannot see the light but live in darkness. This blog is about bringing positive back for people who have lost all hope and help them strive to do better and become driven to follow their dreams.
This blog is dedicated to all human beings. I want people to be aware of, and support, what happens to a person and how to help people in different situations. I want people, who are in different situations to know there is light at the end of the tunnel. I want every person to know that you can work your way through things and that there is always hope, even when there seems like there is none.
DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE
Unless you have been through it, there is no way anyone can understand what it is like to be raped or abused. There are all different forms or rape and abuse but ultimately the sensations are relative. The only thing I can say is I was fortunate it never got physical. It nearly did. I say fortunate as I have no idea how much that would have affected me. I suspect my desire for suicide would have been heightened.
I was isolated, constantly being put down and told I was useless, yelled at in public, lied to, cheated on. I hated sex and never waned it, but he did not care. To make him not yell at me I would give him the use of my body. The tears I would shed afterwards were floods. I say the use of my body as I imagined I was not there. Dreamed I was somewhere else. Some other happy place where it was all rainbows. I felt violated in physically, in mind and spirit. I thought I was worth nothing more than a piece of dirt. My soul was hollow and as a result I built walls. I was able to deactivate my mind and detach from myself. It’s called dissociation disorder. When I felt threatened or uncomfortable, I would move outside myself as if cutting the situation off, not tuning in. A small portion of this function can be helpful in life. A large portion is trouble and I was doing this every day to help me cope.
My friends became worried about me. I remember a situation and my friend telling what actually happened, which was very different to what I thought was happening. One day my friend stopped over to say hello. He was there and the three of us had a coffee and were chatting. I remember going to the toilet and when I came back things were weird. “Is everything ok?” I asked. “everything’s great isn’t it Sandra (her name was not Sandra but this is the name I will use)? “Perfect she said.” Later I found out that when I left the room he turned to her and said something like….. “I am going to make sure she never talks to you again. She is mine and I don’t want you coming around here again.” Apparently when I re-entered the room, he was a completely different person. Apparently, he did this more than once.
My isolation became more intense and his anger became more regular. The only thing I am thankful for is that he did not hit me. He never brought me anything, I paid for everything. He stole items from me. One of my friends sent me an argyle diamond years before. It was not worth that much, but the sentimental value was priceless. That went missing (yeah right, it was kept in a special place where no one knew it was other than him).
You see I thought I loved this person. I thought I was going to marry him. I thought he loved me and put me above everyone else. In the end I did not want these things. He told me he would hunt me down and drag me out by my hair. He would spread inappropriate and nasty rumours around about me. I felt I was trapped and in hell. When he was nice, he was wonderful, anything other than that it was torture.
Every time I went to leave him, he would be nice, do things for me, tell me he could not live without me and I caved in. the cycle was repeated over and over and over again. My depression worsened, and I even started to distance myself from people when they spoke out about him. The only contact I really kept was with my family. I could see he was trying very hard to sever that bond, I blankly said to him one night that not to bother because my family would always come first and that if he tried to come between us, I would walk out the door. I must have said it with some gusto as he then left that portion of my life alone.
You see when you are in a depressive state, when you have isolated yourself and think you are not worth the ground you walk on you begin to hate yourself to a degree that tunnel vision sets in and all you can think about is that the world is better off without you. This was my content state of being. I hated waking in the morning, I hated sleeping at night. I hated working, I hated breathing, I hated my heartbeat thumping. If it was not for my family, I would have ended it. I was good at pretending everything was ok. I wore my “happy” mask every day. NOBODY knew of what I was going through. Mum and Dad knew there was something wrong but did not know what. Friends were concerned but they dare not approach me. I was stuck, I was getting worse. I DID NOT WANT TO EXIST ANYMORE. My heart broke, my soul shattered my existence burned to ashes. I emptied everything from the inside out and withdrew into a dark corner I could not come back from.
He did not care. He just wanted control over me and that is what he had. I did not care because I thought I was worth nothing. Nothing could love me. I was broken.
I felt I could not tell anyone in fear of what he might do. He had threatened suicide, murder whatever would make me stay. How do you come back from that? Who do you tell? When you are depressed with tunnel vision you think no one cares so its not point any way. People would yell at you and say you are stupid you should have seen this coming…. Well I did not see it coming. I had too young and innocent to understand what was happening. My young vivacious energy was gone, and I was a shadow of my former self. A ghost in my own shell. I had a stigma about depression, and I did not want to admit it to anyone.
Then …. One day … we were fighting, as we usually did, and he was about to hit me…..
I just snapped. It was like someone had slapped me in the face and said, “wake up, if you let him do this it will be the lowest point you can go.” Now he never had hit me before, but I could see he was for real. I could see it in his eyes and smell it in the air. I just snapped out of it, pointed towards the door and called his bluff. “Get out”, he stopped mid punch and nearly stumbled backwards so I must have sounded pretty convincing. “Get out and never come back again.” He went to walk away, and I told him to leave his keys.
When he was gone, I put all his clothes out the back and rang to leave a message for him to come and get them. When they were gone, I phoned my mum and dad. They never asked any questions. I just phone them in tears and told them I was ok, but I needed them to come and get me, and that I needed them straight away. It took them three hours, but I was on my way back to the country. There were no questions, no talking just me crying. This was the first step in my forgiving myself and telling myself I was worth something – even if I did not realise it at the time.
