I am a Survivor

Everybody knows what domestic violence (DV) is, don’t they? So why do the victims of DV put up with it? Most people do think they know what DV is but do they really understand it? I suspect that they have little idea. If they did, then they would know the answer to the second question.

I know what DV is. I am a survivor. I have survived for over 20 years now. The actual violence finally gave me the strength to leave, but the DV continued even after I left the ‘family home’. That may surprise many people.

Let’s look a little deeper at what DV really is. Most people I have spoken consider it to be things like violence against the individual. A man hits his wife, that is what DV is. WRONG.

DV is much more complex than that. A definition from “Women’s Aid:
"In Women's Aid's view domestic violence is physical, sexual, psychological or financial violence that takes place within an intimate or family-type relationship and that forms a pattern of coercive and controlling behaviour. This can include forced marriage and so-called 'honour crimes'. Domestic violence may include a range of abusive behaviours, not all of which are in themselves inherently 'violent'."
The final part of that is important not all of which are in themselves inherently ‘violent’.

Take my situation as an example. I was the primary earner, so should have been able to be independent. In fact, when I finally left, finding somewhere to live was fairly straightforward. In fact, what people would recognise as ‘violence’ only happened over a couple of days; the days immediately leading up to my departure.

My DV lasted just 2 days then? No it did not. It lasted for a significant length of time. In fact, it lasted for several years. We were very young when we first got together. A relationship that was somewhat illicit and exciting. Little did I understand what was happening to me. At first it was little things. I never noticed how my entire wardrobe was changed. I didn’t realise how I had been cut off from friends, or how my hobbies were curtailed. In fact, my only reason for being out of the house was to act as a source of money: money that had to be handed over.

Slowly, I was dying. The real person was being squeezed until my very existence as an independent person was destroyed. No longer could I even make decisions, those were made for me. What I wore, who I spoke to, where I went were all decided for me. My beliefs, my hobbies and my friends were all imposed upon me. It had just happened.

While I was out working all day and then again in the evenings and at weekends, my abuser was enjoying life with her friends: trips to coffee shops and shopping during the day and then night clubs in the evening. When did I get excluded from all these things? Of course, I couldn’t go, because I was working.

At first I fought back. Arguments were intense. Slowly, I learned not to argue. It was my fault anyway, so don’t argue. I was, after all, useless. I failed to earn enough. I never looked good enough. I always said the wrong thing and embarrassed other people. In time, I accepted my place. I stopped fighting, I stopped having an opinion. In fact, I stopped being. DV is like a spiral that you descend as you ‘accept’ your place on one level of DV, so you spiral to the next, until everything has been exhausted. When you are trapped no longer able to function as an individual and no longer with the will to fight back, then what people traditionally understand as violence.

Women’s Aid identified four particular strands: physical, sexual, psychological and financial. Not all of these need to be present. In fact, just one and it is DV. I NEVER was subjected to sexual DV, in this relationship. The financial DV tends to restrict a person’s freedom: no money, then no ability to escape. I was the main earner, yet I was deprived of control over my finances, but primarily it was the psychological DV. This trapped me. A world of self-doubt and self-loathing.

Why didn’t I leave? Abusers know how to hold people to their will. That is the whole point. Each time I accepted one scale of abuse and failed to fight back, then the abuse became more intense.

I would like to get inside the mind of the abuser to understand why, but it is like the more control they have, the more they need. The more they subjugate you, the more they need to subjugate you. The less you fight back, the more they goad you to fight back.

Then the physical violence started. It was not for long. Somehow it broke the ‘spell’ that my abuser had over me. I can, to this day, remember clearly the entire scene. I remember details of the scuffed bright green gloss paint and the woodwork, the Artex flaking from the walls, light green paint for the top part and stripped light green and white paper on the lower half of the walls. Even the crusted stain on the lino on the floor pulls into view as the scene unfolds. Suddenly, a fork flies at me, unable to move as I watch the tragedy unfolding. The prongs heading directly at me surely adequate to pierce the softness of my eye. The trajectory is perfect, spot on target. And a sudden burst of brightness as clarity filled my brain. It was over, but somehow the only thing parted was my hair. It had missed by such a tiny margin, but had broken the spell cast upon me.

I left. It was by mutual agreement apparently. Of course, I left. That was the end, at least, that is what I thought.

But it wasn’t the end, just a new beginning. Out of the family home things were different. The DV was not so intense. As we were no longer a couple and no longer living together, strictly, it is no longer DV. But it persisted. Appeals to do this or to do that. To help out with this and with that. Of course, I was registered on the mortgage, so that was another hold for me. It took several years for the house to be sold. Every day giving more reason for contact.

Healing can never start until the abuser is isolated from their victim. My secretary at work even played a vital part in breaking that contact, by making excuses as to why I could not take telephone calls.

But I did stop it eventually. The main years of abuse are over 20 years ago. I am a survivor. The abuse took me to places I cannot even describe. It has and always will cause me issues.

The pain never goes away. Even time does not seem to dim the pain of what was done to me. Just occasionally, something happens and everything floods back again – and that happened again this week. But I am a survivor. I am a survivor of Domestic Violence. I found the strength to overcome and I went on to find love. True and unconditional love.

I found a woman who lifted me up and gave me unconditional love and support. It is through her that I became a survivor and was no longer a victim.