Another one lost and found
Just because I grew up with domestic violence in my home ( in varying forms by a couple partners of my mother) does not mean I go looking for a partner to submit me to more violence.
It only means that I am so used to my boundaries being overstepped that I tolerate and accept the abuse longer. To a point. Enough is enough. I don't need to be one of those abuse statistics that says because I grew up with it I am going to be a mild take it all type of person.
Like most going into marriage - I hoped for an endless solace and an understanding partner, I thought i had that, i really did. It started with the verbal abuse, I am selfish, I am egotistical. A cackling hen. All the more isolating me in my own home. Then I was less than the furniture and that our son was a huge problem, then the hitting began because I said I needed help not ridicule - I needed a husband that would stand by me.
Then I got sick. And while in care the control and verbal abuse continued. And I though I was just hearing things - how was I going to prove this psychological abuse that I had been enduring? I couldn't stay with my mother - my husband wouldn't sign the forms for the children to stay in canada. I wouldn't have access to the medical care I really needed. My stability was wavering - I was burnt out and my post trauma was coming back in surgent waves. I had to go back with him and endure a 15 hour flight with a selfish rude husband.
I went to the first clinic, and I plummeted twice and he complained he wasn't notified of the change in state. I went to the second clinic and there the doctors caught on to the abuse and reminded me that I did have rights. They assigned me a social worker. And warned me divorce may be difficult.
Why in gods name would a woman want to choose poverty after living in a nice neighbourhood?, because that wife wants her sanity once and for all! That wife doesn't need her past repeated, and that wife does not desrve to be accused of lying because her husband didn't listen in the first place.
But it doesn't end there - there are two children who are in the care of the abuser because his life looks so good from the outside. The information was not given to the judge that the husband was an abuser. To come out of an institution means you do need time - and that you do need to adjust to a new life - but as a victim the wife needs the supervised visits.
Not because she will harm the children but because she might harm herself.
She might harm herself from guilt.
She might harm herself because she put herself in the hands of an abuser again.
She repeated a pattern she had hoped to end.
She was vulnerable the other side of the world from her family and not able to earn her own money.
She was vulnerable because she was physically weaker than most.
But her spirit was strong enough to say no more. And she found the support to help her on her way to a new freedom.
He still has custody of the children - and she has assisted visitaton.
We do NOT give permission for posts published as personal experiences to be reproduced, translated or otherwise published elsewhere. We will not contact people who submit their personal experiences on behalf of journalists, bloggers or other third sector organisations. These testimonies remain the intellectual copyright of their authors and must be treated with the ethical guidelines used by academics for research involving human subjects. Our full guidelines can be read here.
‹ Foreign wife that never fit Stuart Hall’s latest charge – according to @BBC5Live Radio ›
Comments are currently closed.