Tag Archives: domestic violence

by

Landmines

CW: Descriptions of intimate partner violence.

In late 2014, I published on this blog a long winded bunch of lies by my ex-wife, explaining her “side” of the story of her previous marriage before me. I have since taken that post down, as I was ashamed and horrified to be a party to such blatant gaslighting against Ilana, her ex.

Now, on the eve of what would have been my 6th wedding anniversary, I feel it’s appropriate to let Ilana give her counterpoint through her truly excellent piece of writing, ‘Landmines’. I also still feel a great deal of responsibility in giving Ilana a platform to use her voice, since I spent nigh on 4 years being jealous of this woman, believing and repeating lies about this woman, and disbelieving her horrific story of abuse.

This is Ilana’s story, written by her in the immediate aftermath of her relationship with our ex. It is startlingly similar to my story, yet is much, much worse in many ways. In the near 7 years since she wrote this, Ilana has continued her healing process, smashing goals, living truthfully, and growing more fierce and strong every day. She has been essential to my own healing, reminding me that the pain fades, the work continues, and love is indeed possible again. The further I travel from the mockery of a marriage I was in, the more I am indebted to her and I’m so very grateful for her graciousness. I am so very sorry, Ilana.

(Note: choking is a particularly dangerous form of coercive control and narcissistic abuse, and is often a sign of escalation in controlling behaviour that in some cases can have fatal consequences. Resources to help if you or someone you know has experienced this will be at the bottom of this post.)

*

The shadow of an argument.

A hotel. One lamp each, illuminating the night tables that bookended the bed. You and I, backs to one another, sinking into the aftermath which was to become the prelude.

I think of that moment now and I can feel it, the stirring, the rumbling before the crack that ruptured everything, everything.

I would take it all back if I could.

I don’t fight like you, I never have. You are happy to rant and vent and rage. To scream while I am curled up on the floor, catatonic with tears.

To call me a cunt in the middle of the street.

I fight my battles inside, in the slight turning in the car, hugging the seat belt, praying that your mood will subside quickly tonight, cursing myself for stepping on the landmine.

That’s how it felt, living with you. Like I had knowingly purchased a post-War home that came quickly and easily because, hidden under beautiful floorboards and drapes, were the bombs.

Huge, silent, spontaneous, and lethal when detonated.

But the house was so beautiful.

And so I continued to live there, but in the aftermath of every blast I became more and more aware of the danger I was in staying in a house so fragile, so easily ripped to pieces.

But I stayed because who was I to give up a perfectly good house?

Wasn’t I so lucky? Didn’t I have it so good?

You set me up for the fall, so cruelly.

You painted yourself so perfect that when I first screamed, ‘Bomb!’, everyone who heard laughed, as if such beauty could never hide something so terrible. But it could.

A hotel. The night was hot, so hot. The type of night I would sleep in my underwear or nothing but you would insist on remaining clothed, you never could sleep skin to skin. One lamp each, illuminating the night tables that bookended the bed. Silence but for one or two tense words being volleyed between us.

And then, suddenly, I stepped on a landmine.

People ask me now, they say, ‘But if it was so bad, why did you get married? Why did you allow it to go on for so long?’.

I’m never articulate enough at the time, it’s so hard to explain. I’ve had terrible experiences trying to explain to people that you’ve gotten to first.

What I want to tell them is this:

When you are in pain, you want to believe that it will end. That it is only temporary. That it will get better.

The truth is, I stayed because I loved you. I always loved you, past the end. Past the sobbing parting of ways.

I loved you until you stopped loving me and that tore me apart.

I stayed because I loved you and I believed that one day you would be happy. I needed to believe that one day I would be enough, that you would stop searching for whatever you were missing and decide that we could make it work with what we had.

That was always your tune, you never had the wit to change it, it all boiled down to the same thing. I was less. Most of the time it was worthless. That was the message that you screamed in to me, until I could feel it in my bones, where I still hear the echoes rippling back to me every day. You tell me I’m hopeless, careless, worthless. You made me feel disgusting, undesirable, a waste. I could fill a book with the names you called me. In jest, in private, in public, in company, in writing, it didn’t matter. I still hear them, I still hear them. You never leave me.

It wasn’t just words. You sucked me dry of everything I had to give. I sold my soul to your happiness. I threw myself on the altar, sacrificed my very being at a chance to make you content.

And it wasn’t enough.

The mornings I was pushed out of bed because you couldn’t face the walk to the train, the same walk I had to make twice a day but you couldn’t fathom because it was too cold.

The constant demands of lifts and gifts and emails and favours and cars and money, money, money.

Because suddenly it wasn’t mine it was ours and couldn’t you use your card we used mine last time and it’s easier you’ve got the bank details saved and I’ll put my paycheck into savings and we’ll use yours for the bills or I really need these classes this is for us this is for you this is for you everything I do is for you can’t you see that

The shadow of an argument.

A hotel. One lamp each, illuminating the night tables that bookended the bed. You and I, backs to one another, sinking into the aftermath which was to become the prelude.

Silence but for one or two tense words being volleyed between us.

And then, suddenly, I stepped on a landmine.

I tell people now that I can’t remember what I said, it was something to do with the wedding, that terrific freight train that was careening out of control, that I couldn’t jump off even when I wanted to.

Or it may have been about your family, who you were so happy to denounce for their faults, who I worked so hard to please but who have since the split aggressively accosted me and my family, who you are now apparently back tight in the bosom of despite hating them so viciously, or at least that was the vitriol you poured in my ear. You were telling me how I should be doing more for them, because look at how much I do for your family you said as we lay in the bed in the hotel in Queensland that my parents had paid for, paid for the holiday, paid for our flights, paid for us to have a separate room.

Or maybe I mentioned something about our house, which I was paying all the bills and rent for but you still weren’t happy with, I may have made a comment about if we ever broke up that you’d need to find somewhere else to live. Because at that point, in that moment, I couldn’t imagine living with this thing, this non-human entity, this ball of tension and hate, this uncensored stream of bile for the rest of my life.

And then, suddenly, I stepped on a landmine.

Whatever I said, I felt it sit heavy between us, the way the first I love you does but worse, so much worse, because this wasn’t the kind of heavy that those words elicit this was the pulling back of a rubber band, the words pulling the band tighter and tighter and further and further and further away until

SNAP

You rolled over, rolled towards me and from my side pulled me onto my back. And then in seconds you were straddling me, sitting on my stomach, and your hands, snake-fast and strong, so strong, were around my neck. Tight.

I’ve heard since that you’ve told people you placed your hands gently around my neck and I don’t know how gently you can ever place your hands around someone’s neck but this was not gentle. Gentle means a grip you can break, a play fight maybe, a tap for attention, and this, this was a vice. And I fought, I remember writhing desperately against you because I couldn’t breathe. It was like all the movies you see, I was Desdemona struggling under the pillow but it wasn’t pretend, I was grabbing your hands and wheezing and no one was yelling cut. I struggled against the claws at my neck and you probably didn’t mean to kill me but I stared at your face, so demented with hate it looked cracked in two, and I thought I was going to die.

And then, within perhaps a minute, perhaps two, the longest I’ve ever known, it was over.

Just as quickly as you’d leapt on me you were off. Back on your side of the bed, fully clothed, facing the lamp on your bookend of a bedside table.

It’s almost funny how your mind adapts to new beliefs.

I was recently shopping and it was only after two sales assistants, two friends and a random girl peeping out of her change room insisted I had an amazing figure that I realised the long-held belief that I have fat thighs is probably more to do with you telling me I’m fat and look at your flabby legs and you need to tone up and I can teach you some exercises for your legs than it was to do with my actual body.

It was a slow poison, the self-hatred you gradually instilled in me. At first, like your other sinister doctrines, it was all for my own good. I wonder if you remember the early days of our relationship, the first few weeks, when we lived on potato chips and chocolate and take away food and the gym was as foreign a concept as the possibility of us ever being apart. I wonder if you remember your own struggles, your crushed confidence as the concept of working in your dream field grew slimmer and slimmer as your own weight expanded. And I never said a word about it, I loved you whatever your shape, and only encouraged whatever endeavour you were currently infatuated with. Your mind changed so quickly I could hardly keep up, your enthusiasm for jobs waxing and waning day by day, you leaving me to fill out endless applications for jobs, I have hundreds of emails still, ‘Found a job for you on Seek.com!’ but you never found anything for me, it was another desperate attempt for you to find satisfaction.

But then, suddenly, it was fitness.

I’ll skip the months I supported us both as you studied and didn’t work, the hours I spent coaching you through every quiz and writing assignments for you, just as I had done with your previous courses, I just wanted the whole thing over, you hated studying. So I would practically do it for you, I felt like I should’ve gotten a qualification as well, but anything, anything to make you happy.

And when it started leaking out of the pages of books and into life, under the premise of taking care of me, you don’t exercise, you’d say, so you really better eat well, I bit my tongue and let you write out a diet plan, because by that point I knew exactly how short your fuse was, and I still had scorch marks on my fingers. You, after all, always knew best.

Back on your side of the bed, fully clothed, facing the lamp on your bookend of a bedside table.

Lying again like nothing had happened.

It was a sign of the months ahead, and from that night, I didn’t know it, but there was still eleven months to endure. I lay flat on my back, gasping for air, aware of pain like a necklace around my throat, pain that would linger that night but never bruise, and I wonder now what would’ve happened if it did, if that would’ve saved me.

I sucked the first breath in with a sob, and then it wouldn’t stop. A hysterical stream of terror, of disbelief, of panic that somehow I had ended up underwater without getting the chance to breathe.

I did try to leave. For all the naysayers, the ‘oh how could it have been so bad if she still stayed with them’, I did try, I’ll have you know.

I would run devastated to the spare room, and sleep in a single bed, plotting my escape.

One night, close to the end, frantic with panic, I packed a bag and left it at the front door, running to the bedroom for one more thing.

When I returned to the door, you had taken my car keys.

You wouldn’t let me go.

You wrote me a letter a few months ago. Six pages, hand delivered, and seeing your handwriting but no postmark was terrifying, because you’d encroached on my space just as I had started to feel safe again. I don’t want to list what you wrote, that letter was near enough to acid, it burnt right through all the flimsy repairs I had started constructing. It made me feel sick. Amongst other accusations, you said I couldn’t possibly have been abused because I had never sought therapy. Little did you know I had been seeing a psychologist for weeks following our split, and why would you make such a claim, did you really think I could recover on my own?

I’ve talked with her about my predisposition for hating my body, I don’t think it’s unusual for a young woman to be insecure about her shape.

But it’s entirely different to hear critiques from someone you love.

But it was all for my own good.

Even when getting rid of all the junk food in our house turned into getting rid of all fruit and carbs as well.

Even when suggesting I exercise turned into calling me lazy and unmotivated for not, saying that I would get fat when I was older, saying that I had to do something now or I would surely have a heart attack later.

I’m just taking care of you, you said, no one else does.

Because by this point, life being drained from me from a constant uphill battle to make you smile, I had little to give to those who truly loved me, my long suffering family, who were fading like ghosts into the far flung corners of my life.

And then came the darkest time.

How I wish I could have blown the signs up bigger, brighter, hung them on the highway, pointed everyone I knew to them, somehow made sure they understood what was happening.

But all I did was gesture vaguely, and they missed it.

Even when I sat in the car with a friend I loved dearly but you for some reason hated, and said you had threatened him with physical violence if he ever touched me in public again.

And he, blind to the pleading in my eyes, just assured me he didn’t realise it was a problem, said he’d back off.

And so I sank under the wave.

I say you hated him ‘for some reason’ but that’s rubbish, I know why you hated him. You had it in your head that he loved me to the point of obsession, but it was you, you and your twisted evil thoughts, and you destroyed what I had with him, a friend that I could message at three in the morning and know he would care. I lost him because you hated him.

I remember lying in bed beside you, you screaming at me, do you love him, you said, and I just cried, because by that point anything, anything would have been better than what I was living with.

But I never, never cheated on you. You said in the letter that I did, but how could I, I loved you past the end. But I felt like I might as well have cheated on you, the way you punished me.

As I sift back through it now, though, I can feel a thousand things catch in the sieve. It wasn’t just the night in the hotel room, it wasn’t just your control, it wasn’t the sick things you said about me. It was living with everything, the combination, every day for four years.

Do you remember it now? The night I sat by the end of our bed, you screaming at me from the doorway, everything I do is for you, you yelled, I give you everything, and I just sobbed and screeched in agreement yes, I know, I know, you don’t have to tell me I’m a shit person, I know, those were my exact words, I remember so well.

The times, for it was more than once, I could feel I had just stepped on exactly the wrong spot and the bomb began to split and I ran, breathless with panic, to the bathroom, the one door in the house that had a working lock, so sure you were going to grab me, and then collapsing, shaking, on the other side of the door as you bashed furiously against it with your fists.

And after a couple of minutes, I would always, stupidly, open it again.

I do feel that losing him was the turning point. Your dogma had finally worked. Emboldened by thousands of repetitions, it was now the voice in my head. I felt worthless, I felt powerless, I felt sick constantly, I felt unworthy of life. I was your puppet, your pet, bent over backwards and still failing at every turn. I’ve never much been one for self-harm the way you see in the movies, but all of a sudden I needed to punish myself, to act out on the belief that I deserved nothing.

I certainly didn’t deserve to eat.

And so I didn’t.

For three months.

At first I was disgusted by my failures, so often succumbing to one big meal after starving all day. But then, as my body became used to less, I would go to bed having run on just black coffee and sugar free gum all day.

And was proud.

In my mind, I was disgusting, I was a failure, I was filled by a guilt that made me ill, and I needed a way to punish myself, to actively express the black fog you had filled my mind with. And there was a voice that told me that if I got sick enough, if I looked frail enough, people would understand how much I was suffering inside, and you wouldn’t be able to hurt me anymore.

I remember, as you lay there like nothing had happened, I slipped from the bed onto the floor, the sobs wracking me like blows, I couldn’t breathe again, on the floor with my back against the bed, and then I was panicking, where do we go from something like this.

Then suddenly your arms were around me, and I was shrieking, I didn’t want you touching me, but your arms were like a vice and it was easier to try and calm myself down then it was to fight you, shhhh you were whispering in my ear, how did my parents not hear, they were just in the room above us, I was crying so loudly and I love you you whispered, it’s alright you said and I let you lift me up and curl up with me in your arms on the bed, shhhh you whispered in my ear, it’s okay.

Three months of black coffee, black coffee, black coffee in the same reusable mug every day.

Seven kilos down.

You never noticed.

The week before my birthday and I was in a sleeveless black dress and you said, I was looking at your arms, I can show you some exercises to tone up, they were looking a little flabby.

The lowest weight I had ever been in my adult life.

And when I confessed, weeks later, desperate for some sign of affection from you, you looked at me with disgust.

That’s stupid, you said, don’t do that anymore.

But only a few days later you bought me a new dress and, noticing it was tight around my legs said, that’s alright, you’ll just tone up a little, just lose a little weight and it’ll be fine.

Because even after you knew it didn’t stop you, don’t eat all that at once, you said, you’ll get fat, and even when we were in company it continued, she’s such a little piggy, she’s such a fatty, she’s so stupid, she can’t do anything, and our friends would laugh and laugh, look at the lovebirds, always play fighting, the old married couple, such happiness.

It should’ve snapped something in me, that night in Queensland, and I curse myself a little now, why didn’t I run, why didn’t I run upstairs and scream at my parents what you had done to me, I could have saved myself so many times and never did.

But somehow I felt more afraid of the aftermath of leaving than I was of you. And the day I left was the day that that balance shifted, and suddenly, staying seemed far, far more terrifying than leaving.

So, finally, I leapt.

The pain didn’t end when we did, though.

I don’t want to recount the awful aftermath of the ending, because it was almost unbearable, and I lost friends that I loved dearly because of their refusal to believe me when I screamed, ‘Bomb!’

For their determination to see the house and not the pockmarked walls, the beautiful exterior but not the rotting foundation, the months of painted smiles but not the burns all over my body.

But I do want to recount how you dropped to your knees on the night I left you and begged me to reconsider, how after months of being starved of affection you said that all you wanted was to give me a hug, like that would fix all the times I had to beseech you on the verge of tears to hug me once in a day, how you would push me away disgusted when I tried to kiss you and complain about how clingy I was, how I should let you breathe once in a while.

I want to recount the day I found out, five weeks after our break up, when we were still married, that you were with someone else.

I want to remember the afternoon I was processing that information, relaying it, shell-shocked, to friend after friend, only to discover that they all already knew, and somehow no one had told me.

I want to recount how I finally made it to my friend’s apartment for a prior engagement and wound up on the lounge room floor, sobbing uncontrollably into my friend’s lap, doubled over in pain, wondering aloud how a wife who starved me of any indication of affection for months could so publicly lavish affection on a new partner. Softly moaning that if she had wanted that kind of loving relationship, she had a wife who was literally killing herself trying to achieve that kind of happiness.

And every time I started to recover, I would be hit again by the control and manipulation that extended far beyond our relationship.

You turning up, uninvited, at places you knew I would be, and my heart fluttering, my stomach clenching, the hair on the back of my neck rising with fear at just seeing you.

Constantly hearing more news, now they’re together, now they’re engaged, did you hear, did you hear. Now they’re married. Three days after we officially divorced, I was almost impressed by your speed, that has to be some kind of record.

Your family approaching me in public, in the shopping centre, where I was sitting unguarded having coffee with friends, to be asked, you’re good are you, you’re not fucking up anyone else’s life, to have to run to the bathroom and hyperventilate and never, never be able to feel safe in that centre again, even though I work there, always looking over my shoulder.

I know what you say about me now, I’m spreading vicious lies, I’m crazy. I’m telling everyone terrible things about you like a smear campaign, I want you to lose all your friends. The latest I heard, you were going to sue me for defamation.

But I have been silent for so long, and you have not, and I will not be silenced by you anymore. If you wanted me to speak kindly, you should have behaved kindly. And you were not kind.

I still hear your voice when I put on a tight skirt, your flabby thighs, you’d say, that’s not very flattering, I hear your voice but I wear the skirt anyway and feel good doing it.

I’ve grown my hair, it’s long now, don’t grow your hair down to your butt, you’d say, it’s disgusting, and when I wash it it brushes the top of my hips and I feel so glamourous.

You drive like a grandma, you’d say, you’re terrible, and you did all the driving because you liked to make me powerless, but these days I drive all over Melbourne and sometimes I don’t use a map I just remember which roads and don’t get lost and I wind the windows right down and blast my music and feel so free.

I still watch my back in the shopping centre. I still feel nervous in the city where I know you used to work. I still clench my jaw driving past your new partner’s old house. I still hear you, daily, in my head, telling me I’m fat or stupid.

But I would rather die of coronary failure from eating foods that make me happy than starve myself for one more day trying to punish myself for crimes I didn’t commit. I would rather let go of friends who think that I’m crazy and I’m just spreading insidious lies than have to continue pasting on a smile and believing that it must be me, there must be something more I can do and more I can give that will mean I unlock the secret to making you happy.

Now, finally, I have exorcised this house, made it mine, and I am excited to open the door and collapse alone in my bed, walls covered with mementos of things I have achieved this year.

Such a far cry from driving the long way home, afraid of opening the door and the kind of dark, threatening mood I would find on the other side.

I hope I never see you again. But if I do, I will be a different person from the one you last saw.

I realised recently that I have stopped mourning our relationship. It is hard to mourn something that now feels like a four-year con.

You’d move on quickly, you used to tell me, if we ever broke up you’d find someone straight away. We don’t need a pre nup, you said once, if we broke up I would have already lost everything. No one takes care of you the way I do, you said again and again, no one else cares about you. You’re so lucky you’ve never been with anyone else, you’d say like a threat, I wish I could take back all my experiences and be like you.

I don’t mourn the four years of slow brainwashing, of the continual con, of the wool pulled slowly over my eyes until I was blind to your will, of the heat turned up and up until I was boiled alive before I even realised the water was hot.

But I do mourn the innocence you stole from the nineteen-year-old who fell in love with a lie.

It’s only now I realise that I am my greatest guardian. And I will never let anyone break me again.

*

You can check out Ilana’s beautiful songwriting here.

Resources for those experiencing intimate partner violence in both LGBTIQ and heterosexual relationships can be found at the following websites:

DV Connect

Another Closet

Domestic Violence Resource Centre Victoria

1800 Respect

by

Survivor Day

I’m gonna tell you a story. It’s a true story, not a very nice story, but true nonetheless. A few years ago I wrote a piece about being in Sydney (you can read it here), detailing how confronting I found that city at that point in time. A couple of other things happened at that time that I didn’t go into in that post, including getting triggered by a rape scene in a theatre show I saw, and being peeped on by the man in the room next door in the backpackers we were staying in. There was something else that happened. Something else that was lost in the mess of that trip but that stands out to me now as a pivotal point in my highly abusive marriage.

Ah yes, here we go, that old chestnut! Narcissistic abuse. Why am I writing about this again? Well, today, dear reader, is World Narcissistic Abuse Awareness Day. 1 June is officially the day to be aware that this shit actually happens, and it happens to people you know.

So, what is narc abuse? Honestly, you could read every post I’ve written on this blog since meeting my ex until now to get the full arc of an emotionally abusive relationship, but tl;dr so I’ll go ahead and tell you.

In adult relationships the person with narcissistic traits (my ex wife, KL) seeks out an empathetic, codependent-type partner (me) to suck dry in an attempt to gain power and control through the latter’s admiration of them (known as supply). This relationship starts with what’s called “love-bombing”, in which the narc falls intensely for the empath and idealises them, showing them the best version of themselves. In my case, KL showered me with gifts, flowers, food, love notes, calls and texts all day, every day. She made herself vulnerable by claiming she was being treated unfairly by her ex (whom I will call IC), and feeding me sob stories of her “challenging” life with IC, painting herself as the victim. I fell hook, line and sinker.

Once we were married, her true self began to emerge, but I was already addicted. I was a goner. Shit slowly started to happen, and that old adage of the frog in a pot of water that is slowly brought to boil comes to mind. This process is called devaluation and it starts small; the odd off joke here and there, casual belittling remarks that I took “too seriously” until it grew to adultery, contempt, triangulation, and gaslighting.

This is all very well and good, and I’m sure you all understand those words, but what I’ve discovered is without a clear example, these concepts are lost on most people.

So here goes, here’s my story.

We’re in Sydney on tour. I’m not having the most excellent time, but see, I have this habit of always being upset about something, always feeling things, you know, so I try to buck up and be happy. One night KL wants to go out and get drunk. I give her my blessing and tell her to go, happy to hang out with myself, read my book, drink my tea and relax for a damn minute. Our show playwright, Z comes into the room and some point and falls asleep, and soon I’m also in snoozeville.

It’s around 1.30am when KL comes stumbling in, sozzled to the tits and horny for me. This rarely happens at this point in our relationship and to be honest, I was gagging for it, so even though I was a little apprehensive because Z was asleep in the other bed, I comply with my wife’s wishes and fuck her silly. She goes to return the favour, but I gently rebuff her, concerned we’ve crossed the line already by going at it with our friend in the room. She falls asleep in two seconds flat and it’s all sunshine and roses.

The next day, Z goes to hang out with the rest of the cast and KL and I are left alone in the room. I’m feeling all sexy and glowy from the night before and say, “hey baby, how’s about it? I reckon it’s my turn.” I think I’m being flirty and I don’t see any resistance to the idea from her. She’s not overly responsive, which I attribute to the previous night’s drinking, but she doesn’t say no. So, she services me. I use that word specifically as that is what it felt like. She dutifully makes me come, and not two minutes afterwards as I’m pulling myself together, she says (verbatim),

“You forced me to do that.”

What?

My mouth drops open and I stare at her, aghast. “I what?” I rasp, feeling my stomach drop into my gut.

“I didn’t want to do that, but you don’t like it when I say no, and I figured I owed you from last night.”

WHAT??

I sat there, all the breath sucked from my body, my eyes stinging, my skin prickling and suddenly I feel sick and very, very dirty. “Are you saying I raped you?” I asked her, my stomach heaving. “Why didn’t you say no? Yes, I get upset when you say no, but I’d never force you. I feel like I’ve raped you.” I started to cry.

This seemed to shock her and she suddenly backtracked, exclaiming “no, of course not, I have issues, why would I say that, I love going down on you, I just …” But at that point I feel I want to tear my skin off my body, slough away the shame oozing out my pores, so feeling like a sordid old sleaze I excuse myself to take a shower.

In the shower I scrub at myself, feeling like the worst person in the world. Guilt, fear, shame, all of those awful feelings cascaded over me. I was certain I had her consent. Didn’t I? I went over and over what had just happened and I couldn’t understand why she would have sex with me if she didn’t want to. And then claim that she did want to! I was so confused. I later came to realise that this is gaslighting, a tactic to confuse and addle me, to keep me under control.

I start to sob and smash my head against the side of the shower. I clamp my hands over my mouth because I’m hiccuping and sobbing loudly and that embarasses me even more and I don’t want her to hear. I hear her calling my name but I yell for her to please leave me alone so I can get myself together.

Eventually, I calm down and get out of the shower, dry and dress myself, and open up the bathroom door to find her lying on the bed, foaming at the mouth. There’s a part of me that knows I’m being manipulated, but I’m learning now that this is a game, and I have to play my part. I stare at her. “What have you done?” She’s crying and foaming and gurgling, so I say I’m going to get Z who is a nurse, and she suddenly sits up, spitting the contents of her mouth into her hand and says, “I didn’t swallow them.” I understood then and there what this was. This was emotional blackmail, something she would do a further two times. So again, I played my part and I comforted her and I apologised while she convinced me that she put the pills in her mouth because she was “so hurt” by what she had accused me of doing.

And then it was forgotten. Just like that. A few days later the peeping incident happened and the last two nights of the show we were performing in was cancelled, partly because of the peeping, partly because sales were shit, and partly because the venue organisers were being difficult. I, being the eternal martyr of course, felt overwhelmingly responsible and began to disappear into myself in an attempt to dissociate.

Our last night there was the Mardi Gras parade and we were marching. I didn’t feel festive, I didn’t feel celebratory. I still felt dirty and disgusting and responsible for the tour being ruined, so my energy was low. Despite this I got dressed up, did my hair, did my face, slapped on a smile and we went to the marshalling area.

I couldn’t maintain the level of energy required to keep up that façade, however, and the mask started to slip. So my wife, the person who was supposed to hold me up when I was falling, the person who promised to hold my hand through the crap as well as the parade of life, the person who had seen first hand what kind of week I’d had in Sydney, got shitty at me because I wasn’t “having fun.” She told me I always did this, I always ruined it for her, and as much as I tried to defend myself, her anger won out. So I played my part. I conceded. I apologised and “had fun”. We marched, and she loved the attention. Every time a camera was on us she would grab me and kiss me in a show of defiant lesbian love. She held my hand and performed her role of loving wife for the public to see. I smiled and nodded and waved and danced and in doing so, unconsciously prepared myself for the shit storm of the last year and a half of our relationship to come.

I didn’t tell anyone except our therapist about this. I didn’t feel like I had the right. The irony is, deep in my heart, I felt like I deserved it because of my dismissal of KL’s ex IC and her claim of abuse. I was so invested in my ex wife’s version of this woman as a scheming, lying harpy that I failed to see the parallels in our stories, that she too had an incident that is not mine to tell, but that affected her as much as mine affected me. I will feel the sadness and embarrassment of that failure for a very long time to come.

~

Writing that didn’t make me feel better, I’m afraid. I’m not crying, I just feel gross. Rehashing all of that stuff isn’t cleansing for me because I know that wasn’t the first time – and it certainly won’t be the last time – she’s done something like that. However, I tell that story to illustrate what an abusive incident is, and as it was the onset of a continuing trend of behaviour, not just an isolated occurrence, it bears telling.

I understand that people with these narcissistic traits don’t actually love themselves. At their core, a narc is a mixed salad of entitlement, low self esteem, and shame. They have an idealised version of themselves that they seek out others to confirm and bolster. Underlying all of this of course, are profound feelings of inadequacy which are almost always projected onto their target. If KL was feeling unattractive, she would make underhanded comments about my age or my weight, never explicitly insulting, but barbed enough to make me start doubting myself. If she was feeling loss of control in another part of her life, she would start withholding sex, or demanding money, or claiming that I wasn’t pulling my weight.

The last year of our relationship was a blur of me working my arse off managing her career, arranging her music, writing and directing her cabaret (which she recently publicly claimed ownership of), funding that cabaret, producing that cabaret, doing all of her admin, paying some of her rent, giving her money to go to South Africa, accompanying her to night clubs in which I watched her getting hit on by various women while holding her wallet, keys and phone and generally being ignored by her and most of the other people in the club, promoting her, being available for sex on the rare occasion that she was drunk enough to be interested, and warning her about stringing along the young, 18-year-old girl that had fallen for her. Devaluing 101.

The next part, in which she ended our marriage and shacked up with the girl – who I’ll call PR and who she went on to also abuse – is called the discarding stage. PR, young, inexperienced and naive was fully ensconced in the idealisation phase and only saw KL’s ideal self, not knowing that she was caught up in the next cycle of narcissistic abuse. Of course, KL took no responsibility for this, just as she took little responsibility for her abuse of IC and again the cycle has continued onto the next woman.

This is what KL wrote to me just before our divorce application was submitted (I will add that this was not the end result of a text fight, this was in response to my refusal to print a document for her):

“Being married to you that last year sucked as you never appreciated what I could do for you, only pointed out what I couldn’t. Stop blaming others for your problems. Stop blaming just me for our failed marriage. I am safe and happy now and in a great place that I have forgiven myself for everything. I am moving forwards.”

She wrote something similar to both IC and PR after their relationships were over. I don’t think either of them refused to print a document for her, but who knows what atrocities they committed to elicit such a response (joke).

Despite what it may look like, this is not a “dump-on-my-ex-wife” post. To be honest, I feel genuinely sorry for her. Her behaviour, that message from her, her continued vicious cycling all point to someone who is deeply broken and self-hating. She doesn’t know how to fix it, how to make it right, so she keeps repeating the same thing over and over again, hoping for a different result. However, the only person that can get her off that wheel is herself.

I am a survivor. The other two women who have shared in these experiences are also survivors. We are strong, we are supportive, we still cry over what happened to us, but frankly, we’re kicking ass and taking names.

If you see anything similar to what you may be experiencing in my story, please seek help. In honour of World Narcissistic Abuse Awareness Day I end with a link to their page, and a list of warnings and red flags, edited because I’m a grammar nazi. I experienced probably about 95% of these signs. Be safe, peeps.

WNAAD

WARNING SIGNS

  • They have a sense of superiority, often being highly critical, often judgemental about others.
  • They have a sense of entitlement. Sometimes this comes off as confidence, but can manifest in subtle ways, like cutting through a service station rather than wait at the traffic lights, or deliberately leaving rubbish for someone else to pick up.
  • They give out back-handed compliments, such as “she has a figure like yours, you know, slim but no muscle tone.”
  • In a romantic relationship, the relationship moves quickly. For example they will shower you with attention, compliments or gifts, and say “I love you” very early on in the relationship.
  • They will start to subtly ignore you. They may appear to lose interest/get distracted or check their phone while you’re talking.
  • Their seemingly innocent words are often contradicted by their body language and tone of voice.
  • Their stories don’t quite add up, and you start to see the little lies. You may even tell yourself, “I just heard them lie to their friend, it was just a little white lie. But s/he wouldn’t lie to me.”
  • They have two sets of rules. Rules that apply to them, and rules that apply to everyone else. They may have unrealistic expectations of love and nurturing from others, but don’t hold themselves to the same high standards.
  • They have a lack of empathy, and are unable to see things from the perspective of others.
  • They have poor boundaries, and may regularly invade your privacy, go through your belongings, or expect that you can mind-read their wishes and needs.
  • They may be highly sensitive to criticism, or any suggestion that they are not in the right.
  • They have a “my way or the highway” attitude. They believe that they know best, and that their way of doing things is the correct way.
  • Initially they can come off quite charming and charismatic, always knowing the right thing to say.

RED FLAGS

As the relationship becomes more established, you may start to see some stronger warning signs, or red flags, such as:

  • You may spot bigger lies, and when you confront them, you never get a straight answer or they will turn it around and accuse you of what they’re actually doing.
  • If you try to raise an issue with them, it becomes a full-blown argument. They may accuse you of causing the fight, or they may use the silent treatment as a way of punishing you for confronting them.
  • Arguments feel circular and nonsensical. You’re left feeling emotionally battered and confused. There is no resolution to the issue, no sense of compromise or seeking a win/win outcome. It feels like they need to “win” regardless of the issue or what’s at stake. You’re left feeling unsupported and misunderstood.
  • They may tell you something didn’t happen when you know it did, or vice versa. This is called gaslighting and it’s designed to make you doubt your own reality and judgement.
  • You feel like you need to ask for permission before making plans with others. They may try to control where you go, or call and text constantly to check up on you, and interrogate you about where you’ve been/what you’ve been doing.
  • You start seeing less of your family and friends. Perhaps because they openly prevent you from doing so through guilt tripping or threats of abandonment. Or, it could be more subtle, where they make such a fuss about seeing your family and friends that you start avoiding them so you don’t have to deal with the fallout. You end up feeling isolated and lonely.
  • The relationship feels one-sided – like you are the one who is doing all the giving, the one who is always in the wrong, the one who is trying the hardest, changing the most or doing the most sacrificing, just to make them happy. And it still doesn’t work. Nothing is enough for them.
  • You can’t feel at ease or relaxed in their presence. You feel like you’re walking on eggshells, waiting for the next time they lash out at you. You realize you feel a sense of relief when they aren’t there.
  • You feel like whatever you do, it’s not enough. You’re manipulated so that your flaws and vulnerabilities are exploited and used against you at every opportunity. You begin to feel inadequate, unlovable, and like everything is all your fault.
by

Love Isn’t Enough

Trigger warning: contains references to drug use, violence, abuse and rape.

I remember the first time it happened. We were in St Kilda East, opposite the cemetery. Stupid idea for two energetically sensitive people to live opposite a massive cemetery, but there you go. We were breaking up for the second time. I had confronted her about her return to drug use, and by confront I mean scream “fucking junkie” in her face. She punched me in the mouth, held me down on the bed and raised her fist to punch me again. She called me a dumb fuck, ugly bitch. I muttered for her to get out of my house. She did. I cried. I went in to work at the parlour the next night, my lip swollen and a blood blister forming. The girls took care of me, but all I wanted was her.

I begged her to come back. She did eight months later. By this time I had spent a few months living in a factory cultivating an amphetamine habit that I didn’t have to pay for, I had worked in Sydney for the first time and been anally raped by a client whilst there, and had been homeless for a while, bouncing from couch to couch. I had finally found a little flat to call home in St Kilda, and she came back. And then she left. And then she came back. Even when she was with someone else, she came back. This was to be the final two years of our relationship, this push me/pull you bullshit.

The second time it happened was at the flat. I had found needles and poorly written love notes from another woman. I confronted her again, this time adding “whore” to the well-versed “fucking junkie” routine. I slapped her because she called me stupid. She doesn’t remember this, but I do because she fractured my nose in retaliation. She slept in my bed that night, while I lay on the couch, sobbing. She was gone in the morning.

I punched the wall next to her head once because she stole my entire $700 pay packet to score some heroin. Then I took her to a Buddhist temple to be cleansed. She thought I was taking her somewhere to kill her. I guess she didn’t know how much I loved her, that regardless of how many fantasies I had of beating her up and throwing her off the balcony, I could never harm her. Love does that.

The last time was the last time anyone ever laid a hand on me again. I forget now what the argument was about. Probably drugs, again. I goaded her, that I remember. I pushed her hard with my words until she snapped. She held a knife to my throat and tried to smash my head through the kitchen window. Fuck, she was strong. I have strength, yes, but she was propelled by something more forceful. I couldn’t push her away. She suddenly let me go, grabbed her things, and stumbled out the door. I didn’t see her again for years.

I grieved for her for a long time. I thought she was The One for me because I felt so strongly for her. I didn’t realise until years later that the physical stuff was not the only abuse we heaped on each other. She lied to me constantly, about stuff that she didn’t even have to lie about. I called her names to hurt her because I couldn’t touch her. She stole money and jewellery from me. I read her private phone messages. She took drugs and worked at the parlour one New Year’s Eve instead of spending it with me, so I cheated on her with another woman – I was free to sleep with whatever man I wanted to, but I broke our one rule in spite. She shot up anything she could get her hands on. I cut myself. She’d proposition men for drugs. I laid on my back for her habit. We played stupid games with each other, her using, me enabling until we burnt ourselves out. We were like a supernova that imploded into a black hole.

The funny thing is, we loved each other fiercely. That’s probably why we lasted for five years all up. She still says that I was the perfect girlfriend. I beg to differ, but I loved her, there was no doubt about that. Sometimes, though, love isn’t enough. We were bad for each other. She lost herself in drugs and I lost myself in her. While we were together, terrible things happened to us and we weren’t in the frame of mind to get help. Our network was sex workers, brothel managers and drug addicts – people who had their own stories and horrors to contend with. We removed ourselves from our respective families because toxic relationships tend to make their inhabitants do that. Oh, there was love. In retrospect though, looking back years later, it is so clear that it wasn’t enough.

Ten years later, we’ve reconnected and we’re friends. Good friends. Some people raise their eyebrows at this. I guess I wanted her friendship because I refused to be the victim and I refused to make her the perpetrator. I’ve told very few people the particulars of this story because I still refuse to be the victim in this. I spent a lot of my life victimising myself because of the things that happened to me at the hands of others. I needed to, and identifying as a victim of abuse is very important for the healing process to begin. But by the time she and I were finished I was done with it, I was done with being the person bad things happened to. Therefore, I think, I was able to forgive. She and I have talked and talked and cried and talked about that time. She has apologised again and again, still does, to such an extent where I have to tell her to stop because she doesn’t need to anymore. I can see by simply spending time with her that she’s a completely different person now, as am I. I said my sorries to her too, as one thing this relationship taught me is that things are rarely one-sided.

I’ve suffered abuse. At the hands of my mother, at the hands of a child molester, at the hands of a few rapists, and at the hands of a lover. It does not define me, but I know more of this subject than I care to. No one can tell me otherwise.

If you know more of abuse than you’d care to, please get help. Talk to someone. Recovery is not about being angry at the person who hurt you (although that helps for a short time), it’s about finding a way to move on with love for yourself. Talk therapy helped me immensely. Maybe it can help you too.

This post is dedicated to this year’s Australian of the Year, Rosie Batty, whose strength, resilience and bravery is an inspiration to many.

CASA
Support for victims of rape and sexual assault

http://www.casa.org.au

Family Drug Support
For families and loved ones of those with addictions

http://www.fds.org.au

ASCA
For adults surviving child abuse

http://www.asca.org.au

Victim Support Australia
Help for victims of crime

http://www.victimsupport.org.au

Child Wise
Help for victims of child sexual abuse

http://www.childwise.org.au

Domestic Violence Resource Centre
A very helpful site for those experiencing domestic violence, also caters to LGBTIQ

http://www.dvrcv.org.au/support-services/national-services

1800RESPECT
https://www.1800respect.org.au

Scarlet Alliance, Australian Sex Workers Association
Although there is no over-reaching national association, this page has links to other organisations that offer support and help to current and ex-sex workers. (Based in NSW)

Home page