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:
Another Bloody Actor 