This week will be one that will forever be etched into my memory. The date is Monday 19th July 2010 and I am talking to my mum and dad on a small burner phone my mum had left behind when she flew back to England. We are discussing my ‘escape plan’. My dad will fly over, and when he is out, pick me and the children up, drive us over the border to the Northern side, and from there, a friend of a friend will fly us on their little plane out of the country. The plan hadn’t developed beyond that, but it was a plan, and it was hope.
It didn’t work out that way though.
On Friday 23rd July 2010, I picked up the phone and uttered the five words that would take me away from the ten years of hell I had endured.
“He’s tried to kill me.”
In actual fact, I know he probably wasn’t trying to kill me, because he loved to control and torture me- but he could’ve, easily, had I been a little more fragile, or he had just placed his fingers around my neck for a second or two longer.
Do you know what it feels like to have someone put their hands around your throat and push their thumbs into your wind pipe so hard you cannot breathe? Until your eyes feel hot and burning and bulging? Until the colours in front of you start to blur and fade to darkness?
Do you know what it’s like to be punched over and over and over in the same spot until you can’t feel the pain any longer?
Do you know what it’s like to have your babies food taken out of your hand and tipped over your head in front of your other children?
Do you know what it’s like to be pinned down after being so badly beaten, for hours, and raped?
If you do, and you have experienced some, similar, or all of these things, then you will know how it feels- in that moment, the next day, the week later, the month later, the year later… ten years later.
"The pain goes away, and the memories fade, but you never, ever forget, even if you want to, try to… they’re always there, somewhere inside you, looking at you through the eyes of your children, in a photo, a song, a smell, a dream…"
I am a survivor of domestic violence.
Sexual, emotional, financial, physical, verbal, mental and psychological abuse.
And ten years on, I am still here telling the world my story. Why? Because I will never forget, nor do I ever want to forget, because if I do, it is to forget about all those that have experienced, and are still experiencing domestic abuse. It is to brush it under the carpet and pretend it didn’t happen to me, doesn’t happen to others. And I am not prepared to do that. I’m not prepared to stop fighting for the victims and survivors. I’m not prepared to stop talking about it.
Not ever.
