Towards the end of May, in 2019, I was diagnosed with PTSD. After the breakdown of my last relationship I had stopped being able to function in the ways I was used to. Admittedly I had always been a little chaotic, operating on a whirlwind cycle of creative boom and bust…but this, this was different. I felt like an unravelling jumper and would have strange uninvited waves of loud and incapacitating fear that would keep me awake at night, or odd terrifying images with his sound or weight in them that didn’t seem to correlate with the story of us.
When I went to the doctors to seek help they initially attributed this anxiety and this low mood to depression…but that didn’t feel right. I felt like an impostor in my own body, screaming to try and get my own attention. But I was still joyful, every single day. I loved my job, my family and friends were regular happy punctuations in my days and importantly for the first time in my life I was financially secure. I wanted to do and to make things, so many things…and I did. I was slower than usual, more projects got stunted or fell behind than I would like but I operate in hyper-focus and often have a raft of things on the go… I was only dull in my progress by my own standards.
But here’s the catch.
I create things to process trauma. I work through it in effusive outburst of words and dancing and doing. I take the negative things and try to be constructive with them however I can, converting them into creating which is the place where I feel most happy and most alive, rather than allowing them to be destructive.
To feel creatively silenced, my productivity dumbfounded, this was wrong. This was not me being depressed. It was something else, this emptiness inside. There was something in there that I was afraid to look at.
And I was losing time, zoning out and experiencing blank patches. This was scary and not something I associated with depression at all. When I am depressed I feel, see and notice too much. So if I zone out then it’s from an oversaturation of emotion. I can remember the experience, the seconds taking forever to drip by, in great detail. I can taste them.
So went back and I sat in the chair at the GP surgery with a specialist and talked about where I was in my life. I talked about my recently dead relationship because it was the only major change. I had opened up about this before with a few friends while processing the break-up and watched as worry erupted on their faces. I had made statements or described things that seemed normal in my head at that time but had been picked up as troubling by them.
And I watched the same expression of concern break out across the doctor’s face.
This is what it took for me to begin to understand that something was really wrong. For an expert, a figure of authority, to point out the fundamental untruths and cruelties that had been so artfully directed at me…to point out that I was fighting with my self and with the truth through the detritus of the layers and layers of abusive behaviour that I had endured.
And I was shocked. I began to shake uncontrollably as I started to listen to myself again. I felt nauseous. No wonder I was so tired. It was taking so much energy to keep listening to the controlling fictions of my abuser drowning out my own bellowing, kicking, desperately protective voice. Tears had been rolling down my face for forty-five minutes but I only became aware of them when it was time to leave the room. I must have looked like a ghost.
I had four regular appointments with that GP while we constructed a plan to begin my process of healing. I refused pills. To date I always have because I need to feel things in order to do the work even if they are painful. By the time we finished these appointments we had established that I may have ADHD but would need to deal with my trauma before that could really be addressed.
By the time we finished these appointments I was on the waiting list for a specialist trauma counselling service for victims of domestic abuse and sexual violence.
By the time we finished these appointments I had started dating someone brilliant. Another thing to be excited about, and I really was excited about it. Our easy and steadily growing connection was another welcome affirmation that I was not depressed.
When I have been depressed I cannot connect with people because I don’t want to or I don’t feel worthy of that connection or it all just feels too overwhelming. When I get dissociative, and I quite often do at the moment, I still desperately want and need to make those connections with people, I just struggle to get outside of my own skin enough to do so. And I often become unable to speak. It’s not that I have forgotten how but the words just stop and get stuck just behind my teeth.
Anyway,
The next painful revelation was brought about by this fledgling connection.
I’m not frightened or ashamed of my own sexuality, I enjoy it enormously in fact. But in the beginnings of this new relationship I felt troubled after our first night together. I felt troubled, because whilst I had had a lot of fun in the moment I had also felt disjointed after, like something was missing. But I really couldn’t put my finger on what that was. Had it been bad sex?
Goodness, no. It had been exciting and passionate and generous and we had both been fully invested in enjoying it together. I had sent him back to London on the train and been so happy and so hopeful for a future repeat of things. I tucked the uncomforting feeling away, which is unlike me. Usually I will wrangle a feeling like that into the interrogation chair and sit with it until we come to an understanding.
And there were other things… the ground rules. The things I always say right from the start that I won’t do, the things that this new relationship and every other one I had been in respected and did not transgress. The things that my abuser latched on to, that he gunned for.
Again it wasn’t until talking things through with friends that I realised where my discomfort was coming from.
I realised that what was missing in this new encounter was violence.
I had been left feeling like something was lacking because I had enjoyed myself, because I had felt respected and because I had not been hurt.
Let that land for a moment.
I was confused and feeling frightened that I had done something wrong because I had had sex without it hurting me, without feeling used, without becoming nothing more than an object. Everything we had done had been consensual, an act of togetherness. I had been present and powerful in my enjoyment the entire time.
This conflict was so utterly destructive, and being quiet about it, keeping it to myself is pulling me apart inside. So that is why I am writing this statement.
I am writing it to protect myself. Because I have to, I need these experiences to be known, because my other avenues of justice as a survivor have been closed off for now.
I am writing this because I have to live with the daily legacy of the trauma that he caused.
Because of the shortfalls of society in functionally helping or trusting survivors of Rape.
Because rough sex is not a viable line of defence.
Because every time I have to repeat my story it throbs painfully like a fresh wound.
I am writing this because I live in a small community and the likelihood that we might bump into each other is high. That is terrifying. Because we share people and perhaps some day they will assume I must be over the break-up by now and invite him along. Because I cannot continue to be angry at the people I care about when they continue to have a relationship with him when I haven’t told them what he did.
And I am writing this because I am terrified that I will not be the last person he hurts and he damages. I know I was not the first.
I know what he did and
I know what he is and
I am finally getting back to knowing who I am after all of it.
So I need you to know too.
I need you to see all of it.
And then, we can go forward from Here.
Or at least we can try.
The way I went forward from my unwelcome revelations was to pull myself up and get on with trying to be creative. I had been told in no uncertain terms by my abuser that he would not stop me putting on events with the collective he had helped me to start. Realistically he had lost interest in the project long before we broke up.
Realistically, I have now realised that he had been using these events as a control method in our relationship. Through the collective he could control my creative output and placate me by allowing me to have that. He could control when and how I was socialising and who with. Even so, I am proud of what has been built. And I felt like I had put in more than enough effort to take ownership of it moving forward. It was good thing and I would continue to grow it.
So I put on an event. It was not perfect but it went well, it felt generous and it was not lacking for the absence of him. I got invited to do another in quite quick succession, and then offered bigger platforms for the collective to use. I had done the work and I was beginning to see the returns. Not financially I must stress, but the platform was growing and was nurturing a good number of artists. I had been building a good thing and it was visible to others.
But it was also visible to him. When he ended our relationship he made it clear that he was uninterested in maintaining contact. But he used this perceived success to re-establish contact. He sent me a flurry of emails insisting we had to sit down and talk (which I was terrified of the idea of doing), then threatening legal action and telling me I had to stop using anything that related to the collective, the name, the logo, the ‘brand’ unless I gave him full credit and or paid him for the privilege. His message was loud and clear I had to start again if I wanted to be creative, and I had to do it on his terms. I ignored these emails but then he sent one to my work address.
This left me feeling intimidated and exposed and like nowhere was safe from him. So I felt that I had no choice and I replied.
I replied, and I wish I hadn’t. I answered his concerns and his demands with reasonable responses and I asked him to stop contacting me. I explained that there was no money in the project, and that building the brand logo had been collaborative and it was unfair of him to retrospectively demand payment. He had had his fair share of any money that we had raised and I had spent the lion’s share when financially supporting the project so really he was owed nothing. And finally I reminded him that it had been intended to be a generous space, neither of us had expected to be paid for our time or skills. That the project was not intrinsically tied to us as a couple or as individuals.
But he persisted.
More emails.
I don’t know why I was surprised. He had previously boasted about how much he loved to commit to petty disputes, pursuing them doggedly until he broke the other person. He had also spoken about his previous job in a court and how he had a great understanding of civil cases, how he knew a brilliant lawyer “if he ever needed them”. He had early on made it clear, “in jest” of course, that he was much taller and bigger than me, that he could really hurt me if he wanted to.
These breadcrumbs stick with you…
They are not statements you forget.
So while this petty behavior looked seemingly low level from the outside,
As part of the fabric of his abusive behaviour,
It was justifiably terrifying to me.
So I reported it to the police.
In order to contextualise why I felt that this was harassment, and why I was so frightened of an unsupportable legal threat, why I couldn’t just sit down with him and talk it out, I had to tell the whole story to the officer who came to take my case. We sat for an hour. And at the end of that interview she strongly recommended that I report him for sexual abuse.
I did not feel able to at the time and I hated myself for that. I just wanted him to stop contacting me, to stop being present in my life. The officer was brilliant and did not push. She did not push when I insisted that I wasn’t ready for her to give him a verbal warning then and there, even though there were grounds for it then and there. She respected that I just wanted it logged, on record, just in case he didn’t stop. She respected that I was afraid of how he would react.
But he didn’t stop.
More emails,
And a letter.
His persistence made me realise that he might never stop.
I don’t know why I was so surprised that he wouldn’t stop.
Or that my silence and dis-engaging might make him feel powerful, or that my fear was what he wanted.
And each persistence perpetuated his control, his fear-hold over me.
And then I found out I wasn’t the only one,
That he had hurt.
So I was left with no choice.
The police were sent around to give him a verbal warning for harassment. And I opened a Rape case against him.
The same police officer I had originally spoke with came to the house. She was excessively supportive. She made me feel stronger than I was.
And I went through it all again in fine detail.
The violence, the violations, the breaking in of me, the bruises, the pain, the terror, the betrayal of his very behaviour and of my sense of self and safety.
And then I went through it all again on the phone with another officer.
Again with victim support.
And each time a little more of me died.
It was explained that the conviction rate in the local area for historic cases like mine was 2%.
And then Lockdown happened. Lockdown happened and the case kept on grinding on.
Only 2% of cases that make it to the courts return a conviction.
Don’t get your hopes up.
It’s more complicated to prove if you were in a relationship, if there had ever been consent, if you leave it too long for forensics.
It will turn your life upside down but you will not have to stand up in court with him…we can do a video interview.
And I was getting more and more tired and more and more frightened and more and more damaged by it all. I was a sitting duck.
And then Lockdown continued and the police were increasingly inundated by fresh reports of domestic abuse in a rising tide of screaming seething behind closed doors inescapable violence. They needed to push my case through before it got swallowed by this disgusting tsunami.
And I felt rushed. I felt unsafe.
They would not be able to do the video interview for me because of covid restrictions. I would have to do another telephone interview. They would not tell me then if they felt I had grounds for the case to go to court. Then they would bring him in for questioning. And they would not tell me then if they felt I had grounds for the case to go to court. I would have to surrender my phone records in their entirety as would he… as if he would be stupid enough to mention at any point what he had been doing. He would know I was sat at home, by myself, we all were. I was a sitting duck. And if the case did go to court I would have to stand there in the same space as him and be interrogated because of the lack of the video interview.
I was a sitting duck and I could not breathe or think or feel. I was only rawness, pain and fear.
Some police officers came to my house in May, about a week before my daughter’s birthday. They sat in my dining room with me and I crumpled into tears and they recommended that I drop the case. Perhaps I was not ready, not resilient enough to keep on with it at this stage. And I knew they were right. I felt like a failure, of a woman, of a feminist, of a human being.
I wasn’t able to protect myself from him. He twisted my insides, poked around in my head until I would have begged him to stay and keep hurting me forever. Until he could wear me like a suit but it still wasn’t enough I still hadn’t given him enough. And now I couldn’t do the one thing that might protect other people from him. I howled in pain but I had to admit defeat.
A couple of days before this I had finally been notified that my counselling would be able to begin, I had made it to the top of a horrifically long list. I knew that it was going to be eviscerating but I knew I needed it badly.
And that’s where we are now.
I am doing the work
Six weeks in.
It is exactly as complex and as difficult and as painful as I expected it would be.
I am trying to forgive myself.
I am trying to let myself be angry,
I have every right to be.
I am trying to talk about it,
Why should I hide. I’m tired of hiding.
I am sorry if you have found this upsetting. I am here to talk about this. It might help us both.
I know what he did and
I know what he is and
I am finally getting back to knowing who I am after all of it.
So I need you to know too.
I need you to see all of it.
And then, we can go forward from Here. Or at least,
We can try.