| If
you met me on a Monday morning in a cafe or on a train,
you would think that in front of you sat an ordinary,
fat looking woman, aged about fifty with greying temples
and a washed-out face who looked as if she was a little
weary but nothing out of the ordinary.
I
would be carrying a basket or an over-stuffed handbag
which would be stuck upon my knee and I would be gazing
out of the window with a somewhat abstract expression,
peering out into the middle distance, enjoying the
sensation of movement whilst having to move not one
muscle myself, enjoying the illusion of energy whilst
being utterly drained of it.
I
am the victim of regular and sometimes sustained abuse;
physical and verbal abuse of the domestic variety,
so there is nowhere else I can go to get away from
it other than on the train, or in the trams or buses.
But at the end of those journeys I must return home.
I need somewhere to sleep. Somewhere to eat. I will
not sleep in the streets. I am middle-class. Respectable.
I must return to my place. That place passes for my
home.
Outwardly,
I am an achiever. Those who think they know me think
I am intelligent; they come to me for advice. They
think I have a perfectly satisfactory home life. They
are wrong: I think I have a perfectly adequate public
profile but my mask sometimes slips.
For
over six years I have spent much of my time crying
myself to sleep. I invent a busy program so that I
can keep my mind on other things. I am achieving an
Arts Degree at University and I plan to take a second
degree after that. I am out of my mind with worry
a lot of the time and have to fit my assignments around
the sporadic and precious availability of sanity,
depending on what sort of week it is. I always do
my assignments as soon as I can, because I have no
guarantee of getting another chance before the due
date. I can't work after a bashing, sometimes for
four days, sometimes a week, sometimes longer. I have
to ask for extensions on due dates and supply doctors'
certificates for illness. I feel a fraud an incapable.
My marks on good months indicate otherwise.
The
daily torment of regular abuse drains me of all life.
It is pointless to cry out. I am afraid what will
happen if I throw the persecutor out. Will they kill
themselves? Theirs is a sporadic insanity, the kind
that comes and goes. When they are fine, life is fine.
When they are not, it's over.
I
attend regular support groups. One day I know I will
ask my aggressor to leave. Till then I just keep going,
hoping things will change, hoping things will get
better, looking for glimpses of improvements, telling
myself I see progress, asking myself if I'm in denial.
I
believe in God. I believe in each day.
I believe in healing. I believe in letting
go.
I
can let go of my child but will drugs
ever let go of him?
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