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[elegantdonutinternet]

Was leaving the right choice?

Now that is a question I have asked myself so many times. Would it not have been better if I would’ve stayed and just kept on sucking up the abuse.

The year was 2017 and my father was diagnosed with lung cancer. Having always been a heavy drinker and smoker and as brown as walnut, I did used to wonder which cancer would get him first. Clearly the added early years of working in an asbestos filled garage had won over his whiskey filled pancreas or his many jet black moles.

My relationship with my father had been a complicated one between the ages of 9 until around 21. I was an ‘accident’ (my mother 19, father 21) but clearly their love at that time was strong enough and he had felt it right to take up his responsibility. What he didn’t see the point of was curbing his going out, getting drunk and some serious womanising. As you can imagine did this not lead to a happy home environment. Anyway becoming of age yourself you do understand things from their point of view. So for many years we had enjoyed a good relationship and he couldn’t do enough for me.

I had never really had a long term relationship until I was 21. Plenty of action before then but usually only for 1 night. I didn’t (and in fact still don’t) know why that was. Sure I was overweight (my relationship with my body would very much require another blog!) but I was also 6ft and pretty so I had no shortage of admirers.

I was 19 when I moved to London and after a few false starts decided to settle there when I was 20. How ridiculous that at that age I feared growing up an old spinster. I mean this was the 90’s not 1890! Anyway a short while after my 21st birthday I met the man I spent my life with until January 31st 2018. It was always a tempestuous relationship where physical violence was a regular occurrence. I always blamed myself and to be fair that’s how I thought relationships were.

My father was violent to my mother and me, my uncles to my aunties, etc. If you’d done something which they deemed wrong you would receive a physical punishment. Also my mother had forever warned me that I would be on the receiving end of plenty a fist due to my feistiness in standing up for myself and talking back instead of just doing what I was told.

So yes I sort of knew the physical violence was wrong I did accept it because I’d done something wrong. Having a compulsive cleaning mother (coming back from school but having to wait until the daily mopped kitchen floor was dry) had turned me into a quite slovenly housekeeper. Actually I always think it was because of my mother but the way my daughter has the ability to make something messy before you’ve had a chance to blink, I think I’m probably just lazy and messy.

So yes being lazy and messy and not cleaning the house weekly was definitely worthy of a bit of physical violence. It didn’t matter that I worked full time (he was training to be a doctor so needed lots of study time), as a woman it was my duty to keep a tidy house. What man wants to put up with someone like that? I actually felt lucky he stuck by me. The psychological violence like gaslighting etc. was also happening but that went straight over my head. I’d been told plenty of times by different people what a waste of space I was and told about all the things I lacked so yes, when he was verbally very critical of me I totally agreed with him.

He did many despicable, unforgivable things I won’t go into as I’m sure this blog is long enough already! During all these years I thought plenty of times of leaving. Even left a few times but always went back as I felt worthless without him and was convinced I’d never find anyone again. Who’d want me?

All this time the biological clock is ticking making you more unsure of it was better to stay and have children or leave him for that lonely spinster life I was so sure awaited me on the other side. The grass was dead and brown on both sides. Plus I actually thought he’d be a good dad. His quite large family would forever say how good he was with children. And it was true but I didn’t realise it was a performance. One that he’d be unable to keep up every day. So I was delighted when I fell pregnant in 2004 and gave birth to a ginormous (11.4l & 62 cm) baby boy. He had the baby blues for about 3 days after where I had to keep reassuring him it’d be ok

He would help out but not much and at times physically hurt our son. I particularly remember a donkey kick which my little 2 year old received after playing up in a queue. I was unsure of having another baby. Of course I had always wanted more but I didn’t feel any security in his role as father. For him going to work was his sole contribution to the family. When I pointed out that he’d be doing the same work with or without having a children it was just ignored. Also our relationship was going from bad to worse as my son was a terrible sleeper, I co-slept with him which was easiest as I was breastfeeding too. Because he had a job he took himself off to the spare room as he didn’t want to be woken up in the night.

So despite reservations I had a baby girl (only 10lb & 57 cm so no stitches needed this time!). His involvement remained the same. Virtually non existent. I even took my son to his weekly football club and my daughter came with me. I would take them on days out only for then to come home and see he’d been watching porn all afternoon.

And I just kept staying but wanting to desperately leave. Particularly after a bad argument. I thought it wasn’t fair on the children as I knew what he was like (not about the shit dad bit mind) before I had them and thought it unfair to put them through a divorce. Actually I also wasn’t strong enough myself to do it. At least the grass on my side was still brown. The one on the other had been burned black.

Life as we knew it continued. Not all times were bad of course but the bad far outweighed the good ones. You’d get tense when you heard him coming through the front door as you didn’t know what mood he’d be in. He had very much a Jekyll & Hyde personality.

Only after I left did I recognise myself completely when I came across gaslighting and found all his traits under narcissistic sociopath. No wonder that when every time I wanted to talk I’d come away feeling guilty for being such a bad mother and wife. Asking him to take them out to the park for a couple of hours so I could have a little break would result in me being accused of not being able to cope.

I always knew leaving would be incredibly difficult. I could give you many examples of his twisted mind and terrible psychological games he played. He did this to the children too and was at physically abusive too.

Now we come to December 2017 and it’s gone beyond liveable. I’ll happily describe it to anyone interested but where do you stop? He was having an affair but I didn’t give a jot about that. My hope was that he’d leave me. Sure when he’d cheated on me years ago it was incredibly painful but now with no love left from my end I really didn’t care.

So with the children fully aware, and who’d actually asked me on plenty of occasions to leave him (I did explained each time that things like that are just not that easy), we left on 31st January 2018.

I wanted a quick divorce in the hope of making it the least nasty. Well you can probably imagine how well that went! He was as nasty as he could be. I accepted the financial settlement he offered me and didn’t fight him on anything. There’d have been no point as we’d still be fighting now. He saw the children every week which perhaps wasn’t a good idea considering his psychological mind games.

From October my son started struggling with anxiety and depression. Getting him to school became a terrible daily struggle with bad arguments every day. I assume I didn’t handle things very well due to my own state of mind. On occasion I’d phone his dad but all he’d do was record everything. When we finally received help from Early Help in January I found out he’d created a whole file on me with recordings, emails, photos of the flat looking messy while I was at my dying father’s bedside.

Eventually my son stopped going to school completely and also never went out anymore. He was completely flattened by his depression and anxiety. My father died on the night of 27th & 28th December. My ex was ghastly to me throughout this whole period. He was really hoping this one would push over the edge he’d been dragging me to for years.

After my ex did something horrible to my son 2 days after I returned from my dad’s funeral all contact was stopped. My ex never ever says sorry and is never in the wrong so he just didn’t contact him. My daughter would still go over (his parents were heavily involved) but he didn’t start speaking again to my son until about September, October and he even had to make the contact.

So my son has been out of education for a year. He has recently started to go back slowly so fingers crossed. It’s a stress and struggle every time but I try to remain calm. He’s 14 and not the easiest or maybe normal teenager but it’s tough. He’s seeing his dad every week again and I’m being friendly and pleasant as being any different wouldn’t benefit anyone.

It’s been an incredibly painful, stressful time for us. I have no family nor close friends so I struggle through alone. I can’t afford counselling and as I missed (or never received) my NHS one was cancelled. This was after already waiting more than 6 months.

I took the children away as I didn’t want to expose them to his behaviour anymore. I didn’t want my daughter thinking that that was how a woman was treated, nor wanted my son thinking that this is how you treat women. The sad part is that if he’d been a good dad I never would’ve left and I’d have just kept sucking up his abuse.

But when I think that my son wouldn’t be having these struggles now and would’ve continued a normal life with school and friends. My daughter would be less anxious too. Yes they’d have had continued having an at times sad/depressed mum but I’ve felt more like that in the last 1,5 years then before.

I will never know if I made the wrong choice or not but it felt like the right one at the time. Staying would’ve meant putting up with it. Well actually you just get used to that sort of living. I’m feeling generally very low at the moment. He still blames for everything that goes wrong. Look, here’s a text I just received from him now:

Yes it is certainly the bed you made & the complete deterioration in all aspects of ‘son’s name’ life since you fractured his life over 2 years ago. No friends, no contact with family & a gaming addition he never had.

‘Daughter’s name’ will in time have problems with the complete fracture in her you caused. It's a heavy burden for you to have but you reap what you sow but it should only stiffen your resolve to help ‘son’s name’.

I feel so alone and barely want to live. I have an existence rather than a life and I live for others. So yes, how frightful that life would’ve been better if I had stayed. Yet another burden to add to the load on my back. I am so so fed up!