Blind

“I am seen as a well-educated, independent, smart, strong woman, so the ‘you’re not the typical victim though’ is a frequent challenge from those who are not well versed in domestic violence dynamics…” – A domestic violence survivor

Have you ever blindly followed someone? You may not have even realised it. You may have just believed what they have said without thinking it through or you may have gone against your own beliefs because they have asked you to.

At some point all of us will blindly follow another. Those around us won’t always understand the motives. Heck WE won’t even understand the motives but whether it’s our mother, father, sister, brother, friend or partner at some stage in our lives we will blindly follow another.

Let me be clear, this is not always a bad thing.

Believing your mother that the frypan is very hot and you shouldn’t touch it, is the right way to blindly follow someone. A domestically violent relationship isn’t.

It took me a very long time to come to terms with what happened.

I still suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder today and it wasn’t even me being abused. I watched as my mother took beating after beating from a man who was supposably in love with her.

Many of you will ask ‘Why didn’t I stop it?’, ‘Why didn’t I call the police?’ and ‘Why didn’t I leave?’ and I ask you back ‘Would you leave your mother when you are scared for her life?’

In the media we always hear the stories of the victims and the survivors but we never hear the stories of those who helped them along the way. I get it, a survivor’s story will help another survivor find their path and so on and so forth. What isn’t so widely discussed is the story of those who stood by them, those who tried to help and couldn’t, those who had to watch it happen.

Well this is my story of survival…

I am a well-educated young lady. I was brought up in a good neighbourhood with loving parents and I never had to want for anything.

When I was a teenager, my father left my mother and my mother struggled. She fell into a deep depression whilst the selfish teenager I was, didn’t realise. My way of coping with my feelings was to go out party and never be alone. Her answer was to slowly develop a gambling addiction. She didn’t want to be alone, she wanted to feel wanted and loved, like so many of us do. She wanted to be around people, not stuck at home.

Over time she started on dating websites, looking for the perfect man. Eventually she found a younger man who made her feel like the most beautiful person in the world. He told her all the right things and she felt special.

The first time she came home with bruises, I blindly believed her story and didn’t think anything of it. Why would I? Until that point I had never seen an abusive relationship, I never had to look for the signs.

About a week later I woke up to yelling, screaming and crashing. I ran out of the room and followed the sound. I found my mother being pushed and punched by the man who supposedly adored her. After much yelling and threats to call the police he eventually left. But not for good.

This went on and on. I stopped sleeping at night because that’s when she was most vulnerable and I scoured the streets looking for her, to bring her home.

My psychologist referred to it as a role reversal, I became my mother and she became my daughter.

I begged and pleaded that she leave him and she looked at me so in love and said ‘he only hits those he loves’. You can imagine how flabbergasted I was to hear that. How could anyone ever believe such a crazy thing but she did.

Over time I stopped my life, I didn’t go out on weekends, I barely slept at night, always worried that tonight was the night she would end up in hospital.

Things got much worse… he turned up at her work, she had broken bones, we tried an intervention order that she continuously broke. So I used the one line of defence that I thought would make a difference, I threatened to leave and never see her again. I am an only child and she told me that I would always be number one to her. Instead she told me they were going to try for a baby.

The day he abused her in public was the day she first promised me she would leave him.

We moved house and she told me he would never learn where we lived. Slowly I started to get my life back but I was being too naïve. I woke up one morning to him leaving her bedroom. She had never stopped seeing him, she just waited until I was asleep to bring him in and he left before I got up.The lengths she would go to, to see him were incredible. I just didn’t understand.

I brought in outside help and we had an invention. It didn’t work but at least I had some support now.

Over the relationship she had with him, she made her whole life about him, she pushed away her friends, her family and devoted herself to him.

Time went on and again she promised me she would leave him. After a week or so I felt like she might have been telling the truth. I left home for the first time in months and stayed at my boyfriend’s house. It felt really nice to get out of the house.

My worst nightmare happened, I got a phone call from my mother in an ambulance on the way to the hospital. My stomach dropped, I felt sick and guilty but I knew I had to be strong for her.

I turned up at the hospital, the lady at reception warned me ‘she looks worse than she is’. I mustered up a smile and walked into the emergency department. Her face was caked with blood, her hair matted. She had missing teeth, her eyes were black and blue and yet I acted like it was all okay. Lucky for her, it was a couple of broken bones and a few broken teeth… it could have been much worse.

After a long chat with the police, I learnt that she had met with him at a public place. They were drinking and he got violent… again. He knocked her unconscious and was dragging her to the boot of her car when some kind strangers stepped in the way and called the police. If it wasn’t for those who stepped in, I probably would have never found her.

He was arrested and charged, sentenced to go to prison.

You would think that would be the end of it but I still had to have ongoing fights with her to make sure she didn’t drop the charges against him (I later learnt she couldn’t drop the charges anyway).

She had devoted her entire life to him, blinded by the kind words he said and the way he made her feel, that she couldn’t imagine her life without him. She was so broken, with no self-esteem, she thought she deserved his treatment.

I felt guilty, how could I have left her that night. If I hadn’t she would have been okay. I felt selfish and so hurt. I was torn by hating her and loving her.

Thankfully we have now moved on…

It took me a long time to forgive her. It took me a long time to even fathom what was going through her mind. To truly understand how you can blindly follow someone who physically and emotionally destroys your life, I think you need to experience it and I hope you never do.

The point to my story is domestic violence happens whether we know about it or not. As the quote at the start states, you don’t have to be a ‘hood rat’ to experience it. It happens no matter who you are. It is easy to blindly judge someone without knowing what they are going through, or what they have been through. So I ask that you never stop supporting the ones you love. You are their only chance of finding a way out even if you don’t understand why they are doing the things that they do.

After all we all want to be loved.