I knew something was going to happen that night.
I don’t know why. I just had a feeling.
I’d been to work as normal, and took the thirty mile drive home, feeling sick to the pit of my stomach. I didn’t know why. I just knew I didn’t want to go home.
Things had been bad for a long while.
I’d already asked for a divorce once, I was told no.I wasn’t given a reason.
I believe it was a sheer case of if he couldn’t have me, nobody could. There had been name calling for a couple of weeks, from what I recall, we had been in separate beds for a while, as he had persisting in still sharing a bed, in denial that it was over, that the love was gone, calling me names from the other side of the wall. He was the one sleeping in the spare room. I had no idea how I dodged the bullet there, from what I can gather he is still sleeping in the spare room to this day. That’s neither here nor there, but still.
I got home and all was quiet. It was a Thursday night. He had counselling every Thursday at 6pm. It wasn’t productive for him, as he was doing nothing to help himself on his road to recovery,
it was all down to me, his mental health issues were my fault, apparently.
So, in essence, he was paying £60 for a fifty-minute chat. I said to him he could have a chat with me, we’d save a fair bit of money every month. I said it out of anger. It went down like a lead balloon however.
I’d been begging him for months to find the man in the wedding photos, the man I fell in love with.
That man had seemingly died. I had no idea who he was any more. Mental illness had consumed him. Domestic abuse over years and years had consumed him, and eaten me up piece by piece.
He got home and started drinking.
The abuse, the name calling, the self harm. They were amplified ten fold when he had been drinking. Whenever he went to the fridge of an evening I’d feel my heart drop into the pit of my stomach. Fear. Pure unbridled fear. I’d never known anything like it, not until that last couple of years of my marriage and after having asked for a divorce. It was terrifying.
We were talking, and started arguing, as, yet again, I said he wasn’t helping himself, I pleaded with him to go back to the doctors to get help. He was on so many medications that he was rattling and drinking with them. However, he would say to me that he would kill himself if ever I left him. Emotional blackmail, psychological abuse. Fear, again. I was spending my life living in fear at this point. So, after another one of his serial threats to kill himself, he took a kitchen knife from the block and started to cut himself with it. He was saying that it was my fault. Saying that he wants to die. That he wants it all to stop. Gauging at himself like a piece of meat. I started to cry, asking him to stop. He just got angrier and angrier. He went upstairs out of plain sight and carried on doing it upstairs, this went on for the best part of 45 minutes. I told him I was calling the police as he was a danger to not only him, but to me. The names came rolling in, like always. Names that I won’t repeat.
He accused me of being on the phone to my boyfriend. Please keep in mind that I had been unfaithful as an escape from it all. It wasn’t an ongoing thing. I’d owned up and apologised profusely, and asked for a divorce, but he said no saying he wanted to make it right. I asked more than once but he refused to let me go. I know it’s not the right thing to do, but, when you’re scared to leave and want to be happy, you find yourself doing all manner of strange things. He’d been using my indiscretion as a weapon. Like I say, I know I did wrong, but the police even said that even doing that doesn’t mean I deserved the things I got after he found out about it.
Anyway, at that point he wanted my phone. He took it upon himself to grab me by the throat in an attempt to activate the face ID on my iPhone. I was stubborn. I’d had enough so I did the only thing I could think of: close my eyes and try to look away. I was trapped at his point. After having my hand “accidentally” slammed in a drawer, I was hysterical and petrified so I took it upon myself to call the police.
I was on the phone to them, for FORTY MINUTES and still nobody had come. He was still drinking. At this point he was necking limoncello straight out of the bottle from what I recall.
I had to take both sets of car keys and run to the car on the 999 operator’s instruction and lock the doors.
I was in the car, sobbing on the phone to him. Adam, his name was. He was really kind and tried his best to reassure me. It failed, but God loves a trier!
The police eventually arrived and I just remember cuddling one of them, thanking them for coming. I was cold, shaking, and scared. I cuddled them. I cuddled a complete stranger.
At that point, they felt like my rescuer. He went in and that’s when I saw it all, there was blood all over the house. The living room carpet, splattered on the kitchen floor, smatterings of it up the stairs. After the police left with him I saw it smeared on the bathroom doorframe. There was a dirty knife on the landing. I say dirty, it was bloodied. It was all from where he had been cutting himself.
He had been posting it on social media, saying that I had done this to him, that it was my fault, that I had driven him to it.
The police kept me downstairs while they saw to him upstairs. Apparently he’s fallen in the bathroom in his drunken stupor and banged the bridge of his nose. I saw him when he walked down the stairs, and it was bright purple.
Over the course of the proceeding two hours, four police officers turned up at my house. One even had a dog in case he resisted arrest. That was when it hit home. This was abuse. I had to get out. If I let this carry on and if I stay I will end up dead, whether it be at his hand or my own. I was curled up in the corner of my sofa, cold and shaking. I think I was cold out of shock more than anything else. She had to ask me questions.
A domestic violence risk assessment, about our time together and what it had been like. She reiterated my worst fears. I was a victim. It was a brush I never wanted to paint myself with. The word “victim” has stigma attached to it and I wanted no part in it. On the other hand, I wanted him to see what he was doing to me was wrong. The lady officer asked me if I wanted to press charges and I said yes. From what I remember, I was quite steadfast in my choice. However, I was scared. I was putting the man that I had loved for so many years in a cell. There was no going back. Not now.
I didn’t want to see him be arrested.
So they promised me they wouldn’t do it in the house. Where he was hurt, drunk and obviously unstable, they took him to a nearby hospital. They said that they would arrest him on the way there. They kept to their word. He was arrested for controlling and coercive behaviour along with common assault and battery. The man I fell in love with was gone. He wasn’t coming back. A complete stranger had taken his place. I’d already told him I wanted a divorce, but now, I knew I had to get out the house completely. The question was how.
Needless to say I couldn’t sleep that night, and I didn’t go to work the next day.
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