Survivor

I don't think about it everyday. It's not on my mind when I wake up or wash my face or call home. But it is always there; in the pit of my stomach, in the black space at the back of my head.

Domestic abuse is not something you just move on from. It's like a wound that never quite heels. You can't see it, but you can feel it when you move and every time you think it's healing it starts to haemorrhage and you're there again, bleeding out in front of a room full of people who don't know, who can't know what it feels like.

I was 19 when it first started. Nineteen. Not yet old enough to get paid a living wage, only just allowed to vote. But old enough to become someone's play thing. Old enough to get hurt. It started innocuously enough, we were housemates and they called names during arguments, sniggered at secret jokes. Stealing, hiding and breaking my things. Then they began pushing me off my crutches and pulling my hair. Touching me in places they had no right to touch.

It got steadily worse as one of them would often simulate sex against me whilst I was sat on a bar stool in the kitchen, trying to work or eat. He would be there, pumping and grinding away after forcing my thighs apart to the hoots of the others as I tried not to cry, not to wince as his nails dug into my arms to keep me in place. Once I made the mistake of trying to get away and he pushed me off the stool and I smacked against the tile floor. Hard.

To the outside world everything was normal. I went to class, I came home and I worked. But I stopped seeing my friends. I stopped laughing.

Then they hacked my phone and stole compromising pictures of me, sharing them with their friends, posting them online. Naked pictures meant for a long distance love. Apparently this is now called 'revenge porn' and can come with a jail term. Back then it was a joke and I was a s**t for having the pictures in the first place. My university found out about the pictures because I saw them on social media during a student council meeting and had a panic attack. They gave me conflict resolution training and hired the guy as a security guard two weeks later.

The months rolled on and it got worse but how was I to know that this wasn't normal? I'd never lived with boys before, I didn't know that your average guy won't body slam you into a wall or lock you in a cupboard smaller than a dishwasher just for a laugh. The attacks were sometimes sexual, often physical and always, always verbal. I hated them touching me but I stopped fighting back because I was so tired. Tired of fighting a battle against a pack of guys baying for a reaction.

The boy the pictures were intended for ended things. I had changed and he didn't know why. Its hard pretending to be happy when some part of you wants to die. They said it was my fault. That no one could love someone like me. They said I was ugly and that no one wants a girlfriend who has two wombs and only a slim chance of having children. Defective, they said. I barely slept, my hair was falling out and I started throwing up so much I took a pregnancy test. Negative of course, I just didn't know then that stress vomiting was a real thing.

I got concussed on a rare venture from my house and three nights
after the one that worked as a bouncer punched me, right at the back of my head where I'd got the first concussion. I fell across the cupboard door that was open in front of me, that I had been leaning over, the bang of the impact echoed around the house. I remember feeling heavy and light all at once and my eyes felt drunk. Whilst I stood there crying and confused he did a victory lap around the kitchen then pulled my pants down as he came past, much to the amusement of the other boys.

The next day I nearly fell off my chair in a lecture, I was so dizzy. A course friend asked what was wrong and I casually told her he'd hit me, it was a joke I said. In my head he couldn't be abusing me because he wasn't angry when he did it. The look on her face implied I was wrong. The same look was echoed on the face of the Doctor she dragged me to that afternoon. Horror. He stared at me for a full minute after I told him the extent of what was going on at home. I started to think maybe this wasn't as normal as I thought, but still I said he meant it as a joke for the others, he didn't mean to hurt me. I remember watching his eyes fill with pity and getting confused all over again. He looked at me and took a breath before uttering the words that changed everything.

"You need to listen to me or I dread to think how I'll next see you. This is only going to get worse."

He explained that from what I told him, the "incidents", as he called them, seemed to be accelerating in violence, sexual nature and frequency. That in his experience the few months I had left in that house could prove to be extremely dangerous. He said the word rape and I felt as though someone had slapped me. He talked about domestic abuse as if I should already know what this was. He asked me to leave the house, for my own safety. So I did. I went to the university and told them everything and gave them a note from the doctor. They moved me into emergency accommodation for a month and charged me £400 for the privilege. They kept employing the guy that hit me, he worked a stones throw from my 'safe' accommodation.

Things started to improve and a year later I graduated. I cannot put into words the feeling of walking down a street without the fear of the faces that haunt your dreams. I barely look for them anymore.

They have left me with some unpleasant reminders of the time I spent with them. A stomach condition that means I can't handle processed foods and the residual tendency to stress vomit. A fear of strange men and a fear of being restrained, a tendency to panic and meltdown when I am not completely in control.

It's been 2 years and I am not free of those memories and of the scars they left me with and I doubt I ever will be. But one thing is for sure, I am not a victim. I am a survivor.

Author's Note

Im writing this and sharing it as I need a way to formulate how I feel and what happened to me in order to face it. Any advice or comment is welcome.

Reviews

[Nigel Newman]

Wow! Gosh it's hard to know what to say, other than OMG!! And how courageous of you to put this out, which I take, by the way, of evidence of your continuing survival. You write this frighteningly well; and while I hope never to have experiences of this kind and can't truly walk in your shoes, you offer the reader what seems a very clear, totally awful, description of a living hell. How wonderful that your student friend took the time to listen, observe, and act.

So, as regards its technical literary points, in my view the story is incredibly well written. There are 4 or 5 small grammatical or punctuation or typo errors, but they don't disrupt the flow. If I was to suggest one change, it would be to expand the final 2/3 paras with evidence and examples of how you are surviving. I haven't done a calculation in terms of proportion of the story, but this feels like 95% is about abuse and 5% about being a survivor. Given that you're demonstrating how you ARE a survivor, and the story is called 'Survivor' I wonder if you should try for at least 90/10 or maybe even 85/15 - not by cutting the abuse parts, but by painting more richly the better life you're now leading. Clearly and evidently it's not perfect, but it's a zillion times better than previously!

Hope this helps, and thank you very much for sharing.

Regards
Nigel