I’m rubbish with dates. I don’t think dates matter much anyway. For every birthday and anniversary, there’s a sadder one . But today, 30th April, is one I will always remember. 30th April 1990 to be precise, the day when I left my former partner, and the mortgage-free house I owned and lived in, because of lengthy mental abuse and one period of serious physical abuse when I feared she might kill me.
Some weeks before, I was asleep in bed when my partner arrived home. The bedroom door opened, she removed the large leather belt from around her coat and proceeded to attack me with it. It was a wild, frenzied attack that seemed to go on forever, but probably only lasted a matter of minutes. Shocked, semi-conscious, caked in blood and marked heavily by the buckle, I knew I had to leave that relationship because next time I might not be so lucky.
The next morning she left to go to work. I waited a while until I knew she was gone and went downstairs and found a small handwritten note which said, simply, “Sorry – I shouldn’t have done that”, but she had done that. The first thing I did was to visit a local solicitor to whom I provided full details and they took photos of the damage caused to me. I was in great pain at least physically, less so mentally. The latter may surprise my loyal reader since I constantly bleat, self-pityingly, about my mental health, but this time I knew I had done nothing wrong and my brain managed to quickly work that one out.
By late April, I knew I had to leave. And some kind friends offered to collect me and my stuff on the morning of 30th April 1990. By late morning, I was safely ensconced at my mum’s place in Portishead. I never saw my ex again, although I did receive a call from her mother telling me what a bad bloke I was for leaving her daughter. That she beat the fuck out of me, after two years of cruel mental abuse and, I would call it, torture, would not have mattered much to her. Her little girl was a sweetheart, an angel. It was all my fault. I never saw my ex again, nor any of her family.
You might think I would have been able to divorce her on the grounds of her violent behaviour, but this didn’t happen. Her solicitor created a fictional counter claim referring to my ‘unreasonable behaviour’ and my own solicitor advised that if I lost a court case, I might not just lose my house and all the proceeds, I might owe more money to the legal profession on top of that. In the end, I accepted a payment that was a fraction of the value of the house, which I later used to pay for a deposit for the house I have lived in since 1992. Do I feel bad about it? Do I regret anything? Do I fret about the financial loss? Do I feel bad about my ex? No, in every case.
I don’t feel bad, I didn’t do anything wrong. Do I regret anything about meeting her, marrying her and then leaving her? No. Shit happened. I made a terrible mistake, but again, I wasn’t the wrong ‘un. The financial loss? I have never, once, worried about that. Sure, it would have been nice to keep a house I owned outright, but my choice was simple: stay and risk death (I genuinely felt that was possible) or escape and be safe. In those circumstances, it was a no-brainer. And I don’t feel bad about or towards my ex. Here’s why.
Either she was evil, suffering from some kind of mental illness or both. I’ll never know which. In her heart, she will know I am fundamentally a good person, she will also know she treated me terribly and she will know that she effectively took my house away from me. I have an idea what she did with that money and what she did subsequently in her life and actually I hope it made her happy.
For many years, I told people that I wished only the worst for her, that I wished there was a hell for her to go to. That isn’t how I feel now, I’m not sure I felt it way back when. And as I get older, the less I hate and the more kind I want to be. Sure, she did terrible things to me and given the lack of a formal and genuine apology there will never be a place in my life for her, but the good person I strive to be can’t have room for too much hate. I reserve that for evil politicians like Rishi Sunak, scummy organisations like the British Red Cross and Rupert Murdoch. An ex partner, for whom I once felt something more than just lust and friendship, not matter what she did subsequently and why she did it, isn’t your usual figure of hate, at least not for me.
I remember 30th April, possibly because two days later my current partner and I went out for our first public date to Twerton Park, Bath to see Bristol Rovers defeat Bristol City 3-0. From hell to heaven in two days. 34 years on, we’re still together, proving at least to me, that maybe I’m not such a bad bloke after all.
Time is a healer, but this time there was nothing for time to heal. Sure, I was massively damaged by my dysfunctional childhood and the subsequent mental health issues that may, or may not, have caused, but nothing about that doomed relationship plays on my mind these days.
I was lucky that my next relationship became life-defining and the shit show that preceded it was not of my doing. I won’t be celebrating or mourning today. It literally is just another day, it’s just that the date itself has stuck me with, perhaps as a useful reminder that, actually, life isn’t quite so bad after all. At least for me, anyway.
