It’s around 10.00pm and I am in bed. Things have not been well between us for some time and when she gets home, I’m going to pretend to be asleep and so avoid having the usual one-way argument and ranting. I know our relationship is over and has been over for a long time. In recent days, I have been trying to find a way out.
This is my house. I own it outright, solely in my name. My mum and dad bought it in the 1950s and now my mum has gifted it to me, mortgage free. My future is assured. But when we split up it won’t be simple.
It’s pitch dark in the back bedroom and I have the blankets pulled tight over myself. I want to drift off to sleep but I can’t. I dread seeing her now. There’s something horribly wrong. She’s always angry, usually with me, and she tries to belittle me. She often raises her voice and says I am “obsessed with (my) mother”. Sometimes, completely overwhelmed, I fall to the floor in a heap and it’s hard to hold back the tears. She calls me “pathetic” and one day throws a china mug at me. I feel that the prospect of violence is always around the corner. The way she looks at me, through stone cold eyes (I can’t remember the colour), I feel scared. She’s strong, she’s a member of a gun club. My paranoia runs deep.
Then, I hear the front door creaking open. She’s back. I hear footsteps, light-switches clicking. My pulse starts to quicken and now she is walking briskly up the stairs. I cover myself with blankets. I’m wide awake and pretending to be asleep. The bedroom door slowly opens, I look up and she’s standing there, wearing a big coat with a large belt around it. Slowly, she begins to remove the belt. Then, in one. swift movement, the smashes me across my head with the huge buckle. I see stars and immediately cover my head and turn around. And now she’s attacking me in a wild frenzy, her teeth bared, repeatedly hitting me with the buckle. Strangely, I feel no pain at first, just the urge to cover myself up as much as I can. I don’t attempt to fight back because you don’t hit women. The thought never once occurred to me. I didn’t even try to restrain her. I suppose I am waiting for the storm to blow itself out. Eventually it does and with one final crack of the buckle to my head, she leaves the room. I am dazed, almost certainly concussed. I drift into a deep and dreamless sleep.
I wake up early and lie there quietly, in deep shock, but not scared anymore. I just want her to leave the house and go to work. Sometime around 7.30am, she leaves the house. I wait for a few moments and dash to the front bedroom and watch her walking towards the end of the road. She’s wearing that same coat with the same belt. I wait for a while and return to the bedroom where I view the injuries in the mirror. There are three huge buckle marks on my back, which is stained with dried blood, and my head is full of painful lumps. Then I venture downstairs.
By the door, there is a small hand-written note on a scruffy piece of paper. It reads, “I shouldn’t have done that”. But there is no apology. I put the note somewhere safe and sit on the edge of the bed, in the bright morning light. I need to get away from this because otherwise she might kill me. But how do I do it? And who will believe me?
That was the end of the physical abuse but the psychological abuse carried on until 30th April 1990 when I left the house, never to return. It was also the last time I ever saw her.
She took my house and I received a pittance by way of a divorce payment. I felt she was evil but I suspected she was mentally ill, too. Or just mentally ill, period. I was scared of her, but I don’t think I ever hated her. The emotion I felt then was pity, even when she got her mother to phone me to vilify me for the way I had treated her daughter. Today, I feel different. She stole my house but she didn’t ruin my life. Pity has turned to nothingness now. I don’t wish anything for her, good nor bad. The only time in my life when I have not worried about something I couldn’t change. I wish I felt that way about everything.
