Coming to America

This blog is coming to you, as the title suggests, from America! 

This holiday has been in the planning for 2 years! It has always felt like it would never actually arrive, then suddenly here we are!! I stressed myself silly for the last few weeks before we left, in fact I must have been a nitemare to live with I've been so on edge!  I actually made myself ill the last few days, culminating in me spending most of the last night before we flew in the bathroom of the hotel! 

We set off from the hotel on Sunday morning to head to the airport, this should be relatively uneventful right? Not a bit of it! Firstly we got a bit lost on the way to the airport, my stressing meant I wasn't being at my most objective, and I missed the signs! Then the queue to the carpark was ridiculous, it took forever to get in. Never mind being early for check in, we were looking like we'd be rushing at this rate! 

So safely checked in and with all the cases under the 23kg limit, well just about for mine! Hope I don't buy too much, I may have to pay for an extra case on the way home! We headed for security, we sailed through without a problem, however my friends weren't so lucky! Both adults got pulled aside for frisking, and both kids got pulled aside to have their bags searched! 

Through security eventually and about to do a bit of shopping when a guy taps G on the shoulder to ask if one of us had lost a phone. That would be me then! I frantically searched my bag, and as I feared, my phone was missing. Only a nice new iPhone 5! Luckily it was handed in and we were soon reunited. Disaster averted! What is it about me and trips to America and losing phones. I left my brand new (2 weeks old) iPhone 4S in the back of a cab when I arrived in New York, got that back too. I'm sure I have a phone guardian angel! 

So we got on the flight, with all our belongings and were ready for the long trip ahead. Although even that was a close call, the signs saying which gate to board at had a glitch and just said wait. Good job we asked, we made it to the gate a few minutes before boarding started! It was a long flight too! We took off at 11:30am in London and landed at LAX at just before 3pm, 11pm in England. The transit through the airport was uneventful, and we were finally in the USA and on our way to get our hire car. This was where it all went a bit wrong, we joined the 2 and a half hour wait to get our cars! I've never seen anything like it, it was crazy! What a start to the holiday! 

Finally we drove down the freeway to Anaheim and checked into our hotel, went up to the room to find all the bed linen in a pile, the room hadnt been cleaned yet! Welcome to America!! We quickly moved rooms and before we knew it we were sitting in Denny's having our long awaited first meal in California, and waiting to see if J fell asleep in his like he did in the first night in Florida!     

The nightmare ends

In my last blog I talked about the turning points, those moments that subtly changed something within me.  They were things that weren't really under my control, situations that happened, that I found myself in, but that were key in changing my life.

The single most important, and life changing moment that was of her making was the decision to leave her job.  Her safe, steady, known role, and branch out into something new.  This something new led her to be working at the local hospital, led her to meeting new people, doing new things, broadening her horizons.  These were the things that truly changed her life.  He no longer knew where she would be and when, couldn't predict her shift pattern, didn't know who she was working with.  She went out more, socialised more and met new people.  She worked for a while in the local emergency department, and looking back now she blossomed.  She met so many new people, her confidence grew, she worked hard, this was noticed, and she was in demand.  All the Sister's wanted her on their ward or department, she felt wanted.  No-one can begin to imagine how much this helped her.  She no longer felt useless at everything.

With her good friend back in the city, she went out and had fun.  Actually acted her age, did what everyone else was doing in their early twenties.  Couple this with all the new people she was meeting at work and her world started to expand again.  All of these things coming together were the last and most important part of her transformation from caged caterpillar to social butterfly.  She met someone, at a party in a club one night, someone she knew through work but had never really spoken to properly.  They got chatting, and something clicked.  They talked all night.  She saw him at work a few days later and her heart beat a little faster.  After a couple of weeks of casual chatting at work they agreed to go for a drink with other friends, the spark was definitely there.  

One night they went for a drive, and talked.  She told him about her marriage, that it was all but over, but she didn't tell him why.  He was in a complicated relationship too, so they decided to be friends and see where things ended up.  They spent time together with other friends, and occasionally alone.  Nothing happened as they were both with other people.  But bit by bit she fell in love with him, and she likes to think he fell just a little bit in love with her too.  What this did show her is that love didn't have to mean pain.  It showed her what it felt like to be treated properly by a man.  Not controlled.  Someone who was interested in her, for who she was, who listened when she talked.  Most of all someone who encouraged her, told her to follow her dreams.  Told her she was beautiful, and treated her like she was too.  Told her she was clever and could do anything she set her mind to.

He slowly gave her back her confidence, and in doing that gave her back her life.  What he also did was give her the courage to change.  He was like her knight in shining armour.  He went away on holiday and while he was gone things came to a head, OM was offered a job working away and she told him to take it.  No big fight, no tears and tantrums, strange after all the water that had gone under the bridge, all of the pain.  No big bang, just a whimper.  She told him to take it, to go, and not to hurry back.  

He packed his things and put them all into the car and one Sunday afternoon when she arrived home from work as she walked in he walked out, got into the car and drove away.  That was it, the end.  It wasn't acknowledged that it was the end, the words weren't spoken, but she knew.  She shut the front door and sat down in the lounge, looked around her and breathed a huge sigh of relief, she finally felt free.  She knew she would never be under the same roof as him again, knew she couldn't, whatever that meant for the future.

This makes it all sound so easy, it wasn't.  Things got a lot worse before they got better.  Things got rough, but with each fight she got a little stronger.  Each put down made her more determined to pull herself back up.  It got nasty, but she also started to see things for what they really were.  She even caught him in the pub one night with one of the other women in his life.  She was knocked down mentally and physically, but every time she got back up she was a little harder to knock next time, and boy did he try.  Which makes the way it ended even more strange. It was almost like he looked at her one day and realised she wasn't that girl any more and just gave up?

Her knight came back off holiday and everything had changed.  They had changed for her and they had changed for him too.  Things never did quite work out for them in the end, but they had an amazing summer.  He was a true friend for saving her from herself, for giving her the courage to be herself, and for teaching her how to love.

He will always be a friend, and I will never forget him for what he did for me.  I truly believe it would have taken me so much longer to come out the other side without his support.  He made me believe in myself again.  He holds a very special place in my heart and I will always love him.  But I also believe that even without him I would have come out the other side, eventually.

My story is very different from many others.  I was lucky to not have children involved, so it was easier for me as I only had myself to think of.  I also had good friends, once I realised and reached out to them.  They supported me, even without knowing the full story and the true nature of what was happening,  They were just there for me, unconditionally.  I found things out later like he was even with another woman a week before we were married, and many other stories that made me realise what a lucky escape I'd had.

The butterfly effect?

In my previous post I talked about the young me and how her wedding day was the start of the end of her nightmare.  Most people find this strange, as by marrying him she tied herself to him even more.  It wasn't the act of marrying him that changed things but the reception.  All of her friends were there, including all her old friends she no longer saw much of.  In fact most of the people she loved were in that room together, family and friends.  It was like a light-bulb moment.  When she looked around that room she saw so many people that were all there for her.  His family were there, but he had few friends.  By far the majority of the people in the room were there because of her, so many people that loved her, and missed her.  It was quite a party too, she had a great time.  What she also realised at the end of the night was that while she had been having fun, none of the day had been spent with the man she'd just married.  She'd spent it with her friends and family.  People who had travelled from Ireland, Wales and from across England to spend the day with her.  They must think something of her to go to that trouble right?  She must be worth something to them?

She danced, she chatted, she laughed and she had endless hugs and kisses and demands not to be so distant in the future, in short she felt so loved at the end of the night that something inside her changed.  What she had was a little glimpse of what life could be like.  Add to this the fact that her Dad was finally around for the first time in her life, properly available to her and seeing her regularly.  The final piece in the jigsaw was one of her close friends from her younger days moving back to Coventry a few months later, and so also being available to her.  More than available in fact, but actively wanting to spend time with her.

Day to day life resumed again after the wedding and a few days away.  But she was never quite the same again.  Slowly, one small step at a time she took back her life, very subtly at first and without really realising what she was doing.  Its only looking back now that she can she what happened.  That small change that had happened meant she questioned more, only small things at first, but as her confidence grew she questioned more!  This was a slow process and very little changed for a long time, but almost like a butterfly emerging from its cocoon, she began to break out.  

As he started to realise what was happening he held on to her tighter than ever.  Pulled in the reins and tried to up the level of control.  Objected more to everything she did, caused more rows every time she said she was doing something.  So many times when he started a row she just wouldn't do whatever it was he objected to, for a quiet life.  Now she was doing it anyway, so the fights got bigger, he got rougher, there was more abuse.  The final realisation came one day when he had started another row and she had stood up to him, he got so angry before she knew what was happening she found herself pinned up against the wall by her throat and he raised his fist.  In that moment she knew at last that she was wrong when she said he would never hit her, she now not only knew he would, but she knew that if she did nothing it would only get worse.

She fought back, he was so shocked he stopped for a few seconds, and in that few seconds she ran, out of the door and down the street, no coat, no bag, just ran........... and hid.  Hid in the church yard for a couple of hours, it seemed fitting, some sort of sanctuary.  It was quiet and she could think.  As I remember it rained, but she hardly noticed, she felt nothing, a strange sort of numbness had washed over her.  She sat and thought, long and hard.  Thought about her life, thought about her options, thought about what would happen if she did nothing, thought about what might happen if she did something, and what something it was that she should do.

She knew she would have to go home eventually, but also knew he would have calmed down by then.  You hear about men that always say sorry and beg for forgiveness just to do it again and again.  He was never sorry, it was just never referred to, never spoken about, as if it had never happened, so there was nothing to be sorry about. This day was no different in that way, but it had changed things forever.  Their relationship was all but over that day, the rest was just the details, the tidying up.  She pointed out to him at some point that if he ever laid another hand on her she would tell his brother, this seemed like the ultimate threat, well that and stabbing him in his sleep.  But she had already decided he wasn't worth doing time for.   

One day she remembers vividly they were arguing about her hobby, and why she spent so much time doing it.  She told him that the people she was with valued her contribution and wanted her around, and the people she was helping needed her, three things she wasn't in that house, wanted, needed or valued.  And she walked away calmly for the first time.

 

The nightmare begins!

Many many years ago in a previous life a naive 19 year old got chatting to a much older man in the pub she frequented.  A few months later, she was 20, things had moved on and she had started to see more of him, he was almost 11 years her senior.  Things at home weren't great, she had what at best would be called a difficult relationship with her Step Father, and this was deteriorating with time.

As things at home got more difficult, it became more obvious that she wouldn't be able to stay much longer and she started looking at what her options were.  One day she was talking to Older Man (OM) about looking for somewhere to rent when he came up with the idea they get somewhere together.  Because things were so bad she thought it wasn't a bad idea and the seed was sown.  They bought their house as her relationship at home hit an all time low.  More and more her life revolved around OM and his family.  The family collectively came to the conclusion that the next step was engagement and on her 21st they got engaged. This was followed less than 2 years later by a wedding.

The wedding was another family affair, they organised most of it, with her input really only being paying for it.  Even her dress was chosen by someone else.  In some ways it didn't even feel like her day, and if she's honest, she knew in her heart she shouldn't be doing it, but didn't know how not to.  In fact most bizarrely on the day she felt like she watched the whole ceremony happening to someone else. She stood at the back and watched the girl in the pretty dress get married.  Most strangely however, it was her wedding day that started her journey out of the nightmare she was stuck in.  The wedding was the start of the end of her marriage, and of the control he had over her.

Looking back it started slowly, so slowly she didn't even realise that anything had changed.  Because they had moved into the house she didn't go out as much.  He worked a lot of evenings so she found herself home on her own a lot.  When they did socialise it was with his family.  More and more she was distanced from her friends, not in a sudden way, she just saw a little less of them as time went by until she hardly saw them at all.  Thankfully. she carried on with her hobby, mainly because his family were involved in this too, and this  eventually helped her escape.

At the same time as distancing her from her friends he started to chip away at her confidence, only very subtly at first, but slowly he knocked her down.  It started out as jokes.  Little jokes that put her down.  She was fat, she couldn't cook, she was useless at pretty much everything.  Upping the anti slowly.  Eventually convincing her that she was no good at anything and that no-one else would ever want her.  When she talked about learning to drive he soon put that one to bed, he was quite happy having her dependant upon him, he wasn't in a hurry to see her independent.

Someone once asked her if he hit her, she answered a categorical no, and he hadn't.  What she chose not to admit, even to herself, was while he hadn't actually hit her it didn't mean he wasn't violent or physically abusive.  What he did used to do was throw her at the wall.  Sometimes from across the room, but always hard. Sometimes so hard she would hit the wall and land in a crumpled heap on the floor crying.  Was she scared of him?  Absolutely!  While he wasn't significantly taller than her, he was very stockily built and considerably stronger, and as much as she would never have admitted it, she was intimidated by him.

Something else that she has only recently come to terms with, and indeed it was only years after it ended that she finally managed to acknowledge it had even happened, was the sexual abuse.  I won't go into detail, but suffice to say she was made to do things she didn't want to, despite the fact it caused her pain and discomfort.  This has an effect on her to this very day, and probably always will.

But despite it all every day she painted on the smile for the outside world and went to work, or went about her business, hiding from the world what was going on behind closed doors and what was going on inside her head.

It can happen to anyone......

It's been a busy few weeks settling in to my new job, getting my head round all the new things I have to learn, and the new services I have to get to know.  The job is so varied I do sometimes wonder if I'll ever know enough about it.

I can be visiting a Stop Smoking service in the morning and in a meeting about sexual health in the afternoon.  The other day I was paying GP bills for Health Checks when someone in the office casually piped up about how she was going to have to opt in to receive porn in the brave new internet world.  After we all stopped giggling we all agreed we couldn't do our job if we didn't as so much of the day revolves around alcohol, sex and drugs.  The only thing we don't get is the rock n roll.

I have to say however, I am loving the new job.  Sometimes you just have to take a risk, and this was a risk worth taking.  It was absolutely the right move for me, and the best thing that I could have done.  Most of the people are fab too.  They will never be my old gang, but they are a pretty good bunch on the whole.

Some of the things I've touched on and will be getting much more involved in over the coming months are services providing support to people who have experienced domestic violence and sexual abuse.  These services have struck a particularly personal chord with me.

Some people who know me will know that a very long time ago, in what sometimes feels like a previous life, I was involved in an abusive relationship.  Very few people know many of the details, no-one knows them all.  Seeing these services from the inside has made me think about it quite a lot recently, most of it I've just packed away and not thought about for a very long time.

Very few people who knew me before, during or after would imagine for a minute that I'd be the sort of person who would be the victim of abuse of any kind.  The 'Me' of today likes to think that she never would again, but then the 'Me' of then never would have thought she would either, sometimes you just don't see it coming until its too late.  Then getting out of the situation is a whole different ball game.

That's why I've decided to blog a bit about it.  Talk about the situation I found myself in, how I saw it then and how I see it now.  I guess I'm making the point that it can happen to anyone.  So for the first time, I'm going to share my story, maybe not all of it, but as much as I can manage.

It took me a very long time afterwards to even acknowledge that it was an abusive relationship.  Not wanting to accept what had happened maybe?  If I don't talk about it then it hasn't happened.  For example its only fairly recently that I have accepted that there were some elements of sexual abuse involved.  However even now, nearly 20 years later it still affects my life from time to time.  It took me till the age of 38 to start learning to drive because he convinced me I was too stupid to drive and would kill someone.

Every man that ever gets close to me will also pay a price for what he did, to one extent or another, even all these years later.  It will always be there in the back of my head, some of it has got better with time, but it will always remain.  It affects some levels of intimacy.  Then there's my almost total lack of self esteem, and need for constant reassurance.  I rarely feel worthy and can't see why anyone would love me, so challenge that constantly, and need to keep hearing it to even begin to believe it.  I have a very low opinion of myself, and invite others to have a similarly low one, then take it to heart when they do!  In essence I'm damaged, and probably always will be.