JULIA GATIE

When exactly it started I don’t know, like an ever increasing circle it appeared seamless with no beginning and no end.  I was trapped.  Trapped and torn, by the situation itself, my own emotions, beliefs and the perception of others.  Because of my need to understand what was happening and why I was constantly in flux, my focus shifting continually on everything and anything that I could glean some slither of sense from what was happening around me.

 

 

As things became worse, I was walking on eggshells and I could do no right. Everything was second guessed; I lived ten steps ahead with an acceptance and expectation of any eventuality, and was continually exhausted.   At any time a storm could erupt, an explosion of rage, of fists and feet, a brick through the window, the door kicked in, a car pulling up containing a tirade of abuse – it would come from nowhere and when it happened the course of the day would be drastically changed and I was adrift, a whim on the sea of someone else’s emotions.   A doctor at A&E said I should leave. I knew this already; it wasn’t that I couldn’t it was just worse for me when I did.  Then I was hounded and harassed constantly until I gave in.  Respite was received and then after a while the cycle would start again.

 

 

As time went on my surroundings changed and I felt unsafe everywhere.  The normal and everyday places and items appeared sinister.   Windows, the providers of life’s essentials, light and air, were dead ends keeping me in my prison.  My hyper-vigilance meant I missed nothing; figure and ground worked simultaneously with the shadows of the things around me becoming as prominent as the object itself . . . . . my perspective collapsed.  Things in the home often taken for granted became poignant, the curtains, there as always with their jagged shadows, their sharp ups and downs.  I connected to it instantly, the steep highs and deep crashes symbolic of the current relationship, a timeline like an erratic heart beat or a rollercoaster out of control.  I saw the shadow halt abruptly, my end or his.

 

 

For something that felt so shameful and isolating at the time I am now aware that what happened to me affects many.  Statistics show around one in four women and one in six men suffer from domestic abuse at some point in their lives.  In the UK Police receive a domestic violence call every thirty seconds, two women are killed by a current or former partner every week and thirty women a day attempt suicide to escape the abuse.