Domestic Violence is something my dad said wasn’t happening until a physiologist stuck a label on it, after the fifth time it happened.
The therapist gave him a diagram to take home like some sort of receipt.
‘Homework,’ dad called it, he stuck it to the fridge.
I had been saying it since the first scratch but was dismissed. He didn’t like the sound of it.
Our arguments often sounded like this,
Why didn’t you believe me?
Why don’t you hear me?
Why don’t you protect me?
“Don’t you love me at all?” I asked him once.
“Of course I do.”
Slowly you begin to see the damage this causes to those around you.
Fear makes people adapt and bend. While those made of softer materials bend and then break.
Heavy coats of denial lick the walls.
My dad the dispenser of Band-Aids and avoidance of every kind, shape and colour.
He has always been like that though, someone who can’t handle feelings.
Back to the question of why- or better still, the question of love in these relationships.
She never questions if she’s wrong.
She keeps him believing he’s nothing without her;
and that’s why.
That’s what Battered Women’s Syndrome is.
The abusers work their way into the victim’s mind via the intense surprise of love and then uses their proximity and position in the other’s life to torture them.
They use everything they know the person is insecure about or loves; ( kids, success, money, self-worth ect.) as a means of control.
Breaking them down, molding them into who they want their partner to be.
“You’re a loser.”
“No wonder your ex-wife left you, everyone leaves you.”
“You’re a selfish man.”
“You’re a horrible husband.”
And weirdly enough, after she screams this so loudly you hear it from the opposite side of the house, she still expects you to like her.
To chat about the weather, to enquire how she slept.
It’s terrifying.
*Y-b-c-d-e-f-g-h…
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