Up & Away...

So it has nearly arrived - jetting off for just over 3 weeks for work. A week in Malaysia, which I am really looking forward to and then two weeks in Shanghai.. Which I am kind of in two minds about. Out of all of my Asian travels over the last 7 years I have not been to China, so it will be a good chance to acquaint myself with it and decide if it is a place I will go back to one day as a tourist.

Over three weeks away from home is going to be interesting. It's a long time.

I will endeavour to blog regularly and tell you everything I am up to and the sights that I see! The food I eat (I love, love, love Asian cuisine!), the people I meet and the shopping I do (which I am really looking forward to!).

Catch ya.

A Beachy Kinda Girl...

I never was a beachy kind of girl..  I didn't grow up in a beach environment, we were actually lucky to have a BBQ once a year..  Tassie was just that kind of place, we weren't big on BBQ's or the beach on our family (but we were very sporty and did other things!).

 

I've lived in Sydney for 23 years next April and while I have lived near beach side for most of that time I didn't ever go swimming or near the beach..

 

Then my husband suggests we buy a place near the beach, I was a sceptic.  I don't really "do" the beach, as such.  I have a  pair of swimmers reserved for Thailand and Hawaii (where no one knows me..) but I wasn't sure about buying a beach retreat..

 

Fast forward a few months and I can't imagine life without my weekender!  I love waking up the waves crashing against the rocks (that took some getting used to, I used to think it was the wind!) and walking along the beach and yes, even swimming!

If we move somewhere else in the world in a few years I don't know what we will do with it and to be honest, how I will live without the weekends away...  Till then, I shall just enjoy it for what it is.

It Can Happen to Anyone.....

Abusive relationships come in many forms.   It isn’t reserved for physical violence, it can involve mental and sexual, even down to controlling everything – such as the finances.  This blog comes out of hearing people say, once they think they know someone is being abused, “god she’s/he’s an idiot, they should just walk away from the abuse and leave”.  It’s not that simple.  Let me tell you a story about someone I once knew.

She was smart, she was attractive, she was bubbly, she was outgoing and you never would have imagined that one day she’d end up being abused over a 7 year period.  Story goes like this – in early 1993 she meets a man, they date, he’s polite, funny, a gentleman and seemingly kind.  They dated for a while longer and then she moved in. That is when it slowly turned into hell.

The mental abuse came first and very slowly.  One day he would tell her she was too fat, the next 3 weeks would be idyllic and she’d convince herself it was a one off.  Next he’d tell her she was ugly and again, the next few weeks would be idyllic. Then slowly it started happening all the time.  Her hair was the wrong colour, every meal she cooked was rubbish and ended up in the bin, the way she drove the car was a disgrace.  The most constant abuse was about her weight and how she was a disgrace to society because she was fat and ugly.  She became alienated from her friends and family because of his bad behaviour in front of them and obsession with the theory “they were bad” for her.  To save an argument, it was easier to drift from everyone.

She still smiled on the outside though.  No one knew what was going on behind four walls.  Even when the physical abuse began he was smart enough not to leave bruises where they could be seen.

He would attack her verbally in public, once calling her a fat, ugly, useless f’ing c…. in a very busy supermarket car park in front of 100’s of people.  She hung her head in shame and kept walking.  Driving along one day (him driving, by this stage she had given up driving, convinced she was a hazard to people on the road) she said something he didn’t like.  He didn’t take his eyes off the road and proceeded to punch her fair in the face, causing a dislocated jaw and chipped teeth.  He even tried to strangle her for getting home from work 7 minutes late, that was careless of him and she had to cover it up with a scarf for two weeks and if anyone asked, said she braked suddenly in the car and the seat belt caught her neck (which in itself was absurd because she hadn’t driven for a while).

By now I know most of you will be shaking your head and asking why was it so hard for her to walk away.  You need to understand that these monsters suck every bit of self confidence you have, they threaten to kill you, your family and friends.  They threaten to kill themselves.  To put it quite bluntly, they fuck so badly with your head, you end up a shadow of your former self and you become convinced everything is your fault.  Even their violence is your fault.

Her darkest hour came 6.5 years into the “relationship”.  Again she upset him (he didn't approve of what she ordered for dinner, told her she'd put weight on and should be eating salad).  He disappeared for a while and she breathed a sigh of relief.  He then returned with a shot gun.  God knows where he got it from, but he stood there and held it to her head, she heard it click and closed her eyes.  He told her to pick up the phone and ring her mother, because it was the last person she would ever speak to.  She was void of emotion by then and simply asked him to shoot her dead there and then as life wasn’t worth living anymore.  He seemed to like that because he smirked and said she deserved to be miserable so he would let her live.  But not before ramming the gun into her mouth, smashing her teeth.

Not long after, excessive drinking became a way for her to dull the pain, and one night, as he lay asleep she went to the cupboard and took out the shotgun, still loaded, he used to like to remind her it was there if she stepped a foot out of line.  She stood over the bed, closed her eyes and began to squeeze the trigger.  The rest is a blank. Part of her says she rang someone and they convinced her not to do it, the other part says she just put it away and crawled into bed.

There are other stories, the way he followed her everywhere, accused her of having affairs, once rang her 169 times in 2 hours when she was out with his sister and didn’t answer her phone, threatened to kill himself if she left (because she did leave, twice, and twice he called her and she returned to the house as he threatened suicide, once she found him hanging.  You will ask she she returned to the house, quite simply she didn't want to live with the guilt of being the reason another human took their own life. Oh the irony!)  She was emotionally spent.

The night she left they had been out to dinner.  He had caused a scene because he didn’t like her food choices so threw it against the wall and walked out.  Driving home in a high powered sports car he reached 180 kilometres an hour on a main road – he fled through a roundabout at this speed, barely missing a truck.  He dropped her at home and told her he’d be back later.  She raced inside and packed a few clothes, photographs, passport and valuables.  She got in the car and remembered the cat, deciding to leave her behind she realised she’s forgotten her handbag so raced back inside.  She came back out to find the cat cowered on the floor in the back passenger side.  The rest is history. She rang her family well after midnight to tell them she had left and her father appeared at the hotel the next day, having flown across 3 states to get to her in under 12 hours.  It’s probably the only reason she didn’t go back.  Having someone there was encouragement for her to finally break the pattern of returning.  She left with nothing and started her life all over again, moving inter-state to get away from him (even that didn’t help, he found out where she lived through one of her utility providers; his sister worked there and simply looked up her address and phone number and gave it to him).  He stalked her for nearly 8 months, often turning up on her doorstep screaming and yelling, once he tried to break down the door with an axe threatening if he couldn’t have her, no one could. She had moved into a security unit block next door to a police station and told them the story right from the start and they knew if she ever called it was an emergency.  That night was an emergency and the last she saw of him.  That was October 2000.  Not long after he met someone else and moved on.

My war and peace is to ask you not to judge the victims of domestic violence, not to turn your back on them and to be patient if you suspect something is going on.  If confronted, most people in this situation will go into denial and cut you out of their life, usually through embarrassment and denial it is really happening.  That is no help to anyone.  Just be there if they call and reassure them you will always be there.  Of course if the violence is absolutely evident and physical or there are children involved you need to make a call on what you do and how you manage it.  Just don’t ever turn your back, even if they don’t call you anymore, because one day they might just need you.

I know all this because she was me. This attempt at putting that period of my life on paper doesn’t even skim the surface of what that time in my life was really like.  But I hope if you realise it can happen to me then you realise it can happen to anyone.  Because no one suspected it was happening to me. 

It took a long time for the fog to lift. Years actually.  I look at the first few months of my "freedom" and cringe at some of the things I did but now realise it was a part of the healing process.  I was lucky enough to have some fabulous people around me to support me, some knew pieces of the story and some had no idea.  I am friends with most of those people today and thank them for their patience through a very trying time.  To anyone else who I knew during that time who didn't know - I apologise for being - well, a bit of a pain in the ass.

Twelve years on I still cringe at raised voices, I hate arguments and sometimes I have panic attacks while driving.  I worry about my weight, what I say and how I say it and my ability to fit into society.  Most of the physical scars fade with time.  The mental scars stay with you forever.  But I am one of the lucky ones though, for me this is in the past.