YWCA of Calgary would like to share this guest submission in honor of Family Violence Prevention Month:
When I knew the screaming and yelling was okay……..
It’s Sunday afternoon and ‘football day’ in our house. The dogs assume their positions on the couch and my husband starts getting excited. His cheers and screams can be heard throughout the house. It’s different. The yelling and screaming that happens today, is different. Other than Sundays, our house is one of serenity and quiet. This is something new to me.
It wasn’t always like this. I moved out when I was fourteen years old and lived with my boyfriend and his mother. They screamed all the time. Initially I would leave the room… then one day I joined in. This continued through my teenage years and every relationship I was in, within months, we were screaming at each other. It was my “normal”.
Somehow I finally got the courage to move out, to get my own apartment. I got a dog. A bigGerman Shepherd. I was free. Free to treat myself as poorly as I’d been taught. I drank to escape the sadness. I let strangers in and hoped that they would call me the next day. I started abusing myself. I didn’t need someone else to hurt me now… by now, I was quite capable of hurting myself.
It was with this low self-esteem that I faced the world. Then, I entered into the most abusive relationship of my life. It started out beautiful. In my eyes, he was ‘the one’. I believed that lie for five years. I was good at yelling, I had the lungs and the voice for it. What I wasn’t prepared for, was the day he pushed me down; the day he choked me; the day I came home and found him in bed with another woman; the day he called the police because I hit him back and the day I couldn’t find my dog because she had managed to squeeze herself under the bed to hide.
It took me years of trying to find the answer to the wrong question…. that lead me to right question. I used to ask myself, “Why do you stay in this relationship?” I even researched the answer(s). It was because I loved him. Because he promised to change; because of the kids; because I don’t have a job and because, I thought, I’m nobody without him…
Then, while in University, I had to write a paper. I learned the greatest lesson of my life. I was asking the wrong question. The focus of my paper became about the right question, “How do I get out of this relationship?”
To those of you who have been asking yourself the wrong question, may I share with you, the answer I found to the best question I ever asked?
I don’t know when it started – I only know how it finally came to end. It wasn’t overnight. I know I argued with myself for months. I know I hated myself. I was afraid of never finding anyone else. I blamed myself for why we fought.
The reason I was able to get out of an abusive relationship was you. People like you; strangers that loved me until I could love myself and the voice of reason that spoke louder than the voice of insanity in my head. The love and care you gave me that I had not felt for a very long time and those words you chose so wisely that made me feel loved. The fact you listened to me. That you, unlike me, were not afraid to discuss, share, and express your feelings with me.
You created a safe place for me to express my feelings. You are the chiropractor that let me cry. You are the safe person that opened your home to me. You are the counsellor at school who allowed herself to tear up while I shared my pain with her. You are the student that shared your experience with me after class one day. You are the lady at the grocery store who handed me a tissue while I stood in line crying. You are the police officer that told me I deserved better. You are the old man that called me beautiful in the parking lot. You are the shelter that took me in and said I could stay. I could not have done it alone, I needed you.
Today, I am living free from abuse.
Thank you.
