But yeah, things have definitely changed. It’s about doing what I want to do, when I want to do it. Or when I first left, I was, I did everything that he used to constrain me. Like cutting the cheese was always wrong. I never cut it straight enough.

So I, when I left him I sort of cut the cheese in pyramid shapes or any way I wanted to. And it was about doing all the opposites of what he held me to for all the years. And like if I wanted to dress up for having my tea, I would dress up for having my tea. It didn’t, it just didn’t need to be an excuse.

And if I want to clean, I clean. And if I don’t, it doesn’t matter.

Hmm. Any other things, I love the cheese example.

Yeah, it’s good [laughs].

[Laughs]

And like going to bed and reading in bed. He used to say, Oh, some of us have got to go to work tomorrow. So you, you could never read in bed. And, it’s just some of those little tiny things he dominated the remote control on the TV. So I had to watch the same programmes over and over. And if nipped out to the loo, I’d come back and think, I can’t understand this film because he would have turned it over. And he’d always say, Oh, well I might have missed that bit when I went to the loo. So you’d see the same one, film, over and over and over. And he would never let me see the programmes I wanted to. And now I can have the TV off, for a whole week. It doesn’t have to be on. It’s great [laughs].

That, I started finding someone I could trust and putting together a little survival pack for myself. Some money, my passport, and different things. Gradually gathering things together and hiding them at this persons place.

And was that person a friend, or

It was a friend, yes. She said that she had a spare room, and would take me in.

Hm. And did she help you decide what you needed to have in that survival bag? Or was that what you knew you needed?

I think it was what I knew I needed. Yeah. Yeah. And it was just one morning, I woke up one morning, I think it was a Tuesday morning, I just woke up and I thought, Today’s the day.

Wow.

Yeah. And that day, it didn’t matter what happened, I was not going to stay. I was going to leave.

Do you know what it was about that day?

I just woke up and thought, Today’s the day.

Gosh. So you

Yeah

hadn’t thought about it the day before, or planned it in that detail or anything?

No. No. I just woke up and thought, Right, this is the day.

So how long had you been collecting your survival kit together and taking it round to your friend’s house?

Quite slowly, so he wouldn’t notice anything. But over quite a few months.

So, she didn’t take you in?

No. No, I rang her up and she said, No. I’d come to my next door neighbour’s, who knew nothing about what was going on behind closed doors and she rang her as well and she said no she wouldn’t take me in, she never meant to.

Your neighbour rang her for you? Is that what you’re saying?

Yeah. As well. And she said no she wouldn’t take me in.

But she had your survival bag.

Yeah, and a spare room with a nice bed, and I can still see the duvet over that bed.

Oh my goodness. So what happened next?

I was adamant I wasn’t, I wasn’t going back. I rang up anybody, everybody I knew and it was an acquaintance that I’d met on a course and she said, Yes.

From the Freedom project, someone from Freedom

No, no, no, no, it was a different course. And she said yes. She was at work to meet her in town and I actually didn’t meet her in town, I met her in a car park and waited for her to finish work. And followed her back to where she lived. She had a one-bed, rented accommodation, and I slept on her sofa for many weeks.

Wow. Goodness.

Yeah.

And did you get your survival bag?

Yes. Yeah. I called round there one afternoon. I didn’t give her any, I didn’t ring her up or anything. I just called, just called, and I said, I’ve come to get my stuff. And I took it.

Did she give you any explanation?

She just said I was never meant to leave. But and she actually rang my husband to see where I was.

But also I think its ongoing support. Because, OK, you move on and time goes by, but like with me it’s my whole life, it’s that impact of my whole life and it’s not a quick fix.

So you need ongoing support when you, you know, because once you come out of the refuge and that, there is very little afterwards. And to go through abuse is different from other things. And you just can’t talk to anybody about it because there’s not that understanding there.

Hmm. So what form would you like that ongoing support to take?

It would have been nice to have had more from [local mental health and housing association for women]. And maybe a follow through after a certain length of time.

After those sessions ended sort of

Yeah.

a follow on?

Yeah. I don’t know, I know you’ve got the 24 hour domestic abuse help line and things like that which actually the other day I did phone up and because of all my childhood stuff started bringing stuff up, so I did actually ring there. I don’t know, just some sort of agency out there that you can tap into. And it’s also like social networking, because it’s like you’ve, you’ve got an illness or something and sometimes you need to be with other similar people so that you can discuss and things.

So perhaps networking with other women who’ve been through abuse, that type of thing?

Yeah. Yeah.

Hm. What was it like using the helpline, having a telephone contact with someone rather than a face to face contact?

That was OK, because I just wanted somebody to talk to. I didn’t need one-one face at that point, I just needed somebody to listen and that was excellent. If I’d phoned a different sort of help line I wouldn’t have got that sort of interaction I wanted. So it helped.

It’s important for you that there’s a domestic violence

Yeah

help line?

very much so.

Looking back to the time when you were living in the marriage, was your husband ever abusive to the children?

Yes. Especially when they were babies and I can remember the first time I went out and left my son, when he was, I don’t know, a few months old, it was the first time I actually got to leave the house without him, and somebody invited me to a ceramics party and my son was asleep in his Moses basket downstairs and I hadn’t, I’d only gone out for two hours at the most, and I’d come back and I’d found my son still in the Moses basket but he had cried and screamed and he was sweaty. He’d peed so much the Moses basket was saturated and he was absolutely exhausted. And my husband had gone up in his loft space, which was this where he liked to, you know, tinker with different things and he’d stayed up there the whole time. And when I said to him about it he said it did him good. And yet I could have lost him that night. So easily lost him. And so I didn’t leave him, I didn’t go out. Yeah, that really hurts, to think that he could have done that.

Is your son the older of the, of your two?

Yes

children?

he is. Yes.

And was your husband abusive towards your daughter at all?

He [sighs] idolised her. In fact he idolises her so much that people notice it, notice when she, because she lives away that his whole demeanour changes when she’s around. And it worried me that maybe he’d sexually abused her or something. But she said he has not.

OK.

But he just adores her. And when my daughter’s there he ignores my son totally. It’s as if he doesn’t exist in the house. It often happened like that.

As if my son meant nothing.

It was a new refuge they hadn’t stocked it up with any of the things that we needed. We were left there two of us on a Friday, with no toilet rolls, no towels, no telephone, no nothing. We were, two of us left there. The other person had just been rescued from a house from her mother and she just had the clothes she was wearing. I was better off. And it was just awful. And we didn’t get a lot of support because the staff kept leaving. And things happened in the refuge, just, the fuse box nearly caught fire, the sewage system got blocked. We had black fly infestation [laughs]. It just was awful. And you think you’re sharing a house with other people, but nobody’s interacting with anybody. And you could be in the house and not know if anybody else was in the house. And it was really strange place to be.

And also you, by going through the door you lost your identity, because you were living in a hiding, you became a nobody. And that’s really awful as well. You know, one minute you are a wife, mother, and then you are, become a nobody. You sort of, a bit like being on a desert island with nothing.

The experience in the refuge, the support when you first leave.

Yeah.

I think it’s vital that you have people to talk to when you need to and since [local domestic abuse agency] have put into action something I suggested which was when somebody goes into the refuge there’s a box of tissues [laughs] which is vital, which means you are loved and supported and a little goody bag with like soap and flannel and a towel, and toilet roll. And a little package of food.

Yes.

Because you go in with nothing. And, I mean, just that box of tissues, just means so much to you. That you know, that somebody’s supporting you. And that’s what [local domestic abuse agency] produce now.

And that’s because of what you said?

Yeah. Yeah, they’ve put this little package together.

Well done.

Yeah.

OK.

But also I think its ongoing support. Because, OK, you move on and time goes by, but like with me it’s my whole life, it’s that impact of my whole life and it’s not a quick fix.

So you need ongoing support when you, you know, because once you come out of the refuge and that, there is very little afterwards. And to go through abuse is different from other things. And you just can’t talk to anybody about it because there’s not that understanding there.

I did counselling with [local domestic abuse agency], at, that’s the best counselling I’ve ever had.

Ohh.

But unfortunately they can only give you so many sessions and that’s with a counsellor that knows everything about abuse and she just understands where you’re coming from all the time. And

Was that you got that because you was, you were in a refuge belonging to [specialist domestic abuse service], it’s like a partner organisation, [local mental health and housing association for women].

That’s right, yes. Yes.

And in what ways did you find that helpful?

It, it was just a way of, you can, you could talk to and she could relate to everything that you’d been through. Because I think that other counsellors, they’re good but they, they don’t know about abuse in the way that you have if you’ve been through it.

Have you had experience of other counsellors who don’t really know about abuse?

Quite a few, yes.

Have you?

Yeah, Yeah.

What type of counsellors? For example, were they through the GP or

Through the GP and private agencies, yes.

Hm. And did that, from what you’re saying, has that been less, less helpful for you?

Less helpful yeah.

Hm.

Yeah.

And I think somewhere in this history you’ve been telling me about your marriage you were diagnosed with fibromyalgia, is that correct?

That’s correct, yeah.

Yeah, when, when did that happen?

About 2002, something like that.

Right.

And the impact was that I was unable to work, I’d always had two jobs. And suddenly I couldn’t work. And, so I was not bringing any money in. And also he didn’t help at all. He didn’t understand the illness, and he didn’t want to understand the illness.

And did that make things even more difficult, would you say, in the marriage?

Extremely so, yes. And also he would make fun of me in front of the children. Because I would forget things, or come out with some, something strange and he would, you know, point it out and make fun.

And that’s part of the condition?

Yes. Yeah. And like I’d get lost. On holiday we’d try and always stay in the same accommodation block and we’d be on the beach and he’d sit and he would watch with the kids while I got lost going back to the room. And he would think it was funny and amusing. And he would have the air conditioning on in the room, knowing that I couldn’t sleep with the noise of the air conditioning. And there’s lots of things like that.

He made an awful lot of people disappear throughout my life. And when I was, at my 40th birthday party he only had his friends at my birthday party, none of my friends, because he said he didn’t like their husbands. And it was all of his relations there, none of mine. Apparently he told his family that I was having a separate party, but I wasn’t.

So how were you feeling at that time?

That everybody seemed to be deserting me and I was all on my own and my self-esteem was really low and, especially when you’ve got young children, because you’re very isolated then anyway, and, like I’d always worked and suddenly you can’t work, you’re isolated with the children you’re a new mum. Which, you know, you’re just stuck in the house. Extremely lonely.

He broke me. Totally.

Yeah.

I didn’t have any say, I had no self-will any more. And

So, he’d broken you?

Literally.

Over the relationship?

Yeah. Totally broke me.

Hmm.

Yeah. So I became a nothing. Yeah.

Gosh.

Hm. Yeah. I was the strong one in the relationship and he broke me.

I’ve lost everything really. And I’ve got to rebuild my life as, as a new me. As a single person. My children still don’t have contact.

You don’t have contact from either of them?

No. I was making all the, with my son, I was actually making bridges and we sort of like go two steps forward and one back, and then one day he came to where I was living and he’d just had a meal with my husband and he was abusive. He said to me, I read the divorce papers and your assets are blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and the time before he’d been my place he’d been in the rooms and he said also, your assets are and the bailiffs can take the lot. He said, Dad’s picking me up and I’m going there. And with that he got up and he left.

Was that the place where you are currently living, he came, or ?

Yes. And I changed the locks, I was told to change the locks.

So you’re still getting ongoing harassment and contact?

No, because I’ve stopped trying to make bridges. I’ve decided that he’s an adult I’ve done my bit and if he wants to, he knows where I live and if he wants to make contact he can. So I’ve had to literally cut him out of my life.

And why are you experiencing, do, why would you say you’re experiencing difficulty having contact with your children?

He’s manipulating them. My son has to live, I know I’m making excuses, my son has to listen to him all the time going on about me. And with my daughter, he has put money into an account for her, so he’s buying her.

And would you describe what was going on as he was very controlling? Is that, that how it was for you?

Extremely controlling. Yes.

I mean, did you realise at the time that it was domestic abuse? Or not really?

I knew that there was something wrong in the marriage, that but I didn’t know it was domestic abuse. No. No. I didn’t find out about that until much, much later.

When abouts did that realisation come to you? Or

After many years of marriage and friends said to me about going to the Freedom programme, and I just, the second session, the person that ran it just looked at me and said to me, Do you want to make some phone calls? And I just looked at her and went, Mmm, yeah.

And she took me aside and I made those phone calls. It was very, very difficult.

Who were the phone calls to?

I think one was, might have been to social services. The other one, I think, to [specialist domestic abuse services for women and children], I’m not sure.

At what stage, how far into your marriage was that event that you just described to me?

That was incredibly about 26 years.

Right. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. And how’d you’d coped with all that going on for 26 years?

I kept thinking maybe it was me, maybe I should keep trying and I kept trying in the marriage, you know, you just kept as you do, you keep trying and then after going, doing a couple of session at the Freedom programme I suddenly realised, you know, that it wasn’t me, that he’d been controlling and he’d been abusive and at that point even my son recognised that I’d changed. I suddenly decided to stop trying because I’d always tried in the marriage.

What does trying mean to you?

Just carrying on with the marriage, trying to keep it, pull .

Trying to keep them happy, that kind of thing, do you mean? Or, or not particularly?

Not particularly, no. Just I don’t know, putting spice back into the marriage.

Right.

You know, anything really to hold it together.

Yes.

And when I actually stopped, for the first time I realised he hadn’t been trying for an awful long time. Probably hadn’t been trying for years and years.

He hadn’t been trying?

No.

No.

No.

So, what happened then? When you stopped trying.

Yeah, big wake-up call for me. I started seeing the flaws in our marriage then. And also having, and the knowledge the Freedom programme, we were learning about just, you know, how abusive he had been and lots of other women all in the same situation. And at that point I decided I was going to leave. And I started making preparations to leave.