When abuse looks like love

I don’t repost articles that I’ve read elsewhere but this morning I got a notification of a new post on Penelope Trunks blog. I really love reading her writing. She’s so frank and honest and it’s refreshing to read something that seems uncensored. This morning though, her post made me stop for a minute. I had to literally take a moment to fight back the tears. This woman is incredible. She is smart and she is successful and she has achieved great things so it confuses me so that she is also so abused and battered and helpless.

She is in a very weird marriage with a man she calls the farmer. He is incredibly abusive to her. He treats her really really badly. She left him a little while ago but he is still abusing her from a distance. Accusing her of using his credit card without his consent and other forms of mental harassment. Today I read that he had once tried to drive over her with a tractor. This man is a monster.

What hit home the hardest though was how she ended her post. A conversation with her father on the phone!

I lay down. I feel delirious. I shut my eyes. My phone rings. It’s my dad.

I don’t answer. I text instead: “Thank you for calling back. I needed some advice but I figured things out.”

He texts: “I called your mom. Is everything okay? Is the marriage over?”

I text: “Yeah. I don’t think he realizes that it’s over. He actually thinks things are fine. He thinks he is doing nothing wrong and I have poor judgment and that’s just how life is. He said he’s coming next month to celebrate the boys’ birthdays.”

He texts: “It seems that he has always had doubts about your judgment, but managed to accommodate. Be careful. He’s a good man who can deal with your quirks. This is not easy to come by.”

It seems that her abuse has always been happening. From childhood she has been called less than and not worthy – I can only deduce from what I’ve read in the paragraph above but we maybe don’t always realise the long-term effects of the things we say to our children.

In this case, her father telling her she is lucky to have someone who puts up with her.

[bctt tweet=”Don’t believe when they say it’s you. Abuse is NEVER your fault! ” username=”tyrannyofpink”]

Why does this resonate so much with me?

I guess the simple answer is that my own family didn’t understand me growing up. I was severely depressed. I had a difficult childhood. In the kind of way where you don’t talk about what happens at home because “what will the neighbours think” so I kept it inside of me for years. The consequence of which was a really bad temper and anger issues.

They put it down to being my personality but I’m not an angry and aggressive person. Turns out that’s just who I become when I’m dealing with all the shit I had to.

So this post – well – it knocked the wind out my chest.

I keep thinking of all the abused women in the world who have been conditioned to tolerate this kind of behaviour. It makes me sad.

I wish more women would speak up and ASK for help! Don’t make people feel like being abused is their fault either. It’s not okay!

If you’re being abused, even if you are made to feel like it’s your own fault, GET HELP! It’s not you!!

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