Reality Bites

Six months in, I’ve bought the husband out of the matrimonial home and moved back. The new guy came too. Then I find out I’m pregnant. This is hard for me because while the biological clock had begun ticking rather loudly, the father, well not really my choice of life partner or father. We’ll call him Tony.

Pregnancy is really when the real fun began (I’ve subsequently discovered that this is in fact quite common).

At the time I thought those nine months were the worst of my life. Within weeks of discovering the impending bundle of joy, my life was plunged into darkness. A life that I had heard of but never would I put up with that, never would I allow someone to treat me like that. Well I did, for four long years.

Any excuse to pick fault, to cause an argument Tony would find it. At first I just put it down to us both being tired, stressed worried about the baby. I wasn’t any of those things. So what was it? I knew by now that Tony had a temper, haven’t we all if someone or something presses the right buttons?

I was two months pregnant, we had a huge row. The reason I don’t know. On that day in September in the back garden of my house Tony took a broom and chased me trying and succeeding in beating me with it. The whole time telling me that he would beat the baby out of me, if it killed him.  This was the first of many physical assaults, the last and most recent ending very very nearly in me losing my life. It’s not just the physical abuse. The real killer, and yes it is a killer, a slow silent and seeming love, that controls and manipulates and traps you and holds you prisoner.