
This post deals with abuse and might be triggering for some readers. If this post brings up any issues for you, or if you just feel like you need to speak to someone, please call 1800 RESPECT (1800 737 732).
I knew this evening all too well. No, it wasn’t deja vu, it was something much more confounding. It was a nightmare I had lived and dreamt of too many times.
I was about to spend an evening fighting and crying with my husband. I felt it coming. He had a therapy appointment earlier that day and it didn’t go well, meaning the doctor didn’t prescribe him an amphetamine.
Whenever a doctor didn’t give him Xanax or Adderall, he claimed they didn’t know what they were doing, calling them “hacks”. He would never see them again. He would never take any advice they offered as valid.
Watch: Women and Violence - The hidden numbers. Post continues below.
We’d been through this over and over, trying different therapists. I was lucky If he saw anyone more than once.
Eventually, he would quit altogether until the next time I threatened to leave, convincing me it was me who needed the help. He’d then go about his life, residing within the same delusions of grandeur as before.
Our fights were violent. What would begin with yelling and cursing would most certainly evolve into physical violence.
The physical abuse was usually self-inflicted - he would put me in scenarios where I had to behave a certain way or risk him banging his head on the wall repeatedly, cutting his forearm, or throwing himself down the stairs.
Hurting himself was the punishment he gave me for not “being good enough”.
Going down the stairs was a favourite of his, and it was composed of multiple layers of emotional abuse.
See, not only did he sling himself as fast as he could down a full flight of stairs, but he would also be completely still at the bottom. He would not move even after I approached him.
What type of person would I be if I didn’t check to see that he was okay, that he was breathing, that nothing was broken?
Inevitably though, no matter what kind of show he would put on, he would be perfectly fine, and he would try to shame me for my delayed response. He could have been dead. Did I not love him?