Part four.
I will start off by adding a trigger warning to this story as it contains details of abuse, harassment, gaslighting, stalking, intimidation, and domestic violence.
If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic violence, please contact 1800RESPECT or 1800 737 732 (Australia) or 000 in an emergency.
Do not hope that it will go away, or that people who do this will stop, because they will not, do not give someone the freedom to harass and intimidate you, please tell the police or someone you trust, so that this person can be held accountable, put your safety first.
I have chosen to leave out the most traumatic parts of this story, possibly I will write a piece on this in the future, but now is not the time, it may never be. I have also left out identifying details about my abuser’s appearance along with specific dates, to protect their identity (to my abuser, if you are reading this, and I know you seek me out online, do not think I will not press charges if you begin to harass, threaten, or stalk me again, I know everything! Do not even go there. I will come at you with the full force of the law and with the support of friends and family who love me and care for my welfare).
I heard of something recently called the “grey rock method,” I had never heard of this term before, and I resonated with it deeply. The grey rock method is where you make yourself seem boring, you do not respond to your abuser and then lay low, hoping that they will lose interest in you and move on.
I was practicing this when trying to get away from CL, without even knowing how to describe it, and I just hoped every day, that I would not receive any more messages, or hear his car pull into my driveway. It would go as far, as fantasizing about the time before I met him, where I did not want to fade away or disappear, to be able to live a somewhat “normal” existence.
Because being visible meant that he could find me, and even having any presence online promoting my artwork would give him another avenue to harass me, and anyone close to me. I cannot describe how insular it made me become… knowing that someone is out there, just waiting.
I still feel guilty around the whole idea behind hoping that the person harassing you, gets bored and finds a new target. I do not want CL to do this to anyone ever again, there is also the probability that his abuse will escalate, and I genuinely believe he is capable of doing unspeakable things.
There was one email that I had received from CL, after a period of no contact, that for the first time made me laugh, it made me see how truly desperate he was, and it made me realise that this nightmare was ending.
CL had “accidentally” sent me a very long email that read like this, “thankyou so much! (Insert real estate agents name here) for making my dreams come true to owning my own home” he had pretended to send this email to me by mistake, and I just laughed, what he was trying to achieve, I do not know.
But once he could not intimidate me any longer, and I had started a new relationship, his angle changed to one of making himself out to have struck gold in his life.
He could have found the biggest gold nugget in Australian history for all I cared, as long as I never heard from him again.
The trauma left from that experience was a difficult beast to live with, but it was not going anywhere. I remember feeling so tired all the time, like I could sleep for a century. They say your body holds that trauma, as a somatic response to all that you have endured, and boy do I know all about that.
Still to this day, if I see someone when I am out, that looks like CL, I feel like I cannot breathe, I start planning what I will do to counteract the impending confrontation … and I am at least happy to say, that my response is a lot more fight these days, than flight.
That repulsion is still also so strong that if I see someone that even resembles him, in person or even just on the TV, it is enough to make me recoil in disgust.
Even through all of what happened, I do see a silver lining, and take this as a valuable gem of learned experience, a hands-on lesson that maybe could never have been taught to me in any other way.
Someone said to me a long time ago, that “You deserve how you let yourself be treated” and I do take that with a grain of salt, because this person was reading a book called “The Game” at the time, which is basically a how to guide, for negging women. I do also feel it is an unfair statement, because many people lack the tools, to demand respect, to know a healthy dynamic and to know when they are being manipulated. To say otherwise starts getting dangerously close to victim-blaming territory.
But it is a statement that has sat in my mind for over ten years, so it must count for something, and it must have struck a nerve for me personally.
After the dust had settled, I dived deep into the ocean of self, something that in the past, I felt was self-indulgent and ego-centric, but likely had a lot more to do with not wanting to ever face up to certain truths, and open wounds that never had a chance to heal… because I did not want to even acknowledge their existence.
An ocean where I knew I would be completely alone, with no ores for my little boat, and no pillow for my head, just a deep vastness of salty blue … and me.
Right there, lay the key, on the bottom of that ocean, it took for me to fall out of my little boat, that could go nowhere, but where the current let it, it took for me to struggle and fight the waves, give in to the water burning my lungs, and to sink to the sea floor… still alone.
Alone…
That was the key… why could I never be alone?
One thing that I have given significant thought to, is why some women are so susceptible to abusers of all kinds, I think that intergenerational trauma plays a role, as does learned behaviours and past experiences, especially where a person will fawn for self-preservation… and then it becomes such an ingrained part of your persona with others, that the predator can feel the vibration of vulnerability radiating from you.
It really is a terribly perfect web, where dangerous people can wrap others up like little moths, before gnawing off their wings, out of the pure delight of destroying someone so completely, there is nothing left but a fragile hollow shell.
I know it feels like a deep injustice, that the perpetrator gets to go on with their life, while those around them are dealt with the task of learning deeply painful lessons to stay safe. I have come to think of these toxic people like deadly zoo animals, and look at them through the safety of iron bars, knowing they should be in some isolated wild place, far away from people.
I make sure not to allow myself to get too close to the cage, knowing the beast can never change, knowing that they will say anything, in order to be released, so that they may devour you the moment they gain the upper hand.
I had fallen into a perpetual cycle so early on, and I do not know if I really even noticed it was happening, I just knew I did not like the way it felt, and I thought that there must be something wrong with me, because I always found myself being treated in ways that were really not acceptable…
The pattern that I noticed first, was that no matter what someone had done to me, I would accept their apology and always see their better parts, I could never accept that someone could not know that they were causing harm, if I could just explain it the right way, I was sure they could come to some realisation, I was sure that they would come around.
What I neglected to understand, was that of course they know they are doing harm.
In fact, they not only know, but they do not care.
By always being open to these discussions, all I had ever achieved was showing how poor my boundaries were, and how easy it would be to use my empathy against me.
I made significant effort to be conscious of how the trauma of those events affected me, and I will be honest.
It was exhausting.
It was exhausting to be always, pulling myself up for reactions that I knew were rooted in fear, and negative past experiences.
But it also made me aware of any toxic traits that I had myself, the last person I ever want to mirror, is CL. It made me re-think my own anger or potentially manipulative actions, and it forced me to go through a confronting, dark night of the soul, to come out the other end, as someone I may never have been, should this not of happened to me.
I do not know if the road to healing ever really ends, or if it will branch off into smaller, friendlier paths over time. Paths that may hopefully lead to a comfortable little house, where weary travellers can rest their feet.
All I know, is that I can already smell the smoke from a wood fire … roaring next to a well-worn chair, that has my name on it.
