#stillnotgoodenough

When you’re in a struggle for your life, there comes a moment that you just wish it would hurry up and end. When the fear has reached a maximum level and your finally tired of the constant struggle you begin to accept the thoughts “this is how I go out, this is how my life ends.”

His hands are so tight around my throat, I can’t breathe, and my vision is starting to go black. My legs have turned to jelly, and I can’t reach the ground. Tonight, I think he might kill me. In that moment, I was ready for it to all finally come to an end. But it didn’t, and that wasn’t the end. Charles and I were in a relationship for approximately 3.5 years, ending with his arrest in March 2019. On the night that I have described Charles assaulted me before a family Christmas gathering. He was careful to never break a bone, but he controlled every aspect of my life with consistent threats, intimidation and stand-over tactics that was always followed by actual physical abuse.

That Christmas morning of 2018, Charles’s assault lasted through the night and continued the next morning. Even coming after me as got I in the car to go and see my family. I was excited for Christmas; it was the first I would have with my family in many years and the last Christmas I would ever get to have with my dad who passed away in late 2019. When I arrived, my family knew something was wrong. They tell me I was shaking and hyperventilating. They knew if they asked, I would make up a cover story for Charles’s actions. So, my sister puts my sleeping niece in my arms to comfort me and nothing more is said until later, when they discover the marks on my neck. I have no choice but to uncover the ugly truth. And still, I say “it’s just an itchy neck.”

Most of the assaults have gone undocumented or unrecorded because of my fear of Charles’s retribution if I ever went to the Police. When they occurred, Charles would spend hours upon hours physically assaulting me. This was always accompanied by psychological torment about everything from my weight to my usefulness as a human being. Anything could provoke Charles’s anger. I wasn’t allowed my own opinion, I couldn’t think for myself, I couldn’t choose things that I wanted. I literally had no control of my own life and forever feared the physical repercussions that included being punched, kicked, threatened, strangled, or have a weapon used on me. He would only stop when he was satisfied that he had beaten the result that he wanted into me.

Not long after his arrest, I ended up in the Mental Health Ward due to the psychological impact of what had occurred over the years we were together. It all became too much for me and I attempted suicide. I had to be escorted by the police to the facility to ensure I did no further harm to myself.

Today, I live with frequent panic attacks, nightmares, flashbacks, insomnia, and a heightened level of anxiety. This affects my everyday living and my sense of personal safety. I am obsessive about locking my doors in the event that Charles finds out where I live. I have means to protect myself and feel the need to check these compulsively to feel safe. I live in the fear of his words when he’s told me “If I ever go to jail because of you, I WILL find you, and I will F**CKING KILL YOU! That’s a promise and don’t you ever forget it”. These words haunt me every day. I don’t ever feel safe, no matter what I am doing or who I’m with. I don’t even feel safe in my own home. I don’t go out at night and even something as simple as my grocery shopping, the moment I get in my car, I lock the doors as a precaution because I don’t trust anyone. I have spent the last 2 years seeking help to get through the trauma caused by all the assaults. I have been diagnosed with depression and PTSD in relation to not only the violent attacks from Charles, but the emotional, psychological and sexual ones as well.

It has been just over 2 years since the last time Charles assaulted me, I still remember the attacks daily and can often re-live them when my safety is threatened, or my anxiety is triggered by invasive, overwhelming thoughts that I struggle to control. Throughout our relationship, the violence increased in frequency and the reasons for it became more and more ridiculous. I cannot recall the first time he assaulted me, there were so many times that the violence occurred that my memory fails me when I try to remember them all.

Towards the end of our relationship, it became so ridiculous that he used any excuse to justify his violence towards me. One night after cuddling on the couch he mentioned my weight. I wasn’t interested in talking about it, he so got violent, emotionally abusive and controlling. He screamed at me, telling me I was the fattest girlfriend he had ever had, and I looked disgusting. He spent 4 hours punching me in the same spot on my arm over and over, leaving a large bruise. I would later tell my family members that it was caused by running into a door handle after chasing my cat through the house. I begged him to stop but that just infuriated him even more. In the end I gave up and told him what he wanted to hear. The next day he forced me to run the block, while he screamed at me. When I was not able to continue because of exhaustion, he threw me on the ground in the street and punched me until I got up. When I crossed the street to get away from him, he followed me, kicked me in the kidneys, slamming my head into a park table and forcibly dragged me back to the house.

The events described contribute to my daily anxiety, nightmares and flashbacks. I often struggle to manage this. I feel that most people expect me to be over it by now, but that’s not the case. Many things trigger me and bring on panic attacks where I re-live the trauma again. It doesn’t help that Charles will not leave me alone and keeps trying to contact me via Facebook and other forms of social media. Every time he does this (the most recent in April of this year) it’s like the flood gates of hell open up again and all the work I have put in to getting better disappears and I’m back to square one. This feels unfair. I feel like the justice system has failed me on so many levels and that Charles only got a smack on the hand. It feels unfair that Charles only got 6 months in jail. It feels unfair that everyday I’m living with the consequences of his actions. It feels unfair that he gets to move on with his life while I feel stuck in a cycle of trauma.