“Crying my eyes out laid in bed. It’s bloody Christmas Day. I hate that I’m scared in my own house still, nine months on. I’m here on my own and every noise I hear I think it’s him. I can’t stop crying. I hate what I’ve been turned into. I know I’m better but I don’t think it will ever go. Everyone keeps telling me they always come back. I know him. I know how he thinks. It could be years before he gets revenge, but he’ll turn up. And nobody has done anything. I’ll never get a reason why. Just the wrong person at the wrong time. Sick of being told how strong I am. This is what people don’t see. The aftermath. Therapist told me to be kind to myself. To hug myself. To let myself cry. But then he wins. If I let myself go completely he wins. I’ve cried over and over, but not completely. I’ve stopped myself already now. He’s not going to win.”
I was asked to write a diary by my therapist. The above entry was nine months after Arthur was removed. Every noise sounded like him. A car slowing outside. A door in the distance. The sound of a step that might not even be real. My mind jumped straight to: He’s here. He’s come back. He’s found a way in.
Throughout the relationship he slipped in stories about how violent he’d been in the past and how nobody ever crossed his family. He told me nobody ever got away with crossing any of them, that he’d sit in the dark and plot revenge. None of it was casual conversation; it was a warning. A reminder of what he could be capable of. Those “confessions” were designed to make leaving feel dangerous, to keep me scared enough to stay, and to make sure I understood exactly who held the power.
I felt stupid for being so afraid. Weak. Pathetic. I hate what I was turned into. I hate that I jumped at shadows. I hate that I replayed conversations that never happened. I hate that I imagined him standing outside, smiling, waiting.
Sometimes I thought: You’re broken now. This is permanent. You’ll never feel safe again. He ruined you and there’s no going back. Then darker thoughts crept in. What if he’s right about you? What if you really are unstable? What if you deserved it? What if this is the punishment for being naive?
Some nights I felt like I was just a frightened version of the person I used to be. Everyone says They always come back. The night he was removed by the police, he ‘promised’ me that he wasn’t done with me yet. That sentence played on repeat in my head like a threat. I imagined him years from now, calm, patient, turning up like nothing happened. I imagined him enjoying the fact that I was still scared. That he still had space in my head. That he still owned part of my peace.
The police were useless after the night he was removed. There was no justice, no consequences for him, no real acknowledgement. It made me feel like it didn’t count, like it wasn’t serious enough, like I imagined it, like I was overreacting. Like I WAS crazy.
I became sick of being told I was strong. I didn’t feel strong, I felt paranoid and fragile. I felt like I was pretending to be okay during the day and quietly falling apart at night. This was the part that people didn’t see. The hypervigilance. The rage that has nowhere to go. The shame. The fear. The part of me that wondered if I’d ever feel normal again.
My therapist told me to be kind to myself. To hug myself. To cry fully. But my mind always twisted it into something darker: If you let yourself collapse, he wins. If you break properly, he wins. If you admit how damaged you feel, he wins. So, I rationed my pain, I controlled my crying, I never let it take me all the way under. I always stopped myself mid-spiral, mid-sob, mid-breakdown. I was not going to allow him to destroy me completely. Even if I felt destroyed. Even if I felt afraid. Even if I hated how small I’d become.
Now I’d got away, I was not going to allow him to win. EVER.
