It is 13th of July 2024. 4.5 years since I started my journey to be free from abuse. I really don't feel much better off than I did back in 2019, when I was in the thick of it. It's only very recently that I have felt completely isolated and alone in my struggles again. No one can understand unless they have had similar experiences. How does an abuse victim explain the fear to move within their own home, to a well adjusted, normal human being? I have never spent so much time staring at walls and just crying. The home I currently live in was the former family home for myself, my ex and our five children. The last few years of our relationship, I was confined to the bedroom. That may sound silly to anyone who doesn't understand abuse. I was made to feel helpless. My abuser needed me to need him. He knew he would lose me if I didn't need him. So he took over my life and did literally everything. My ex slept in the living room and if I would go into his "bedroom" (the living room), I was told to get out. Even now I hate being in my living room. I feel extremely uncomfortable. The kitchen is another space that causes me extreme anxiety. My ex would never eat anything I cooked. He would joke about it being poisoned or just being inedible. I still feel incompetent in the kitchen. There are a few meals that I make for my kids that they love. My ex has recently decided to try to make these things himself for the kids. I suppose it's another way for him to try to keep the kids away from me. He doesn't want them to want to be with me. If he uses my recipes to make their favourite foods, that's one less reason to come to my house. I bought my youngest a fish tank last year and have been meaning to get him a fish ever since. Well, guess what daddy just got at his house? That's right, a fish tank. He keeps trying to one up me on everything. You know that song "anything you can do, I can do better"? Yeah, that's my ex. I can't have anything that he doesn't have. Except cats. He hates cats. He wants a dog. Been promising one to the kids for years. He finally gets a dog into the home, temporarily (he was dog sitting for family) and the dog causes complete chaos in the home and kills and/or maims a much loved family pet belonging to my oldest daughter. And he refused to pay the vet bills for the surviving animal. He is truly unbelievable.
I want to move on with my life but I know I will never be able to. This is who I am now and I need to learn how to live with the constant terror of living in this house, a stones throw from my ex's new flat. I don't see any way to reach recovery and healing. He has successfully destroyed me.
It is now August 2024 and things are only getting worse. My anxiety is constantly sky high. I constantly feel like I am being watched. My ex may have set up cameras in my home without my knowledge. He knows things that he wouldn't know unless he was watching me. I can't trust my children so I lie to them all the time. They tell him everything. They even go so far as to make up lies about me. As an example, my oldest daughter told my abuser that she heard me saying "I love you" to some man on the phone when she was at mine. This never happened. I do have a male friend who I have known for 25 years, who I video call sometimes. That has caused my abuser to lose his ever loving mind. Never mind that this person has literally been a part of my life since before I got married. My abuser has turned insanely jealous of this person in the last year and I fear he may eventually kill me because of it. He cannot stand the fact that he can no longer control who I see or what I do. I'm scared. I live in constant fear. There is no one who will help me. No one who cares if I live or die. I guess this chapter of my story, serves as some sort of evidence if anything ever happens to me. I can't stop it but I can make sure he pays for it. If I disappear or die, it's my abuser who made it happen. My kids will probably all think it is hilarious. They are as abusive as he is now. He has them trained well. I should add, it's only my daughters. My oldest son was horribly physically abused by my abuser and hates him. And my youngest son is a mama's boy. Although, I have sensed changes in him recently too. He stays with his dad most of the time and is slowly getting brainwashed too. I may end up losing him. There is very little in my life that I am able to control. My life is a living nightmare and I will never be able to wake up.
I am just back from a holiday abroad. I got to experience what it is to feel safe again. Unfortunately, I am back in Scotland now and am more afraid than ever. I know my ex has made threats to my life and I don't know how to accept that. He needs to take control in whatever way he can. This is how he can take final control of my life. It's simply a matter of when. I have no say, no rights. Nowhere to turn. I just have to assume it's going to happen. It's a really lonely place to be.
A NEW LOW, EVEN FOR MY ABUSER
I have not been allowed to see my children. My oldest two daughters are convinced I am Satan herself. This surprises me because I am the parent who always took them places and did things with them. I was the one who did the school run. I was the one who was always there. Their father has said to me, if I won't be with him, he will take my kids away from me and he has done just that. This is precisely why I was reluctant to break all ties with him and tell him, in no uncertain terms, that we were over. It's one reason why I was reluctant to get a divorce. I knew he would follow through on his threat, even though he proved unable to follow through on any promise he ever made me. It's all part of coercive control.
I was recently given legal advice stating that if I wanted to see my youngest child, I had every right to pick him up at school and take him home. So I went to pick him up early last Friday so I could spend the weekend with him. We walked out of the school and he ran away from me, in terror. I have no idea what his father said to him but clearly he said something. We were playing games and having fun the last time we were able to spend time together. I gave him no reason to be afraid of me. We are pals. We always have been. My ex doesn't give a fuck about the kids. He only cares about controlling me and the only way he can have any control over me, is by taking my kids away from me. All of this is perfectly legal for him to do. He can control me for the rest of my life and there is fuck all I can do about it. Abusers have all the rights. Victims have NONE.
It's now 2025 and I am still being controlled by my abuser because there are no laws to keep domestic abuse victims safe in Scotland. I started the process of breaking free way back in 2019. I have followed all the steps that were available to me as a dv victim and I feel even more hopeless than I did in 2019. I contacted women's aid. I contacted Refuge. I called the police, repeatedly, until I was informed Police Scotland were not interested in enforcing the law if it meant protecting the clearly inferior women. Social Services in Scotland also have no interest in protecting women or children from abuse. In the UK, over the past ten years, on average a woman is killed by her partner or former partner every 4 days.
BBC News - The murdered toddler who 'fell off the radar'
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-40341450
https://womensaid.scot/information-support/domestic-abuse-statistics-scotland/
https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/24734520.recorded-domestic-abuse-incidents-scotland-rises/
https://www.femicidecensus.org/
The data is clear. Women and children are not safe in Scotland. In the past 6 years, I have been unable to determine why Scottish society is such a misogynistic one. The more victims I talk to, the more I am convinced that Scottish women are seen as subservient and of lesser worth than Scottish men. I don't even have the right to leave the UK, to escape my abuser. My abuser has the legal right to keep me here. He has the legal right to determine where I am allowed to live because I made the mistake of having children with him. Coercive control is sanctioned, by law. I've been through my share of solicitors and they all agreed on one thing, coercive control is generally a crime that cannot be prosecuted because it mostly takes place in the home, away from witnesses. Coercive control only became against the law in Scotland in April 2019. Before that, the law saw women as nothing more than property in Scotland. Let me be clear on this, very little has changed since it became a crime to marry someone for the sole purpose of keeping a slave. I cannot even file for divorce because the child custody case is unresolved. You better believe my abuser is going to drag that out as long as possible in order to retain his legal hold over me. Scotland is so far behind the times when it comes to the rights of women. We are nothing more than property to be used and abused. As long as this continues to be true, women should not choose to live here. I would have left ages ago if I had any legal right to leave.
Lifelong trauma
21st March 2025
I have always suffered from a bit of anxiety but since i immigrated to Scotland, my anxiety has been off the charts. Panic attacks are a normal occurrence. They mostly happen when I have too much time to think or something triggers my anxiety. Seeing my ex is one trigger. That is to be expected. I can't look at pictures of him anymore and I don't think I will ever be able to look at his face again. Police are another trigger. I can't be anywhere that may have police present. I need to make this abundantly clear, the police have caused me as much trauma as my abuser has caused. I am not yet ready to talk about the effect my last encounter with police Scotland had on me. I still feel shame when I think about that day. It was clear I was to blame for everything I had been through and that sticks with me to this day. Police Scotland have caused irreversible damage and are just as responsible for my mental health problems as my abuser was. I cannot stress this enough. Police Scotland very nearly killed me, TWICE. If anything does happen to me, I want to make sure that the responsibility for what happens falls on them. Their job is to protect abusers and help them. Their job is to make sure women know their place. Their job is to put women in danger.
One day I hope I can talk openly about how I dealt with the horrific trauma inflicted on me that day. My very first post on this blog just touches on that day. It doesn't begin to cover the damage. I hope reading it helps other victims of Police Scotland understand that they are not alone. That was why I wrote it. There are many of us and I speak up for them. I will always stand up to bullies, even when they have cost me so much. I cannot even begin to tell you how much that one day cost me.