ZOE MARSHALL: 'I only kept one secret from my mum. After she died, it almost killed me.'

This is an extract from Ariise, by Zoe Marshall, Simon & Schuster.

Mum and I had shared everything with each other but I had kept one very big secret from her. It was a secret I was keeping from everybody.

The truth was that I had been in a very violent and dangerous relationship with a man I was seeing. This person had promised to love and protect me, but instead I endured physical and sexual violence as well as the emotional and psychological violence we now call coercive control. As anyone who has experienced domestic violence knows, abusive relationships can turn us into someone we never imagined we'd become. Abusers have clever strategies for isolating and gaslighting their victims, and this can have a profound effect on the way we see ourselves and the world.

Shortly after my mother's death, while I was still in this very dangerous relationship, my extended family imploded. It was another challenge that proved me right in my belief that the world was a cruel place. It even proved my partner right: that without my mum, I only had him.

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Weird things happen when someone dies. People handle their grief in strange ways. My own memories of this time are clouded by grief and abuse. And now that so many years have also passed, it's difficult to separate facts from feelings. I'm sure that everyone involved has their own very different version of events — each version coloured by their own trauma and grief. But this is how that time felt for me.

As I have shared, my mum had become nan's support system when she was just 11 years old, and this care and responsibility only grew as my nan aged and became more and more dependent on her daughter. So, when Mum died, my nan and her other children — my aunt and uncle — felt just as lost as I did. My mum was the glue that held my family together. And now that she was gone, my extended family was holding me responsible for mum's financial obligations — obligations I didn't have the means to fulfil. My nan, who had helped raise me, funnelled her grief into getting financial safety from the very little money mum had left behind when she died.

And it got really rough. I was treated like a stranger, a business associate rather than the grieving daughter, granddaughter or niece. Instead of family gatherings to mourn together and grieve my mum, there were court cases and lawyers. It was the worst time of my life.

Looking back on it now, I understand that everyone involved was acting out of desperation and their own complicated grief. They weren't thinking about the long-term damage and impact on me or our relationship. At that time, they were trying to survive their own loss. I know that people can do terrible things — things they wouldn't normally do — when they're grieving. I also know that my family did the best they could at the time. Did it mess me up? Yes. Did it force me to sink even deeper into the disgusting relationship I was in, as a deranged form of survival? Yes. Would others have forgiven this betrayal? Probably not. But my mother raised me to forgive, and to try and see everyone's perspective.

This isn't easy to write. It's hard to go back to these places as I share my story with you. It's vulnerable to share our wounds — even if they have healed. But it wasn't over yet. I still hadn't hit my rock bottom. 

While all of this family trauma was unfolding, I depended even more on my abusive partner. And he controlled everything in my life.

It got to the point that the only safe place was inside my mind — my thoughts were the only thing he didn't have access to. He controlled where I went, how I dressed, what I ate, what I did and who I spoke to — I wasn't allowed to be on social media. And breaking his rules would start a violent episode. The only safe activity I was allowed was reading. 

This wasn't threatening to him, and he never showed any interest in what I was reading. Books were safe. No one was looking at me or touching me while I was reading a book.

I couldn't run away with a book. Reading was a 'good girl' activity. And, even though I was in a hopeless place, my deepest knowing led me to books about self-development, manifestation, co-creation and the power of our thoughts.

Ironically, my ex was the one who gave me the book that would finally give me the strength to leave. A friend had lent him Neale Donald Walsch's Conversations with God. My ex considered himself a religious person — which, considering his horrific behaviour, isn't very on brand — and he thought he was giving me a book about God. Little did he know that it is a book about spiritual truth, finding your highest self… and about relationships.

I started to ask myself questions, exploring the parts of me that were buried underneath the rubble of abuse, to see what I believed about myself, to really listen to the way I spoke to myself about myself. I began to examine my sense of self-worth, how much I valued myself and if I had any self-respect left after what I had been through. I began to ask the most difficult question of all: How did I get here? And during this time of self-examination — while I was so desperate for a life with less pain, less hurt, less fear — I began to seek answers, healing and a new way of living. I wanted to relearn and change the way that I approached… everything.

I managed to leave my abusive relationship, but I wasn't completely free from its grip. And it's hard to know if I would ever have put all of this new learning into action if it hadn't been for what happened next. After yet another violent episode with my ex, I was driving angry and upset in the rain when I lost control of the car.

I genuinely thought I was going to die. But when I crawled out of the wreckage, the first thing I did was reach for my phone, which had been flung across the road. I wasn't trying to call an ambulance, or even my dad. The person I called in that moment was my abusive partner: the same man who I had been trying to get away from when I crashed. It's hard to acknowledge that level of insanity when I look back. As the paramedics put me in a neck brace and back brace, worried that I might have internal and spinal injuries, all I could think about was him being mad at me.

When he arrived at the crash site I was still being worked on in the ambulance. Later, at the hospital, he told me that if I hadn't driven off upset, I would still be safe at home with him. He told me there was no point calling my family.

"Nobody cares about you. I'm all you've got," he said. And I believed him. I had no money, no car, and I was stuck in a brace.

It was the lowest low point in my life, and I didn't have my mum or family to help me through it. There were many times during this period of immense pain when I questioned my relationship with my higher power, asking myself: If the universe truly loved and supported me, then how did I find myself here?

It was only in retrospect that I understood that this was a lesson my soul needed to learn.

What I realised after the crash was that I really could have died. And I had been suffering immensely, I was isolated from my friends and family, I was stuck in a cycle of abuse — and I wanted so much more than that. I knew there was more to life than this.

So I slowly found the strength to leave my toxic relationship for good. The lengthy legal and financial conflicts with my extended family eventually came to an end and we were able to make amends. It was only then, when I wasn't in survival mode, when I had some space and safety, that I began to fully grieve the loss of my mother and face the trauma that I had endured. I did many years of confronting work to heal, so that now her memory brings joy, even though there will always be longing.

Image: supplied.

Ariise by Zoe Marshall, published by Simon & Schuster, is available now.

Feature image: Instagram / @zoebmarshall.