Trigger warning: This post could be distressing for those who have been in an abusive relationship
My new year’s resolution is to give up trolling.
I’d never thought of myself as a good candidate for turning into an online troll. But I guess I’d also never imagined I would be a victim of domestic violence.
On one level it’s quite pleasing to think that I can still surprise myself after 40 odd years of bumbling about in this otherwise familiar body and brain.
Being in an abusive relationship was hellish. But astonishingly, after I finally found the strength to ask him to leave, I found myself in a whole new kind of hell.
Central to this purgatory was shame. I was too ashamed to tell my family and friends what had happened. Telling the truth would be to admit that I had lied for years about the man he was. Telling the truth would require that I expose myself as the type of woman who knowingly remains in an abusive relationship.
And telling the truth meant admitting, to my own mortification, that I had chosen to stay in a relationship with a man who had physically harmed my children.
And so I spiralled downwards. When people asked what had happened I found myself unable to answer.