BLOG POST CONTRIBUTED BY TASH - A SURVIVOR IN THE #METTLEWOMEN COMMUNITY

Humans are born with the need to be happy, surrounded by the ones we love. Some of us, however, are robbed of that experience. Those of us who have experienced abuse within the ‘home’ know this all too well, but we also know it’s so incredibly difficult (and terrifying) to try and break the cycle. The unfortunate reality for many, is that the concept of ‘love’ or even ‘self-love’ is taken from us at some point in our lives by a toxic person or people.

Domestic violence takes all forms; it is not just the ‘man beats wife’ image that many of us think of when we hear the term.  It can be a partner, a parent, a sibling, a step-relative, or even your own child who has turned on you in later life.

 I am sharing my experience in the hope that it will resonate with someone and let them know they are not alone and also to educate others that domestic violence is an ugly beast that does not discriminate.

I am now a grown adult that has left an abusive home life behind. I’m 27 years old now, an established professional with a great network of friends, interests, an active social life and pets. I consider myself grounded and down to earth. Nobody suspects my background and most would be stunned to hear me say the following:

“My name is Tash and I have been a victim of family domestic violence for the majority of my life. I no longer have a relationship with my abusers (my parents) and this is my experience around cutting ties with my them.”

— Then —

I was born in Melbourne, but moved to Cairns with my parents for my dad’s job at a young age. I went to nice little Catholic primary school in Cairns and a reputable high school in Brisbane. I had hobbies and interests, some semblance of a social life, and I did all the things a ‘typical’ girl does: read girly magazines, have crushes on boys and pig out on pizza with girlfriends. Outside of the typical activities the world sees, my schooling years were some of the most traumatic times of my life. My home life was a dark hole; a suffocating and fear-inducing hell for me as an otherwise normal kid.

If someone has grown up in an environment fuelled by anger and violence, it’s not hard to imagine that these types of actions can have horrific consequences. It should be no surprise that the person going through it may not necessarily ever reconnect with the concept of putting themselves first or being able to love and be happy. It has taken me years to start working towards a clearer understanding of what self-love and happiness is to me. It was in my adult years that I implemented certain actions and boundaries in my life to limit and restrict those destructive elements from re-entering my life. My life has essentially been a process of managing harmful forces; a dark reality thrust upon me as a child.

As a child or teenager, you know that your parents physically assaulting you to the point of hospitalisation is wrong but you don’t know why. It is why I (and many children in these situations) lied about where the injuries came from. I lied about my home life and tried to lead people to believe everything was okay. I learned to forgive when  people don’t know what to do and prefer to plead ignorance – “if you don’t want to talk about it then we won’t prod!”. As time went on, I grew to understand my circumstances more clearly and know it would never end if I stuck around. I grew to believe that nobody would help me and that I was abandoned by the universe as a broken child forever. When you are victim of domestic violence, you lose any sense of power. You lose hope and slide into a constant state of fear because someone you trusted and cared about has stripped you of your power. When your life is threatened, with a very real threat, you don’t exactly know what the right move is.

Cutting ties with family members is one of the hardest decisions I’ve faced because we are conditioned to believe that to terminate relationships with “family” is morally and fundamentally wrong. When in reality, the facts are that “family members” are just people and not always healthy or caring people, and if these people weren’t family we would never choose them to be a part of our lives due to their poor treatment of us so why do we tolerate it now? We spend years sacrificing our mental and emotional health in abusive relationships under the deluded notion that we “have to”, just because these people are our family. We are obliged to. We are conditioned to believe that if we end relationships with them that we are “bad” and no one wants to be or feel like they are an inherently bad person. It’s completely against instinct to walk away from the ones who are meant to nurture you.  There is no easy way to say, “I don’t really talk to my parents.” It’s even harder to say, “I’ve cut my mum/dad out of my life,” clarifying that you are the one who has severed the bond. Say it to anyone, friend or stranger, and a certain light you hadn’t even noticed fades from their eyes, every time. Smiles falter or grow forced. Mothers give so much to their children that a justification for ending the connection must be staggering, or maybe it’s you! You must have done something! You must be overreacting! Mothers love their children unconditionally, how could you possibly sever that bond? The tradition of a family unit is deemed impenetrable. It is basically taboo to try and leave or break the unit. But we shouldn’t allow people to demoralise our existence just because they happen to be related to you or married to you.

Society tells us parents should love their children unconditionally but if that held true, I would not have spent my younger years hiding injuries and battling intense PTSD. I would not have the image seared into my brain, of my mother telling me I ‘deserved it’ while my dad repeatedly kicked my head in with steel cap boots on, at the tender age of 13. To this day, this image still incites immediate fear and panic inside me and I feel like I’m in an intense flashback, reliving every kick, reliving the intense convulsing on the ground and screaming so hard I made myself physically sick all over the carpet. I would not have gone to school days later with a still heavily bruised face, to tell my Grade 9 year level coordinator what my dad had done, only for him to do absolutely nothing about it. I would not have started crying when one of my good friends hugged me when she saw me and immediately asked what happened to my face. This particular incident became a key trigger in my PTSD and to this day, is still a very particular memory I battle with and have crippling flashbacks over. Of all the trauma and horrific memories that I feel like I have overcome in my life or come to terms with, this one plagues me. However, this one also reminds me why breaking the cycle was the right move.

Years later, I found myself in a blur of time where things started gaining momentum, forcing this bridge between me and my abusers. It was a combination of employment opportunities, moving out and having the right people at the right time encouraging me to implement certain steps and processes. On a personal level, I had also hit a point of understanding the reality of what it was I was going through. I had developed a level of awareness of just how serious my situation was and that I really needed to ‘fight back’, so to speak.

In the process of distancing myself from my parents, I heard “She’s your mother; you’ll want to reconnect someday.” “Your dad’s laid off the booze now anyway.” The words are so universal I can’t even point to a specific person who said them; it is all that the world told us as victims of domestic violence. Despite all this, I know that I don’t need to be in a situation where my physical safety and mental wellbeing is at a critical point on a day-to-day. I know I need to limit these things in my life if I ever want to be happy and safe. Granted, I didn’t do this on my own. Some key people in my life really helped drill the message in for me that being ‘hopeful’ my parents would change, was going to be pointless. My parents demonstrated the sheer refusal to change, time and time again. I made excuses for my parents over and over again, justifying their behaviours repeatedly. As a child you remain hopeful that your parents will snap out of it and be loving and caring again, but the educated adult in you now knows better, as painful as that lesson is.

As a child, I knew being beaten up was wrong but I didn’t know why, or just how wrong it really was. I just knew that I didn’t want anyone to find out. I didn’t know I could leave. And even if I did, where on earth was I going to go? I didn’t know a foster home was even an option but even if I did, there was no way I would have gone. I couldn’t be separated from my sister and I wouldn’t have wanted to subject my parents to any kind of ‘trouble’ for what they were doing. It was a very real and scary feeling of being trapped in this ‘family’. Because I’d accepted it was my reality, I had to learn to just deal with it. The unfortunate side effect is that children are forced to develop often unhealthy coping mechanisms that can restrict ‘normal’ development. I learned to compartmentalise; to use every ounce of mental stamina to force down painful memories and experiences.

The handful of times another adult found out I had been ‘disciplined’ for doing something wrong, only generated more rage in my dad, who would punish me even more for letting word get out. I was absolutely petrified of people finding out because not only would I be punished, but I would have somehow brought shame upon my parents and embarrassed them for their own actions. I didn’t know any better.

As a teenager, I still didn’t think I could leave. I had become an incredibly angry teenager, constantly acting out in rebellion and rage. I was engulfed in this constant state of fear and anxiety, wanting to escape but not being able to. At this point I started justifying their behaviour more than ever. Your parents discipline you for your own good, right? It’s later in life that you realise that’s not ‘disciplining’. It wasn’t until I spent more time with friends, their families, that I realised just how abnormal my family really was. As a child you have a hunch that something is not right with your family. You’re so sure of that hunch that it’s not even really a hunch anymore and it becomes something you actively try to hide from the public eye. My parents also knew to hide it. They were polite and all-smiles to my friends. Violence was normalised within the confines of my home.

 “Why didn’t you tell someone?”

That’s the thing. I did.

And they did nothing.

When I finally told an adult, an ‘authority figure’, I felt an intense feeling of relief, albeit temporarily, then an immediate wave of fear. It was a peculiar set of circumstances where that authority figure was my year level coordinator at school who had actually called my parents to tell them I had skipped three Multimedia classes, which then prompted one of the worst beatings of my life (the one mentioned earlier). When I eventually returned to school with the injuries clearly visible, he actually asked me if it was because of his reporting to my parents that had led to this. I had never envisaged the day that someone found out and may be able to help, would be them figuring it out of their own accord, and not of me screaming out of desperation for help. When he asked me if it was because he reported my antics to my parents, I could not even get the words out to respond. I was immediately overcome with such fear and relief; I could barely speak. I simply nodded at him through a flood of tears.

At this point, my mind went all over the place. Was this going to be the end of my suffering? Was this the moment someone swoops in and rescues my sister and I from this hell? Or was this going be another one of those times where my parents find out I told someone I was being beaten up and they were going to punish me harder than ever before? It ended up being none of the above. I received a lukewarm apology and sentenced to 100 hours of litter duty for my crime. This was to be undertaken during lunch hours, prompting endless questions by friends about why I was being punished and how I sustained the injuries.

Those lunch hours changed my friends’ perception of me. I lost almost the entire year of lunch breaks to do litter duty instead of bonding with my friends. Suddenly I was the ‘weird’ one in the extended group; something must be wrong with me. Something isn’t normal with my life.  My friendships weakened. My parents went about with their lives as normal, thinking nobody had found out or cared. The only person who suffered was me.

At this point, I conceded that nothing was ever going to change. This is my life sentence.

— Now —

To this day my parents still believe they are in the right. They have not once, ever, apologised for the physical trauma (let alone psychological) they inflicted upon me. My mother continues to try and berate me about how poorly I treat them by not having any kind of relationship with them anymore and how she is jealous of her friends’ kids who share a close bond with their parents. This is the very dark reality of abusers: they genuinely believe they are in the right and will always make you feel like you are in the wrong. As an adult I have become a little more self-aware and conscious of what is actually right and wrong behaviour. I eventually came to understand that this is just who my parents are. They won’t ever change. My communication with my mother is very limited, and is strictly around life-admin and anything important pertinent to my sister who still lives in Brisbane. I do not speak to my dad at all. While this was without a doubt, the best decision I ever made, it still hurts me. I sometimes feel hard done by the universe, like “why don’t I get to have loving parents?”.

As a child from a violent family home, I somehow grew to be successful. I think the sheer desperation to get out of that environment drove me to chase opportunities that would distance me from my parents. I’m in a very fortunate position now where I am in a safe environment, living an exciting life and working a career I love in this wonderful city of Melbourne, surrounded by some seriously incredible people. All things considered, my life has turned out very well in these latter years.  That’s not to say everything is fine now; there are consequences I have had to learn to manage that will be in my life for a long time to come. Things didn’t just ‘un-f***’ themselves when I cut my parents off. There are countless moments of fear, doubt and resentment I experience because of the way I was raised and the toxic ‘lessons’ I learned from the very people who were supposed to protect me. There are many lessons to unlearn if I want to change my future for the better.

Not surprisingly, I now live with anxiety and occasional bouts of depression. For a long time, I also struggled with some extreme anger management problems. I experienced blackout rages for many years; a terrifying realisation when you snap out of it and find yourself standing in a trashed bedroom, heart pounding, out of breath and covered in cold sweat with little to no recollection of how you ended up there. The most minor things would tip me over the edge. I have to actively concentrate on pushing through flashbacks and panic attacks. I found over time that the intense rage I was constantly experiencing under the surface did just settle somewhat naturally, but I know I need to continue to manage this regularly, and likely to need to do so to some degree, for the rest of my life.

Growing up, I used to push all bad feelings to the back of my mind and learned to compartmentalise which may have somehow helped me cope with the trauma at the time, however has become detrimental to me in my adult years. I do not communicate things that upset me when I should, choosing to instead force them deep down inside me, accepting people’s poor treatment of me or not learning to disagree in a productive manner. This only fosters resentment and anger in me, making for unhealthy relationships as an adult. Partners have had no idea they have upset or hurt me because I never say anything, while the resentment festers inside me, eating away at me like poison. I have had to relearn the correct and appropriate way of communicating with others; understanding people’s communication techniques, their personalities and responding effectively to conflict.

These issues not only impact my personal life, but also have had a harmful impact on my work life. I have stunted my own professional development numerous times due to communication issues; either the inability to raise conflict out of fear and anxiety, or just putting up with things and letting toxic co-workers or managers walk all over me. Nobody is perfect, but I have had to recognise these personality traits relate to my years of abuse.

I tried so many things to try and undo the damage of my past, before eventually conceding I may not ever be able to completely reverse the trauma. I have to learn to manage them and my mind as I move on, and leverage these learnings to build a better life for myself. I had to identify methods of therapy that would be most appropriate for me. It took a long time to come to grips with the fact that some traditional models of support were not going to work for me. In fact, I did not find counselling/therapy helped me at all despite trying multiple therapists. I realise this is certainly not the case for many people, and that therapy has helped countless others, but in my personal experience this was not an option. I decided nobody understood me better than me, so I took my recovery into my own hands. This may not be the most conventional route and may take longer but it is the right move for me.

It is nearly a daily process of managing myself and the things I feel as a result of my childhood. My current life has absolutely been marred by my formative years.

The space the past occupies remains mostly empty, saved for occasional exchanges about it between my sister and I. Those conversations are brief and high-level because even today that space is haunted and unpleasant to dwell in. I have actively blanked out the majority of my high school years and some key memories from earlier childhood. As a DV survivor, you only have two kinds of memories: the abusive ones and the really positive ones. There is no in between. It is in this space that I know I once was born with the innocence of knowing how to love myself and love others and then had to learn the harrowing lesson that just because someone gave you life, it doesn’t mean they can’t or won’t take it away from you. It is in this space that I am reminded of my continuous path to understanding my self-worth and working towards a healthy, happy and safe future. It is only with these learnings and peace in my life that I can begin to apply this to the world around me. If I want to raise a family one day, I want to be able to teach my children what love is and be the right role model and parent.

It’s almost strange to say I no longer have a relationship with my parents now, because if I’m really honest about it, I think that relationship ended the day my parents started laying their hands on me. Distancing yourself from an abuser is incredibly difficult. It took me years of intense heartache and pain to even begin to process it. But this is just one of the steps towards finding your worth and getting yourself to safety. Taking care of yourself involves identifying the destructive elements in your life and putting in the measures to limit them or remove them entirely.

— To You —

For a long time, the legal system failed to support and protect people. For a long time, schools were not equipped to support children in this area. I’m hopeful that that’s changing. I am hopeful that we collectively, are heading in the right direction with changing the conversation around domestic violence. Reforming the family violence system in a human-centred way has already begun, and it’s only the beginning. There is more awareness being generated and more resources are being made available to us at a holistic level. In order to make meaningful reform in both a legal and social capacity, the extremely varied lived experience of family violence needs to be communicated and understood to design responses and services that work in the context of each person’s life. Because of this, I am grateful that we have more platforms being made available to talk about our stories and to paint the different pictures. I am grateful to Mettle for allowing me the opportunity to share my story.

I have no idea what my future holds for me but I know for sure that it is only onwards an upwards from here. I’m hopeful that I will be able to build a new life for myself. One that is built on nurturing and harmonious relationships. For a long time, I struggled over wanting a family of my own and protecting myself from a couple that never deserved one. I am very fortunate now that I am surrounded by loving families who show me just how rewarding a family can be. I can finally see a future for myself where I am not alone.

If any of this has resonated with you, please know it will stop. How you get it to stop is really up to you and the circumstances around you but please don’t give up like I did. Don’t think that one person failing to respond means nobody will respond. Don’t let one ignorant person stop you. Keep fighting for your safety, keep pushing, keep speaking out. Find comfort in the fact that despite the abhorrent, horrific experiences you might be going through, that you still have the ability to determine what is best for you, your health and your wellbeing. You can and will learn to love and be happy and safe again.

It is also not your fault. Nothing you ever did made you deserve to be abused. Nothing I did as a child warranted it, and nothing I could do now would warrant it. Know that it’s okay to not be okay. It’s okay to question people’s toxic actions and intentions towards you, regardless of the role they play in your life. It’s okay to cut ties with the people, places or situations that are robbing you of your worth.