When the door came in. Trigger ⚠️
TRIGGER WARNING: this post contains details of domestic violence and a life-threatening incident. Please only read on if you feel able to.
WHEN THE DOOR CAME IN
I've been putting off writing this one for a long time. Something I saw on Facebook this week brought it all back — a video of a woman whose ex-partner was stalking her, confronting her on camera. It was frightening to watch. It also brought me straight back to my own diaries from years ago which I've only recently gone back and read properly.
Your brain does something merciful with trauma like this — it blocks a lot of the detail. Not all of it. The big moments stay lodged right at the front of your mind forever. But a lot of the details do get buried, and reading my own diaries recently brought a lot of that back up. What never goes, though, no matter how many years pass, is what your body remembers. Sixteen years on, and this is not something that's "over." It never really leaves you.Not to mention the profound impact in regards to your life’s trajectory. A really bad life decision impacts on everything moving forwards. This is not suggesting we can’t get out of such situations and pave a different path, but there can be no denying life will be forever altered.
At the time, I was living in the flat above the salon. My former partner's behaviour included stalking me — turning up outside at two, three in the morning. I always knew, because my little Shih Tzu, Billy, would wake me barking. I'd already lived through his behaviour long enough to know what Billy's bark meant. I'd creep to the window and look, and sure enough, he'd be there. I don't know how long he'd been standing outside before Billy heard him.
One entry from mid 2000's reads almost like a countdown. I'd gone to bed just after 11, after my former partner had spent the evening refusing to leave me alone by text, insisting I must have someone else there with me — I didn't, I'd simply had a normal, productive day to myself, washing the car, pottering about. But I was uneasy all night, certain he'd turn up. Earlier that evening I'd already heard noises in the bushes out front, and Billy's ears had pricked up, though when I looked out I saw no one. I took a sedative and tried to sleep, but couldn't settle. Then I heard a noise and jumped — Billy barked, and I saw a shadow pass the window. I already knew, instinctively, it was him. I grabbed my phone and checked through the bedroom window and the kitchen one, and saw nobody. It was just after 2am. I kept watching through the blinds for some time, until eventually he walked out from the archway where he'd been standing. He saw me and started shouting, then came right up to the window.
On another occasion he came through the front door of the flat — solid old wood, with a small glass pane — with an axe he must have found in the garden shed. He was six foot four and built to match. That door went down like paper. There was no chance to react, let alone call 999. There was nowhere to run either — the flat led straight from that doorway up the stairs with no other way out. My body took over completely. I was shaking so hard there was no controlling it. All I could do was keep saying I loved him, over and over, while he stood there with the axe raised. I didn't love him. Not in that moment, not really. It was pure survival — the only thing my body could think to do to try and bring the moment down. He'd lower it, then something would set him off again and it would go back up. There was zero control over how that ended. It could have gone either way, and there was nothing I could have done to change it.
Some time after I moved out of that flat, it happened again. This time a female friend was with me. He broke in — through a window, through the latch — and went for her in the bathroom.
I'm not going to try and explain here why I didn't leave sooner. It's too complicated for this post, and I don't think it's a fair question to answer briefly. What I will say is that relationships like that don't leave much room for the outside world. Friends drift away — understandably, because the chaos becomes exhausting and frightening to be near. Nobody wants that kind of danger anywhere near the people they love. And on top of that, you get judged for still being in it — as though staying is evidence you don't value yourself, which in truth it is evidence of a deep lack of worth, however it's so much more tangled than that. My own world was falling apart in other ways at the same time — the salon had closed, and I was drinking more to cope with all of it spinning out of control.
I still catch myself blaming myself for getting into that relationship at all. Well we do need some level of accountability. Logically, that isn't fair to survivors since these issue’s are complex .But logic and how you actually feel about your own history don't always agree.
I'm telling this now because I think it's time to be honest about what I've lived through, not all but some — not for shock value, but because someone else reading this might recognise pieces of their own experience in it, and might need to know they're not imagining how serious it is, and they're not alone in it.
If anything in this post has affected you, please don't carry it alone. You can contact the National Domestic Abuse Helpline free, 24 hours, on 0808 2000 247, or Refuge at refuge.org.uk. If you are in immediate danger, please call 999.
