Trigger Warning:
This blog post heavily deals with Domestic Violence and Self-Harm..
This morning I was planning to make myself a butter paneer pizza because I recently saw a butter chicken pizza on TikTok. I went next door, to my relative's house, to get a tomato, only to find chaos. She was getting arrested because she injured her ex in self-defence. Our local police station would not let him open a case because they were very aware of the situation but then he went to another police station to open a case. This woman has protected this man for 20 years and he did not hesitate to try to ruin her life when she finally had enough.
I still haven't gotten my pizza. I just wanted a tomato and the next thing I know, I'm being given her handbag and she's writing her details. Nobody is telling me what is going on until I start shouting for someone to inform me. My uncle was there, I have never seen this man visit this much in my life. My grandmother is just as confused because she also went into the house for something else and was suddenly being asked to do stuff. However, my grandmother is old and couldn't help much. The next thing I know, I'm in an Uber to the police station with my uncle because we couldn't open the garage door to get the car.
I still haven't gotten my pizza. I was too exhausted to make it by the end of the day. I'm not sure if I can even make it tomorrow either because I have to be in court and bail her out. The police at the police station were just as confused as us because there is a lot of evidence that he is the abuser. The police were talking about how well-known her house is at the station. It's been almost 20 years of this nonsense. I keep reminding her this because she is only realising now the severity of the situation and my grandmother is confused. I'm confused about why my relative and my grandmother are shocked that it came to this. Even my grandmother's baby sister's preteen children could see through the situation.
When I moved back home a few years ago, I told my relative that if she and her partner, does something stupid then it would be our problem. We would be the ones running around for her because she would either be in the afterlife or in prison. I am too exhausted to be annoyed. I also switched off emotionally because sometimes people just need to experience consequences. I've been trying to process everything happening in life. I was doing well on my own but something keeps happening to set me back.
I had a trauma debriefing session the Monday after the incident and it ended up being so traumatic that I made a Facebook notice that I want nothing to do with my spiritual community. My friend offered to get me another counsellor but I thought I was fine until I started ruminating. This woman kept dismissing that I am on the spectrum. Ironically, rumination and taking time to recognise emotion is a trait of autism and that kept me from cussing her out. I also felt a need to be respectful because we came from the same spiritual community.
I felt so aggressive in therapy but I needed to advocate for myself. The fact that I felt the need to advocate for myself was already an issue. I wanted to talk about the conflicting feelings that I was experiencing at that moment but she wanted to talk about my "failure to launch". She was fixated on why I've been at home jobless. Meanwhile, I'm terrified of what would have happened if I was not home. It is possible that she didn't want this event to make me feel stuck but her approach was wrong. A few days after the session, I felt re-traumatised because I was processing things that I thought I had already processed before. I had so much hope for the future and suddenly I was back to being unsure of myself. She totally dismissed my feelings about the event and focused on my past, which is irrelevant.
I find myself having to explain these past five years. I tell her about the lockdown of 2020, being stuck in our religious community's centre to help maintain the place when they had to cut our 150 people staff and volunteers to just 40 volunteers. We were also on level 5 lockdown longer than anyone. I tell her about my burnout, I tell her about my PCOS symptoms flaring up and I got very sick. I tell her about my ASD diagnosis and she scoffs and gives me a grin of disbelief and then she questions where I got my diagnosis.
I try to explain how I've been working on getting to know my brain and working with my brain. I've been adjusting my life to suit my brain, which means starting my own business. I am not lazy. Being in my community made me realise that I would sacrifice anything for things that I am passionate about. I will work myself to near exhaustion for a cause that I believe in. However, being on the spectrum is pushing myself what feels like 150% but people see 0% because I struggle with some things. In my community, I struggled with my spiritual practices such as meditation, the sermons were overwhelming and I hated the scriptures but I never understood why until I realised that I was autistic. Pathological demand avoidance, overstimulation, and a strong sense of justice. Being in service of people felt more spiritual for me, it was the most that I felt most safe and happy. Helping to maintain my community was my passion. I am now creating my own rules.
She asks me why I took 8 years to finish a two-year diploma, I try to tell her about my struggles with executive dysfunction because I am autistic. She is dismissive. I've been to therapy for all of that already, it's not important in this session. I assertively try to shift the conversation to the past month and my anger at the lack of efforts to prevent this situation. How it did not have to get this far. I begged and begged for my relative to take real tough actions to protect herself, to not have any more mercy. I tell my counsellor about my regrets and fears.
My counsellor concluded that maybe my relative did not listen to me because she is frustrated that I am a "failure to launch" (this is the summarized version). I know she hates me for it and it's something that we've been working through these past few years. I just don't understand what relevance my "failure to launch" has to do with anything that's happening now. It felt as though I was being blamed for the events of that night. I witness an attempted murder and almost 20 years of abuse but the fact that I am still living at home at 30 is the most pressing issue? She makes me feel like I'm not allowed to be outraged.
I ask myself what would have happened if I was not at home? I tell my counsellor about the begging. She tells me that I'm overthinking and she refers me to a psychiatrist. I was trying to be a good girl, so I agree. I need to go to a psychiatrist to get meds to potentially fix concentration issues but I refuse to go on anti-anxieties or anti-depressants. A part of me feels like if I had a job, I could have afforded to change the locks myself but it was not my responsibility and it would have been of no use if she let him back in the house. I was not the one getting death threats from her partner, I was not the one being chased out of the house that she paid for and maintained on her own.
I told my therapist that I was not looking for my relative to listen to me, I wanted her to have common sense and be nicer to me. I know it sounds mean but I don't understand what is going on. I feel like my therapist is blaming me for what happened, while I feel emotionally and physically exhausted. I am angry because it seems so logical that this could have been avoided. I was feeling so hopeful about my future and excited about life, only to be made to doubt myself again.
I had not felt this defeated since the time a friend of mine tried to harm himself with paracetamols and battery fluid and messaged me to tell me about it. Throughout that whole ordeal, I was constantly shamed, pushed aside or abandoned. I had so much guilt. I know it sucks that I am making his struggle with myself. It was a very complicated situation that drove me into an intense existential crisis and I was so traumatised by the entire relationship that I went into a very deep depression in the following year. I started healing after I watched the last episode of Bojack Horseman and Diane's monologue was everything I wanted to say but was never brave enough to.
It was something along the lines of "I trusted you. I trusted that you would be okay. Suddenly I didn't trust myself anymore. Why did you make me feel like I was responsible for you?" I cried so hard after that episode. I was on the floor, curled up in a ball. I started feeling myself slowly release my anger, guilt and shame. I feel some of these sentiments return. "Why have you always made me feel responsible for you?
One of the reasons why it took me 8 years to finish a 2-year Public Relations diploma was because it was via correspondence (mostly online/mail) and I quit at some point to pursue psychology at a physical college. During my studies, I started noticing my ASD symptoms. I thought a physical college would be better but it was worse. The symptoms were always there before the college but I always blamed myself for it, that I was not focused enough or planning my days properly, or that I must have been stupid. I was finally following everyone's advice on how to have an organised and functional life but it was not working for me. My relationships were also very chaotic.
When my friend was in hospital, I felt like every move I made was a mistake and it brought up so many ethical dilemmas for me. I was studying psychology because I was living in an organization that claimed to help people with their minds but was quick to discard people once it was clear that they had more complicated issues. I hated it so much. It was an incredibly elitist place. When I would consult my lecturers on what to do in a real-life crisis, I would be met with confusion and told that it was not my problem. I started questioning what the point is of doing any of this work (spiritual or professional) if I can only help certain people.
In my first post about this situation, I wrote that I thought I knew enough about domestic violence from a theoretical level but it feels like it's been thrown out the window of my mind. I find myself blaming my relative and telling her "I told you so". I feel conflicted because I hate when people do that to DV victims. I vehemently defend strangers but here am I, going against everything that I believed and I don't know how to stop it. I know this is not her fault but I feel so angry and unprotected. I still have compassion for her, my anger comes from fear.
I've been following domestic violence stories on TikTok. I don't seek them out but it seems like many popular international influencers are coming out as victims. A recent one is an influencer called Morgan Bailey, who became famous for calling out her deadbeat baby daddy and then there was controversy when they got back together, people were angry at her. He recently claimed that she was abusing him and tried to show "evidence" (messages of him demanding money from her "or else) but it all just proved that he was, in fact, the one who was abusing her. This was not the first incident, a while back he locked her out of her house. The comment section is people telling her "We told you so" and insulting her. I am so against these reactions to domestic violence.
Just last month, a popular YouTube influencer found out that her husband SA'd their children, and people were blaming her. People pointed out her inability to see red flags and blamed the fact that she wanted a man with money. Her content is centred around her marriage to a "Provider man", so I guess people were waiting for an opportunity to dogpile her. I was so livid at the discourse surrounding this woman and I would write Facebook posts about how unfair it is.
I feel so disturbed by the reaction of the public towards influencers who have experienced domestic violence and how people make sound it easy to leave. I remember being in toxic relationships and not being able to see the true extent of danger. I had no reason to stay in those relationships but I did. My relative also had no reason to stay in this relationship but she did. She has her own house, car (she even recently bought a new car, so she would stop using the car that he bought in their relationship), and a good job. She provided financial security for me so I would not depend on a man, but she also taught me toxic relationship lessons.
One of my favourite content creators on TikTok is "Snips", her mother was in an abusive BDSM relationship and they spent her entire childhood trying to groom her into joining the lifestyle when she was 18. She was one of the resources I used when planning my BDSM journey, specifically whether I want children one day. However, I started relating to her content. Though my childhood does not involve BDSM, I relate to the parentification that she experienced from a parent who could not make good decisions for themselves when it comes to relationships.
That is where my anger lies. I would never direct this to another woman but in my family's case, I wish she protected me.
Snips emphasises that even if children are not witnessing extreme violence or inappropriate behaviour, they can still pick up on dysfunctional relationships and it can still affect how children view relationships. Though I never witnessed my mother being beaten and she was not beaten every day, there would be one explosive fight a year when I was a teenager, I was always the one swooping in to save her. What I did witness was her being cussed out every day and how terrified we all were of this man. I remember him blowing up her phone because he didn't want to cook lunch for himself. Mind you, he had a high-paying job where he only had to work a few days a week and not even a full 9-5. I knew he would not hurt me but I always feared for her life. I witnessed her struggle financially to pay for and maintain her house. Though he had a well-paying job, he contributed below the bare minimum. I remember spending every day after school keeping her company when she waited for him to finish socialising at the tavern, he would be so drunk that she would have to help him in.
He lost his job and refused to do anything to change his career. He refused to go back to study. He also refused to buy a house despite my relative's pleas. He decided to spend his pension trying to "maintain a lifestyle". The housing market in my city is amazing, the houses in nice areas are so cheap. He was financially abusing her.
Something that frustrates me is how much I suppressed in my teenage years and how I unravelled in my early-mid 20s. People would make me feel like I had no trauma. My mother is very involved in my life and has an excessive need to care for people but that is a trauma response that people misinterpret for love. No doubt she loves me, but the expressions of love are unhealthy and lack boundaries. She also has an excessive shopping addiction that I want nothing to do with because my whole life being reminded that she is in debt but still being forced to accept the things that she buys me, then I would be made to feel guilty when I needed something. I am so content with little.
People would make me feel I had no right to struggle in life because my mom provided for me financially in my early 20s but my grandmother has helped her too, her entire life. I've had authorities in my community play "Trauma Olympics" with me, either telling me about their childhoods and then tell me how lucky I am or they would tell me that someone who was harming me has had a rough life instead of helping me solve a problem that I came to them for help for. I would sit in silence because her abuse is not my story to tell. I didn't even tell my closest friends about it until recently.
This experience with the therapist allowed me to step into my power. After a week of guilt and an amount of anger that I hadn't felt in years, I realised that I didn't need permission to feel my feelings. None of this is normal. People don't just experience knife crimes in their homes. People in healthy situations do not have to tell people to shut up, not only because the fighting couple is annoying but because you're afraid of escalation. A healthy childhood is not one where you have to place strict boundaries with an alcoholic to leave you alone or watch someone being disrespected on a daily basis. A healthy childhood is not one of living in fear. I don't have to have adverse experiences for me to demand safety, it should come with being human.
I was so broken in my early 20s and no one could help me, despite my pleas but I healed myself. I don't have intrusive thoughts anymore. I look forward to life and I finally feel like I have a long future ahead of me. I was in therapy for years and I felt worse, but I put in the work to get to know myself and finally be authentic to myself. I spent many days sitting in my feelings, days where it felt like the depression was so heavy that my body would sink to the floor. I went from crying every day to crying once a week, lol. I learnt to forgive myself and I appreciate every part of myself
I refuse to let ANYONE take that away from me.