DIARIES FROM DOMESTIC VIOLENCE

Shame. I have felt ashamed of myself before sure! I am in no way perfect and I am the first person to admit it.

Accepting that I am not perfect and admitting my faults has not always gone so well for me to say the least. The only bright side is I don’t have too many skeletons in my closet.

Last year a psychologist that did our family court report commented that ‘I deserve more credibility as I have been honest’. Now keep in mind we were all interviewed but I was the only one who turned up alone because I was the only one that had been kicked out of where I was living with my son, I had my child withheld from me without any legal rights, I was publicly shamed and hung out to dry for all to see. Apparently I must be some sort of witch who ‘tricked her as I am a great actress’. Well I can’t be that good because I still don’t have my son back! Or maybe other parties are just annoyed that things such as his drug usage or the fact he is a weirdo?

Fighting this alone is hard and I understand why I was looked at so hard. Let’s face it, it’s not everyday that two grandmothers and the father of a child take the mother to court in an attempt to break her it seems!

December 2015, 10 days before I turned the big 30 he left me and our son. Our son preformed Hero by the Foo Fighters on the drums and sang. What was once a song we used to sing to him as he went off to work with the lyrics ‘there goes my hero’ now are a cruel reminder of just how insensitive he was. Even when our son was a baby I would have hold of him in my arms and wave his tiny little hand while singing ‘there goes my hero’. Why did he have to do it that night? Why didn’t he sleep on the couch and go the next morning. Who does he think he is to do that to my beautiful boy?

It takes a lot to break me it seems.

You know the typical clechée where the mother in the movie is kind and softly spoke and would give her right arm for her children but the mother-in-law is this horrible, seems perfect to her son but really is some sort of witch behind his back.

Well my ex despised his mother. One example is I received a text message with a picture of his mother’s toothbrush up his ass. Gross I know! She had just split up with her husband and was also living with his sister. The hate for some reason was so apparent that I don’t think his family would have seen much of his growing up had I not decided to put in the effort with them. I don’t know how many times I turned up to one of their family events just with our son. Not knowing anyone but feeling it was important for them to be in our sons life. That was for our sons benefit more than anything. My mother-in-law even got me a job at the practice she worked at for over 30 years. I can give myself credit and say I am an efficient worker who picks things up quickly. So quickly I was kind of the second in charge when the office manager was away, maybe that was because the owner was, ‘less than pleasant’ on a good day.

After 6 years and countless hours spent getting to know and love these people I now considered my family. After believing they thought the same about me. I work up the courage to go to the Christmas get together 15 days after he left us and had answered no question as to why. I take along all the presents I’d been getting together all year, you seen that’s what I used to do. When I was a ‘good mother’. It didn’t matter to me if they got me bath bombs every year when we didn’t even have a bath. Money was not somethings used to think about when giving a gift. I wanted them to be personalized or tell a story, not judged by a price tag.

For all of this I overhear my now ex mother-in-law, obviously when she didn’t know I was just downstairs say, ‘I don’t know why you’d want to be with her anyway’. You see I thought I’d bucked the trend and was one of the lucky ones who had a great relationship with my mother-in-law. I mean I have always been a bit quirky but so was my son and she thought he was amazing. I thought she had seen my efforts from the start and loved me. I didn’t realize it was one sided.

I don’t know this for sure but not long after the domestic violence was out in the open I lost that job which I had held for almost 4 years and was very good at. I found some disturbing emails that had been accessed on the work computer. They were emails from my mother to my now ex mother- in-law. They outlined the plan to remove my son from my care. They said that I was the violent one. My own mother used phrases like, ‘very worried about the case being successful because she has been allowed to see the child’, ‘the judge might take this to mean Carly is not such a risk’ and ‘the fees are high and we are likely to fail’. They were disgusting and they were sent by my own mother.

So what do you do with that information? Well I printed it out and showed it to my boss. I was given 5 weeks unpaid leave and told not to come back until I am for lack of better words, ‘fixed’. I was homeless, I had my son taken, I was lied to, humiliated, scared, effected from the violence and recovering from an operation for cervical cancer.

How do you get to the conclusion that the best course of action waste give someone 5 weeks unpaid leave?

That’s reasonable isn’t it?

I mean I couldn’t preform to the best of my ability anymore it was just a simple case of work life balance isn’t it? How exactly do you balance being terrorized, beaten, raped, lied to, stalked and the list goes on?

Do you know why all of things were happening to me? Because I for the first time ever I spoke up and didn’t except that my life was for someone else to dictate. When I turned 30 and because I figured I had wasted a lot of those 30 years looking in the mirror and finding faults, fat rolls

and imperfections that it stopped then. That I was going to be me imperfections and all.

Perfectly imperfect.

I was not going to smile and suck it up anymore. I was not going to go back to a man who never cares about me or my son as much as he did himself. A man who beat me because I would no longer be lied to and ok about to.

Today is my first day back at work in a while. I’m pretty nervous. I have worked for myself this whole time making mirrors but as a business owner I’m not great!! I am easily side tracked and I don’t charge enough and that is if I charge at all. To date I think I have given more away to charity or just to someone who I connect with. Trouble is I try to connect with everyone I come into contact with.

Here is to a new beginning. I get nervous when things look like they are improving as it doesn’t seem to last. Also my confidence is shot and I doubt myself a lot but I know I’m still in there somewhere.

So for all of those heading off to work today. I hope you have a wonderful day today. Maybe for a few minutes look at round at the people you work with and look for the signs that maybe someone might need a hand?

Had my employer been more understanding and not added to my shame then who knows?

I certainly wouldn’t be here! But then again maybe this is where I am supposed to be?

Only time will tell I guess…..

Carly xoxo