Why are you so angry, anxious and addicted?
Ok deep breath……
I couldn’t even ask myself that question for so many years, I just knew I was, and being caught up in active addiction kept a lid on the anger and anxiety in part, because I used addiction to alcohol and cannabis to mask issues that had been buried for years. But, every so often they would flare up, quite literally, as aggressive or anxious episodes that were impossible to predict or control. Now that I look back on my life, it’s hardly surprising that the outcome was as debilitating.
The fallout of what I endured throughout my teenage years and beyond is hard to comprehend, and it almost felt like it happened to someone else when I looked back at the situation. I tried to detach myself from it to avoid having to feel the pain of accepting that it did actually happen to me, and I had no one to help me or keep me safe at the time I needed it most, when I was incapable of assessing the situation and making a choice to keep myself safe, predicated on my skewed world view of how life should be by the role models I had to look up to at that time.
I was homeless from the age of 15, and found myself in and out of temporary accommodation for the best part of the next two years. When I was 17 I was placed in homeless accommodation in Clydebank, a shared accommodation, former hotel block taken over by the local authority and housing around another 15-20 individuals with various issues. Life was to take an unexpected turn, in fact my life became unrecognisable in a very short period of time after meeting the man (5 years my senior) that would spend the next 4 years actively abusing me and breaking down the last of the support network I had around me, until I had nothing left.
The honeymoon period lasted about 3 months, and was all about partying, socialising and lots of laughter, but the cracks very quickly started to appear, there were flashes of jealousy and controlling behaviour throughout that time, but ever so subtly, and if I am honest, after 2 years of feeling like I didn’t belong anywhere, I think I was pleased that someone cared enough to express jealousy and feel like they wanted to control me, up until that point no one had shown much interest.
‘But if it was that bad, why didn’t you leave….?’
It’s an easy stance to take when you’ve never been in the situation yourself, of course it’s easy to say how quickly you would walk if a man ever raised his hand to you, but then we involve emotion, guilt, drugs, alcohol, shame and blame, and the motivation to leave dissipates. Add into the mix that before I was in this situation, I was already at a low point, staying in a homeless unit surrounded by alcoholics and addicts which didn’t inspire much hope for a brighter future.
I will never forget that first time though, I was drunk…..but immediately sobered as soon as his fist collided with my face.
We were in a house party, and he had fallen asleep in the spare room whilst a group of us partied on in the kitchen until the wee small hours, I went to wake him to tell him I was ready to leave. I walked into the room, and he was lying on a bed with jackets stacked high, submerged in layers of fabric, fully clothed, collapsed in a drunken stupor. I leaned over the jackets, and gently shook him, my hand on his shoulder, there was a flicker of his eyelids, it was almost as if he was playing dead….I shook him again and immediately felt the shock and pain of a fist straight to the face. I didn’t even have time to register what had just happened before he was apologising profusely, crying, telling me he didn’t mean it, he was sleeping, and lashed out in a knee jerk reaction. I sobered up quickly, I was upset and in pain, but I accepted the apology and we left the party together, it wasn’t mentioned again but little did I know at the time, that this was the tester, and the next moment of impact was going to be much worse and not too far down the road.
Over the next 4 years, I think it would be accurate to assess that I had around 100 physical altercations, varying degrees of violence, from backhanded slaps for saying the wrong thing to being bottled and glassed, beaten unconscious, raped, strangled until all the blood vessels in my eye burst with the pressure, and my nose broken whilst I slept to mention but a few of the relationship low points.
The police were involved several times, but each time I refused to press charges through fear of repercussions. I tried to leave, managing to pack up and move house twice, but twice he found me, kicked my door in and managed to manoeuvre his way back into my life.
Throughout this time the links I had to friends and family deteriorated, many trying the tough love approach, the ultimatum of picking him or them, and when you are stuck in such a volatile situation, with no obvious route back to security, and no real support offered by those handing out the ultimatums, the irony of the situation was that I returned to the familiarity of volatility. What is apparent now, wasn’t apparent then, people find comfort in familiarity. Familiar to me was black eyes and chaos and I was stuck in a pattern that pulled me back into that cycle every time.
The physical aspect of this was only one part of this relationship, the mental torture was something entirely different.
This man was consumed by his own inferiority, and self-pity, an alcoholic unable to hold down a steady job for any length of time who watched his own father beat his mother to a pulp on many occasions, estranged from his young daughter and filled with guilt and rage about this. His ex-partner had felt the wrath of his aggression one too many times and made the sensible decision to get a restraining order placed upon him to ensure there was distance between them, all details that weren’t revealed to me until I was in too deep.
Aside from the violence, he took his anger out on me in other ways. He constantly destroyed my appearance, my character, my self worth was non existent, and I almost felt as if I deserved to be on the receiving end of the abuse at times. I don’t think I ever realised how low I was at that time until many years later, constantly feeling tense, walking on eggshells and ready to react and defend myself at any moment took it’s toll in ways that I didn’t envisage, for many years to come. There was also several altercations with other females through this time, I was forced into fights, warned that if I didn’t react to certain situations, then I would feel the force of his reaction, as punishment or discipline almost.
There was a few occasions that I hit him back, but I quickly learned that just taking the beating would mean it would flare up quickly, his anger would peak, and it would be over and done with much quicker than if I prolonged it by fighting back. Most people that know me now, wouldn’t think that would have been something that I would have ever endured, it doesn’t seem to me something I would ever allow to happen now, but that’s only because the me now, built her strength from every punch and insult I took then.
But by my side the whole time……..Anger, Anxiety and Addiction.
Addiction was a coping mechanism throughout these years, I was heavily reliant on cannabis to calm my heightened state of emotions, as any time I wasn’t under the influence of cannabis I was back in that heightened emotional state, I understood it then as anxiety, but I understand it now as the body’s fight or flight mode being sent into hyperdrive continually. Living through mental and physical abuse will only ever have a limited amount of negative outcomes, and the physical toll this takes on the body is so damaging, the ability to regulate emotions is no longer something that is under your control, you become completely reactive to your environment. Living like this through my teenage years and into my early twenties, a time that should be filled with adventures, love and laughter, learning about the world and developing as a person had a massive impact, I feel that it stunted my emotional development and even after I managed to finally escape it, left me seeking other volatile situations, but due to my skewed world view they were yet again deemed safe. This was a pattern that was set to continue for years to come.
The final straw was another vicious beating.
I was working as an Administrator in a local care home at the time, and I got a phonecall from my neighbour to tell me that there was fighting going on in my flat, or so she thought, but that she could only be sure of hearing one person in the flat…..him.
I made my excuses to leave work, it was the middle of the day, mid week, I walked into a total scene of destruction in my flat, who knows what the trigger was for him this day….but there wasn’t much left of anything by the time I arrived home and when I walked through the door, he had a new target for his fury. He had smashed up a coffee table and there was a leg from the coffee table with a nail protruding, he started smashing this into my legs and the nail ripped through my jeans and the skin at the top of my thigh, he struck me again on the face, narrowly missing my eye, and for a final time on the back of the head. I was screaming, crying and trying to defend myself throughout, and my neighbour in this time had phoned the police and her and her husband were now banging on the front door trying to intervene. This broke his stride, and in a panic, probably thinking it was the police at the door, he grabbed his rucksack, threw it against the hall window on the way out, smashing that too for good measure and ran out the front door passed my neighbour, that was the last time I seen him……for a long time.
I refused to go to hospital, the police took me to a friends house where I told them I would be safe, he wouldn’t find me, I was asked to attend Alexandria Police Station the next day to have my injuries photographed and was adamant that this was the final time, I was never going back, and I would do everything in my power to finally be free of him.
I moved into a Womens Aid refuge in Balloch for a short time, and started rebuilding the practical aspects of my life from there…..
The anger, anxiety and addiction would stay with me for decades afterwards though. I’ve only recently learned how to manage this, and once you remove the anger, anxiety and addiction, there are still remnants of sadness. Sadness for that young girl that felt so alone she couldn’t see any other option but to stay in such a destructive situation and sadness for the realisation that all she ever wanted was to feel safe and loved.
Resilience isn’t just a character trait for me, it’s more than that, it’s part of my identity. We can take situations like this, trauma, and we can let it turn us into victims, or we can take it and build on it. Let it remind us of just how strong we are, just how much tenacity we have to survive and how much determination we are left with to never let it happen again.
The strength I have found in recent times to be able to speak about this openly and admit just how much of a lasting impact it has made has only came from the realisation that in order to deal with our trauma we must work through it, we must show ourselves the compassion we would show others, we must allow ourselves to be vulnerable in safe spaces, surrounded by kind souls. We need to dig deep into the places we have stuffed these emotions and face them, work through them, and I promise there is so much love and light that comes from the darkest of places, you just need to trust in yourself, you have the strength within to face your demons and overcome them.
If you would like to discuss any experiences you have had in a safe space, please message me on Instagram or through the contact form with the words ‘Courageous Conversations’ and we will take it from there!
Much love, Emma x
