致施虐者的信
本期主題
It isn’t always clear when you meet people who will do you the most harm. Before you came in to my life, I had never been systematically bullied, abused or 1)demeaned. I had led a life where I hadn’t even considered this a possibility. I was Oxbridge-educated, respected, with no thought that this might change.
One dreadful, foolish mistake changed all that. I trusted you with my life and my children’s lives. We have, as a result, been subjected to three years of 2)attritional bullying and a series of incidents of abuse and fear of what you will do next.
We have lost our family home, despite your repeated promise that we would always have the house you bought to live in with us. That promise has, of course, been broken. It is now your house alone; you swear at me and threaten to throw us out.
I have tried to explain to you that what you do scares us, that shouting, swearing and threatening is abusive. Confronting your behaviour has, unfortunately, made it worse. You now have nothing to lose; as you said to me last week, it doesn’t matter what you do to us now because my friends hate you already. I try to talk to you, but your response is that women use fear as a weapon and that you are fed up with the “I’m so scared” argument.
Yes, it’s scary to lie in bed while you shout, swear and wave your arms in my face and scream at me about what I have done wrong.
Yes, it’s scary to see you swear at my disabled daughter, and have her cry and ask me not to follow her because it will only make things worse. Yes, it’s scary to be in a shop with you, paralysed with fear, only to be told I must keep walking. Yes, your 3)unpredictability, temper and extreme need for control scare me. If I question your behaviour, you tighten the screw. You say that what I say is merely “my reality”. Can you not see that there is an objective truth? If someone is hit or raped, they are hit or raped—it isn’t just that their experience is of being hit or raped. The rapist’s “reality” does not 4) negate the rape. When you shout, swear, bully and threaten, you shout, swear, bully and threaten. You are doing this; it is not just my subjective experience.