3 years, 36 months, lots of days

3 years ago today was 'the incident', an act of violence. Happy Anniversary!


I used to wonder why someone would so such a brutal thing, were they emotionally scarred in childhood, is it soldier PTSD? but now I just don't care about their opinion or their feelings or their motivation. They were intelligent enough to make sure they managed their behaviour in front of others for years, only rarely slipping up, they knew what was happening was unacceptable so no sob story justifies their intent to cause harm and dominate.


Thanks to the wonderful people at Women's Aid, I graduated from a course of study called The Freedom Programme which teaches about how to spot the early signs of baddie-dom and how it is never too early and almost never too late to make the right decisions for your health and happiness. They taught us the root causes, societal tolerance of crummy behaviour for a quiet life, they looked at the myriad of ways that people become ensnared in awful situations. One was happily married to a lovely fella and one was happily single so were a walking advertisement of authentic living.


The generalised root cause of abusive behaviour is "because I can". Nothing you do or didn't do is going to change that frog in Prince clothing. They do not care, they feel perfectly justified and unrepentant.


You are not on your own. There's Social Services, the Police (who take these things very seriously), family (those that stick around, anyway) and friends but a person does have to stand by their own convictions and make their own way. If the ex is hanging around outside school, that's a situation for the police, if they won't be reasonable and choose selfishness over doing the right thing, that's for the courts... you have to decide, act and pay but you are not in this on your own.


The day you escape (by the way, get expert help on that, it is by far the statistically most dangerous period because they're losing control of the situation) is the day you begin to grow again.
 
Now, today is 3 years since "it" occurred and we have to wait until March 22nd to celebrate Happy House Day, but aside from the old "what kinda dad? eughhh, total Futher!!!" feelings, all is well. I say all is well, I still just reached to pat the bruises on my stomach which have long since faded.


Never been more balanced, relaxed, takin' care of business than now.
This would not gave happened if we had stayed.
I have a Ph.D. in hindsight but what the heck. This is good enough because it is better than what was.


Now, to get this boiler properly fixed once and for all! Life goes on.