Mental Health Awareness Week - Stress -The Woman Next Door

Aligned with Mental Health Awareness Week 2018, a personal description of witnessing Domestic Violence and its subsequent impact on mental health.

Trigger Warning: The piece describes domestic violence and sexual assault. Please consider your personal well being and safety before continuing further.

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I can't tell you when it started. I can tell you key memories, but it became so routine I didn't realise what it had done to me until it was done.

Please don't get me wrong. I know I am not the 'true' victim in this. I heard so much of it, so I quite graphically know that. I've just reached a point where I have to acknowledge the effect it did have on me. And the effect it must have on other people.

A life peppered with:

- The sound of voices in anger over the garden fence. - The sound of someone’s quiet sobbing in the night. - The sporadic sounds of furniture crashing. - My calling of the police. No, I don't want to leave my name, but I’m obviously close enough to hear it, so... - Hearing the police arrive and yet leave again so soon afterwards. - The police repeatedly calling at our own door, to ask if we've seen him, or her. Warning us not to approach him. As if I needed that warning. - Steeling my body as I turn the corner and am faced with the fact we'll pass on the street. Him saying hello, as I muster a big fake smile and push the pram past him as nonchalantly, but as quickly, as possible. - The police at the front door, telling us he was wanted and had just escaped over our back garden. Oh, and not to go out there if we hear noises. Just what you want to hear when you're home alone with a baby. - Her mother telling us he'd threatened to burn her house down. - That sunny afternoon I was sat in the back garden and the day suddenly changing, as I heard one of their 'usual' fights become him dragging her upstairs. Even after everything else I'd heard, I wasn't expecting that. So quick a turn. Was that really? Did he just say? The open bedroom window telling too much, too clearly. - Being told on the ‘phone that, in these situations, it isn’t a crime unless she reports it herself.

I had a new baby. I was new to motherhood and baby had an undiagnosed illness at that point so didn't really sleep. Not enough. I was sleep deprived, massively so, and the drip, drip, drip of their poisonous lives seeped in to mine.

Day and night, and alone with a baby, I would hear them. That wonderful new life I had hoped for became :

- Shushing and rocking a distressed baby to sleep to the background sounds of violence. - Whispering as I called the police, both not to wake the baby that has just fallen asleep at my breast, but also in case the neighbours heard me do so, desperately not wanting him to ever know the police visits were my fault. Not wanting to meet him in the street with the pram and him know his latest run in with the law was my fault. You know you have to do it, 'before he murders her', but ringing 999 whilst you're breastfeeding a crying baby doesn't feel like your finest moment in motherhood.

- Trying to distract a scared little one during the day from the bangs, crashes and angry loud voices of language you desperately do not want as a 'first word'. Understanding her fear of loud noises like no one else could.

No one could quite understand, not even my husband, because they didn't live it like I did. How it tapped away. You couldn't schedule your life to avoid it. I know, I tried. There was no pattern. No particular time of day. You never knew what was coming next. But you absolutely avoided the garden when it was sunny and you tried to leave the house as soon as you could in the morning when his car was outside.

I acquired a constant running level of anxiety. Like a car engine just ticking over. So when you throw in the other things that happen in life, in new motherhood, well I started to disappear in on myself. I built walls. I felt an overwhelming need to protect my baby, and then toddler, from everyone and everything. I got on with things. I enjoyed so many moments, the walks, the playgroups, the play-dates, but in some ways it was just one step in front of the other. I was treading water in a pool of anxiety, which on some days felt like a rip tide.

Eventually moving was the desperately needed breath of fresh air sweeping through my soul, but in some ways, it was too late. The old me has gone. If I'm honest, I don't see how she's ever coming back. She can't, because I carry an anxiety I didn't have before. Some days its a weight. Some days it just waits quietly for a trigger. I am fearful of people in a way I wasn't before - because I now know how quickly they can turn and the things that they can do. Even how they can justify it to themselves afterwards. I cannot trust. I don't want to trust, and I was just the woman next door.

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If you have been affected by any of the issues raised in this piece, please consider accessing appropriate support.

https://helplines.org/