It Started with a Car Crash
It wasn’t that I had crashed my car. It wasn’t that I had to call my elderly friends R & L to come and pick me up.
It wasn’t even the fact that, after crashing into a man’s car, I asked if he could drive mine around the corner and park it up safely.
No. It was the fact that, even though my husband has just locked the front door to our matrimonial home and closed the door on our seventeen year marriage; I felt fine, better than.
For the first time in a long time I felt free, I felt safe, I felt certain about my future; even though I was sat with my daughter in a broken car, freezing cold, one rainy night in February, 2012.
My heart was racing in my chest as I waited for R & L to make the four mile journey to our stranded location. My daughter was busy on her phone giving her friends blow by blow pre-teen, drama laden, text speak updates on her own homelessness whilst I glanced back, occasionally, to the house we had lived in for over a decade. My hair was wet and my arms were cold. We left in such a hurry, we didn’t even have our coats.
I listened to the harmonic droplets of rain on the roof of my car hoping to find some calm, instead, it promoted an undeniable urge to use the toilet. When I looked back to the house, I wasn’t checking to see if he had opened the door and was on his way to say, most humbly, that he had made a terrible mistake and to throw himself at my mercy. I was checking to see if he was headed in my direction, yes. I knew however, that if I was to see my husband striding down the street towards us, he would not have open arms with which to welcome us by, nor would he be begging forgiveness for his behaviour. No, if I saw him now, making his way towards us, it would be the last thing I would see. That thought made me shiver more than any amount icy rain ever could.
I hid it well for many years, the abuse, the manipulation, the paranoia fueled paddies that would give any two year old a run for their money. There does, however, come a point where self preservation becomes a reality. In other words: enough is enough.
As I recalled our encounter not one half hour before, I checked my pocket to ensure I still had my phone. I know what you’re all thinking: of course she has her phone, otherwise how could she have called R & L? To this I can only answer, once you have lived with a person like my husband, you will understand why I felt the need to check.
One month earlier, two days before I had an exam at University for my honors degree, he stole my mobile phone and left the house at night, threatening to smash it into bits. I was mortified, it had all of my notes recorded in audio format for my exam so that I could listen to them during my forty-five minute train ride to university. I had a bruise on my ankle where he ‘accidentally’ used his size 13 booted foot to stop me reaching him to wrestle my phone free. It wasn’t the first bruise he’d ever given but it would be the last - I hoped.
You might think it silly, stupid even, after all it was just a phone.
Not to me though. That single device was my link to the outside world, tethering me to a desired, yet, illusive freedom. Through my phone I could connect to the internet and my email. From there, I could keep in touch with my new found friends and that is the part he didn’t like. I had friends which he could not control. Sad though it may seem, he took my phone so that I could not access the internet. He had disabled the router via his computer at home so that no one had access to the internet. He had the control. He knew how to do things like that and I did not. This is information he saw fit to use in his jealous rage. He didn’t like how long I was spending on the internet, didn’t like that I didn’t want to watch a movie with him or wait for him to finish checking his email so that we could play a game together. I had every right to spend my time how ever I wanted, after all, for so many years he did exactly the same only he won’t admit it.
I used the landline to call his mobile and left messages asking him to tell me where he was and what he had done with my phone but to no avail.
It was not the first time he had flounced off but this time, his diva complex was really starting to piss me off.
It Started with a Car Crash takes a retrospective look at two years in the life of a woman and her daughter after separating with her husband of many years. For most people, a car crash is traumatic enough but, what follows the mother and daughter in their first independent months tests their strength, courage and sanity. Based on real events.
Available now on Amazon!
It wasn’t even the fact that, after crashing into a man’s car, I asked if he could drive mine around the corner and park it up safely.
No. It was the fact that, even though my husband has just locked the front door to our matrimonial home and closed the door on our seventeen year marriage; I felt fine, better than.
For the first time in a long time I felt free, I felt safe, I felt certain about my future; even though I was sat with my daughter in a broken car, freezing cold, one rainy night in February, 2012.
My heart was racing in my chest as I waited for R & L to make the four mile journey to our stranded location. My daughter was busy on her phone giving her friends blow by blow pre-teen, drama laden, text speak updates on her own homelessness whilst I glanced back, occasionally, to the house we had lived in for over a decade. My hair was wet and my arms were cold. We left in such a hurry, we didn’t even have our coats.
I listened to the harmonic droplets of rain on the roof of my car hoping to find some calm, instead, it promoted an undeniable urge to use the toilet. When I looked back to the house, I wasn’t checking to see if he had opened the door and was on his way to say, most humbly, that he had made a terrible mistake and to throw himself at my mercy. I was checking to see if he was headed in my direction, yes. I knew however, that if I was to see my husband striding down the street towards us, he would not have open arms with which to welcome us by, nor would he be begging forgiveness for his behaviour. No, if I saw him now, making his way towards us, it would be the last thing I would see. That thought made me shiver more than any amount icy rain ever could.
I hid it well for many years, the abuse, the manipulation, the paranoia fueled paddies that would give any two year old a run for their money. There does, however, come a point where self preservation becomes a reality. In other words: enough is enough.
As I recalled our encounter not one half hour before, I checked my pocket to ensure I still had my phone. I know what you’re all thinking: of course she has her phone, otherwise how could she have called R & L? To this I can only answer, once you have lived with a person like my husband, you will understand why I felt the need to check.
One month earlier, two days before I had an exam at University for my honors degree, he stole my mobile phone and left the house at night, threatening to smash it into bits. I was mortified, it had all of my notes recorded in audio format for my exam so that I could listen to them during my forty-five minute train ride to university. I had a bruise on my ankle where he ‘accidentally’ used his size 13 booted foot to stop me reaching him to wrestle my phone free. It wasn’t the first bruise he’d ever given but it would be the last - I hoped.
You might think it silly, stupid even, after all it was just a phone.
Not to me though. That single device was my link to the outside world, tethering me to a desired, yet, illusive freedom. Through my phone I could connect to the internet and my email. From there, I could keep in touch with my new found friends and that is the part he didn’t like. I had friends which he could not control. Sad though it may seem, he took my phone so that I could not access the internet. He had disabled the router via his computer at home so that no one had access to the internet. He had the control. He knew how to do things like that and I did not. This is information he saw fit to use in his jealous rage. He didn’t like how long I was spending on the internet, didn’t like that I didn’t want to watch a movie with him or wait for him to finish checking his email so that we could play a game together. I had every right to spend my time how ever I wanted, after all, for so many years he did exactly the same only he won’t admit it.
I used the landline to call his mobile and left messages asking him to tell me where he was and what he had done with my phone but to no avail.
It was not the first time he had flounced off but this time, his diva complex was really starting to piss me off.
It Started with a Car Crash takes a retrospective look at two years in the life of a woman and her daughter after separating with her husband of many years. For most people, a car crash is traumatic enough but, what follows the mother and daughter in their first independent months tests their strength, courage and sanity. Based on real events.
Available now on Amazon!