Why On Earth Did I Stay? (The Question.)

By Kali

He was beautiful. His face, his stance, his bearing... Heads turned and stared as he walked down the street. Life had been hard for him. Too hard, he said.

I knew he didn’t just have a problem, he was a problem. I kept my distance. He beat and terrorised his mother. She was my friend. My only friend in a country far away, with no ‘rule of law’. At least I could help her - stand between them - keep her safe from the terror and pain - sometimes.

He couldn’t cope. Heroin was his best friend. Money I earned went to feed his need when his mother didn’t have enough. I learned to hope he could get heroin, I’d help him. At least he was peaceful on heroin. We might have a night of sleep for a change - not terror and violence, shattered glass, knives, gunshots - threats to kill... Alcohol brought on screaming violence and terror. Anything was better than that.

He was a big problem. I wanted him away so I could just get on with my life in this new country. But he kept telling me I was an angel. He loved me more than life. I could save him. No-one else was like me. No-one else could save him but me. He loved me so much. He begged and begged me to save him - to please, please admit my love for him so he could be saved from his pain.

I knew it was all rubbish. I saw how he terrorised and hurt his mother, my friend. He loved seeing the fear in her eyes. Seeing the fear would make him hurt her more so, I was never afraid.

So why, in the end, did I agree that I must love him too?

He kept telling me that the heroin was wonderful - it would help me too. I should just try it once… Finally, just once: “OK, I’ll try it, just once…”

I was ashamed and so alone. Only he knew I’d used. It joined us. And, one day, when he begged me again to tell him I loved him, I finally gave in again and said “yes”.

From that moment I was his to do with as he liked. I couldn’t stand between him and his mother to protect her any more. The blade so slowly, gently, sliding down my leg… Those beautiful doe-eyes staring up into mine as he smiled: “You know I’d never, ever do anything to hurt you…..” I’d sit and pretend nothing was happening. They like it if they can see you scared so, I didn’t feel my fear. Never reacted, no matter what.

Knives flying through the air to slam into the wall around my head, gunshots barely missing - shot-pellets snapping my jeans as they just missed… And broken glass. There’s something about broken glass coming at me that terrified me more than anything else. But, I hid that fear too. He laughed at me that I couldn’t let the bruises and wounds show at work. It was for my own good that I mustn’t let them show.

“Try it once” became more. I wanted the drugs to numb the pain of the rapes night after night, the utter exhaustion from not being allowed to sleep as my body was used hour after hour while I still had to get up and go to work every day as if nothing was wrong. Heroin helped me ‘not feel’. Not feel the pain of the beatings, the fear of the knives and the broken glass and... I refused other drugs but - he’d force tablets into my mouth, slam me up against the wall and hold my mouth and nose shut until I swallowed them. Other kinds weren’t so soothing.

“Did you eat some of that??? You ate it before I’d had any????” I barely heard the tiny voice in my head: But I was so hungry! And - I only took one bite - most of it is still there for you! Besides - I bought it with the money I earned - you live off what I earn! My body disappeared with every step I took as it ate itself - I had not been allowed to feed it enough for too long.

A colleague said to me one day: “But you’ve become so thin!” “O - it’s nothing - just this outfit is meant to be so loose so you can’t really see all of me,” I lied. I weighed 40 kg - all 175 cm of me.

I kept on believing that by controlling my fear, not showing it, I could make him lose interest and stop sooner, leave us alone to live a normal life. Eventually he’d collapse and sleep and then I could rest. A little. He’d wake up and act as if nothing had happened, as if nothing could be wrong. I kept fooling myself that things would stay that way. They did, until a few days later things would be too hard for him again and it was my fault again.

In the end I got too weak. I didn’t care enough to keep on trying to survive any more. I didn’t care if the bruises showed at work any more.

“Blood turns to ice in your veins”. I discovered the cliche is real. After a whole night of beatings from a crazed maniac frothing at the mouth, insane on a cocktail of drugs and alcohol, trying to escape from the flying fists and kicks, room to room, furniture smashing around me - the day came I knew I was about to die. This time there had been one kick I hadn’t been able to duck well enough. One I knew had injured something badly, and this time he woke up still crazed. I couldn’t live with this any more and he knew it. He told me it was my fault. I had to die. He told me how he’d do it, what he’d do with my body and it was real.

I was filled with that cold, solid green/grey coloured ice. I knew that sunrise - the one just then, was the last one I would ever see.

But something inside me remembered the window. His mother had told me once that everyone should have an ‘escape plan’ - know how they would get out and away from their house if they needed to. When we planned the route out of this house I never really expected to need it.

I thought out what I needed to grab before I jumped out of the window we’d planned as he turned for his weapons and I ran. I ran to the one house I knew in that city that he and his friends didn’t. I got away because I still had an Australian passport and could get on the first flight out of that country, back to Australia, so he and his drug-dealing friends couldn’t find me.

It’s taken many years of work, study and help from people who care for me to understand why I believed I could ‘manage him’, why I stayed.

“The Answer” is another story.