Christmas Preparations

The festive period is the busiest time of the year in any church calendar and although I’d left the marital home (and church manse) in October, senior management in the church took no real action.   I could be cynical and suggest that they deliberately let things continue until Christmas passed because they then didn’t have to face the ordeal of trying to cover high profile Christmas activities within the parish.

No one had any inkling that Sandra and I had separated.  Sandra and the children resided in the church manse, I was sleeping on my parents settee still.  I would turn up at the church, put on the mask that I’d worn for eighteen years and pretend all was normal. 

In the last week of November, the church’s occupational doctor made an appointment to see both of us because the church authorities had asked him to carry out a medical assessment. In my opinion this was totally pointless because the problem wasn’t medical.  We were both interviewed by senior leadership who then made a decision to grant to both Sandra and I three months compassionate leave.   This pronouncement was made to me in a letter dated 21^st December (note how it suited the church to wait until after the Christmas rush!) and the leave would commence 1^st January.  The purpose of this was to relieve us both of all duties so we could focus solely on repairing the marriage.

I had said while being interviewed that keeping myself occupied had been one of my coping strategies and to have any purpose withdrew would be detrimental to my own mental health.  I needed to have something to focus on.   I felt hurt and angry that anything I said to the church authorities seemed to be completely disregarded.  In fact on 2^nd January my first day on compassionate leave, I broke down in tears as the impact of  the social interaction I was being denied hit me.   I cried out to the four walls that contained me, “This isn’t compassionate, this is cruel!”

The letter received on the 21^st December also contained a paragraph which caused me great angst:

“The Church strongly recommended that marriage counselling is undertaken together to address the difficult issues within your marriage.”

Difficult issues?   Eighteen years of Domestic Violence wasn’t just difficult issues.  I felt betrayed by a system I had trusted and committed my life to.   I was happy to continue to receive personal counselling but as far as I was concerned joint counselling was out of the question.  It was my opinion that Sandra would not open up and admit her role as denial and avoidance had always been the way she dealt with any thorny subject.  The likelihood was that she would deny anything I mentioned and then attack me later for whatever statements I would have made.  Joint counselling was pointless.  I wanted my life back.

Rather incensed by the Church’s attitude, I contacted the Doctor to ask what his recommendation had been to the church leadership.  His response, “in my opinion this marriage has irreconcilably broken down.”

Knowing what they did about the ongoing incidences of Domestic Violence, also having asked for and then received their own Doctors opinion that the marriage was beyond repair, why were the Church strongly recommending that marriage counselling is undertaken together to address the difficult issues within your marriage?   Such apparent denial of my reality by the Church devalued my own self-worth and I struggled to come to terms with their mind-set towards me and Domestic Violence.

Christmas day would be the first one spent apart from my children.   My children asked me if I would go to the marital home and spend Christmas Day afternoon with them.   As hard as it was, I did.  As far as I was concerned, the children have and always will come first.  Sandra being there made things uncomfortable, but that wasn’t of paramount significance.   I was there with the children, nothing else mattered.

  

Editted Journal Entries March-October 2009

Mothering Sunday 22^nd March 2009

 As well as buying Sandra stuff from the ‘kids’ and treating her to a Chinese takeaway.  I brought her an autobiography of a TV presenter  I’d thought she’d enjoy as she always watched his show on TV.  How wrong was I?  She flew into a rage, torn the book up and threw it at me.

Sunday 3^rd May 2009

This was May bank holiday weekend and we had a busy day at the church. All the activities that took place at the church during this play were under my leadership and direction.    All day I received favourable comment and positive feedback.     This is something that over the years has caused problems as she doesn’t appear to like me receiving any sort of positive acknowledgement.  I put this down to Sandra’s  insecurity.

About eight o’clock that evening, she went into melt down, shouting and becoming very threatening in behaviour, screaming that she wanted me out of the house and would throw me out herself if I didn’t go.  I went outside and sat in the car parked on the driveway  for 20 minutes.  I then went to re-enter the house but was met with more threatening behaviour.  In a complete rage, Sandra screamed at me to get out of the house and stay away.  Absolutely shocked, I drove to my parents who lived five miles away, in tears.  I tried phoning to speak rationally with her, but all my telephone calls were ignored.  My parents insisted that I stayed at their home but I was adamant that I had to return and try and soothe the situation.  I returned home at 10.pm but all the doors had been locked and the keys had been placed in all locks meaning that, from the outside, I couldn’t unlock any doors.  I tried for half an hour to enter my house all in a non-threatening manner so as to not draw attention from neighbours as to what was happening.   At 10.30pm I gave up when I saw all the house lights being switched off.  I drove back to my parents’ home and slept on their sofa. 

The next morning,  I returned back to the marital home, The only comment from Sandra was ‘You’re back then,” and then she proceeded to behave in a manner as if nothing unusual had occurred.   My absence was never mentioned by anyone.

 Wednesday 2^nd September 2009

We had just returned from holiday which had included a few stressful moments over travelling arrangements but nothing out of the normal.  Got home to discover that there had been a situation in the Church that needed resolving.   Although technically, Sandra was the leader of the church she would avoid dealing with difficult situations and would leave them to me.  Because of the nature of the problem within the church, I felt that Sandra had to be involved.  One complication was that the children were still on their summer recess from school.  In order for both of us to tackle the crisis, I  asked my parents to have the children for a couple of hours Wednesday morning.

At 2.30am Wednesday morning, I was awoken by Sandra who was in an argumentive mood – saying that it was unfair to dump the children at my parents on their  last day off school and Wednesday was a bad day to visit these people etc.  I told her to go back to sleep but it meant that Sandra avoided two difficult conversations that would take place that morning.  Rather than jointly speaking to the people involved, I ended up going alone.  I retuned home at 1pm to discover the vile mood continuing.   Sandra was shouting that no food was in for lunch using language that was unbefitting for a church minister and words that her congregation would be shocked to learn that she even knew!  With raised voice she stated that she was hungry and had to be out for 2pm for a Hair appointment. To try and appease the storm, I went and brought fish and chips for everyone.  This didn’t work.  Sandra was still in a rage, and after nibbling on her plate she said, “ I don’t want these ****ing chips and deliberately walked over to me and tipped the plate over my head, also letting the plate fall over me.  When I just sat there and didn’t respond not wishing to feed her anger even further, she lifted up my plate and tipped it over my head.  

 I dropped her at the Hairdressers at 2pm and she said she was going on to the local supermarket and would telephone when she was ready to be taxied home.

We were supposed to be at my parents for a birthday tea at 4pmwhich had been pre-arranged.  Sandra phoned for a lift from Tesco’s at 5.10pm.   She climbed in the car as if nothing had happened while myself and the children were very subdued in mood afraid to say the wrong thing to Sandra in case it provoked another violent reaction.  When we finally arrived at my parents Sandra waltzed into their home as if everything was perfect, chatting away about the most trivial of items.  No apology was given for being over two hours late.

Sunday 6^th September 2009

 When I was washing the lunchtime dishes, the youngest child came into the kitchen and threw a spoonful of rice at me from a dinner plate.   I shouted at the child and gave a telling-off.   However, this was another defining moment for me.  This child had some learning difficulties and I’d been telling myself that were I to leave, this child would be severely affected in particular.   I reflected on what had happened and realised that the youngest child had carried out this action because of watching Mother behaving in the same way and maybe thought that it was okay to throw food over people.  I woke up to the fact that the other person I was kidding was myself.

Tuesday 15^th September  2009

The two oldest children usually walked home from school together.  The oldest child was having tea at a friends house, so I’d arranged to pick up the middle child from school. I would go straight from my office to the school.   On the way back, a boy was laying on the road in some distress so we stopped to help.  This meant that we got home later than expected.  Sandra was furious when we arrived home  shouting and swearing  convinced that I was late picking my child up.  I tried to explain what had happened but Sandra refused to accept this.  Half an hour later, the school telephoned me to give me an update as the boy had been taken to hospital.   Sandra even accusing me of pretending to take a phone call from the school and blackmailing my child to agree with my story.  The boy’s mother kindly sent me a ‘Thank You’ card for stopping to help her son but Sandra still refused to accept the true version of events and never apologised for her actions. 

Thursday 8^th October

We had a joint visit from our Bishop to talk about the crisis that happened at the beginning of the month.  Sandra was extremely talkative and when we were discussing the  situation started saying “we said to …..”.  This did annoy me as she couldn’t cope at all with the problems and had left it all to me to sort out and now she was speaking as if she was present and had resolve matters.  So I interrupted her and corrected her by saying, “Actually I said to…… you weren’t even there! “

Later, when we were on our own, Sandra told me in no uncertain terms that I was out of order and that she would make my life hell for showing her up in front of the Bishop.

Tuesday 13^th October 

The oldest child  had an accident and was knocked down on the way home from school.  I was able to get to the scene straight away as one of the roadside witnesses telephoned me.    Meanwhile, the school had found out and tried phoning Sandra on her mobile phone. They left a voicemail. I was always asking Sandra to use her mobile phone as she never had it switched on or carried it with her. As we travelled to the hospital, I told Sandra that this sort of thing was the very reason she should always have her mobile phone available.

Early Wednesday morning (2.30am )she woke me up to argue that the school couldn’t leave her a voicemail because her phone wasn’t switched on!!!  I just told her to go to sleep.  

The Journal

The defining moment for me came at the beginning of 2009 when I decided to keep a journal charting the abuse that was taking place.  Much of it had become such common practise within the family home that it seemed a normal way of life.  I felt absolutely lost and desolate.  I tried to act as if all was well but there were many occasions when I was withdrawn and subdued.  No one had any real notion of what went on behind close doors.  My external pretence of a perfect home life seemed to be mirrored by the children.  Had they behaved in an unruly fashion due to the example set them, they may have had good reason to.  However, they always behaved impeccably and extremely well-mannered and polite.

Two things occurred when I first commenced writing this journal.  I wrote of some of the historic actions which I have also written about in this blog.   By now I had over sixteen years of material to draw from and the thought frightened me that I had only recorded the things I could remember.  There was so much more that had been assigned to the dark recesses of my mind - that place where we place stuff we want to forget. 

As I started to document current happenings I then attempted to read back my words with an unbiased open mind.  It had only taken nearly seventeen years but reality hit me.  What I read was absolutely horrific and shocking.   I had been living domestic violence for so long, I had accepted the irrational behaviour of my wife and I had become numb to unreasonable behaviour occurring.  Over the years I had adopted my own personal coping strategies to get through each day.  The self-justification I’d made to explain Sandra’s actions and words had eroded away the severity of the abuse.

Furthermore if anyone else ever read my journal, I felt that what I was describing would sound far from plausible.  I can’t imagine that anyone would treat such an account as fiction.  It became important to me to take photographs on a mobile device to substantiate my personal witness. 

For anyone caught in a violent relationship who feels that they have nowhere to turn for help, I would recommend keeping a diary or journal as your first step.  As I’ve already stated, this was for me the defining movement.  It didn’t solve everything but it helped to make me aware of the full impact the abuse had and was taking on me.  It also became a form of self-therapy.  It would also prove to be a great support in the months and years when I started to rebuild my life.