Today I was a bitch,
I was stupid.
A waste of space.
An idiot,
Bad.

A witch,
Horrible.
Insane.
Fat.
Ugly

…

I was a bad mother. You combined some of these to call me a fucking stupid bitch. Idiot. Said that you are going to have my children taken off me. Incapable insane whore.

You are so clever, your mind is sharper than mine after all the hours of broken sleep and breastfeeding your children. After I juggle jobs and childcare. You are cleverer than me.

After I clothe your children and kiss their boo-boo you are cleverer than me. After I get up early, again, a second job to pay the bills. You are cleverer than me.

After I wait in queues and fight for assistance. You are cleverer than me. After I parent for 24/7 when you refuse to come pick them up for weeks, you are cleverer than me.

You have used the courts as a new weapon and your words as a control. You are cleverer than me. You’ve silenced me, and I’m tired.

So this is my love letter to you, my abuser.

The only name I can call you.

Because these days that you back me into the corner and pummel me with words and hit me with insults and try and cut me to the core with your barbs until I just don’t think I can go on any further, these days when I have no tears left so that I wish you would go back to just abusing me with your hands instead of your words because at least then you stopped, these are the days that I howl into the night and cry out to my sisters in whispered message boards and I am reminded…

That I am a deeply loved and loving mother.
That I am smart, valued, wise and kind,
That I AM good,

That I’m sane, healthy,
A beautiful woman.
I am a wonderwoman.

And it might just be enough.

*

I have written this after a day of unrelenting insults and disgusting words that have got me so down. So low. After weeks of failing to pick up his children and childcare arrangements and beginning of year school costs and all those stresses that get the average functioning family down.

But these men; that hold esteemed positions in our community, that you know, that you admire. They use their brains and their contacts, their resources of courts and systems and privilege as their new weapons. The other men around them continue to hold them up too, even if they know. They use the fact that they are “too important” for anyone to criticise.

This man learnt instantly he was not allowed to put me in hospital, I gave him no second chances yet he still put me there more than once, and finally the police agreed it was enough so now he does it in other ways.

Yet sometimes when I am especially low and fragile I wish for that over this, because at least then it is short, sharp and over (I apologise to other women that have suffered ongoing physical violence that would of course disagree). But for me, and so many others this is torture. Emotional, verbal abuse and threats that just keep coming. The New Zealand court system can or will do nothing, and they often add another layer by silencing or imposing a gag order so the abuser can legally and freely continue to abuse with the permission of the courts.

It is a lifetime sentence.

Some days I feel strong and I want to shout it from the rooftops but I am not allowed. I am silenced. Some days it is all too much and I really don’t think I can make it through.

Today, I am tired of it all.

This piece was originally posted via www.aunties.co.nz. The Aunties are an interface between a number of women’s refuges in Auckland, NZ, whose primary focus is to provide for the material needs of women who reside in these places. Find out more.