When I learnt to hit back- the journey from being a victim to being empowered

The Story of Anonymous
Written by Anonymous
Edited by Mallika Bhatia

I have often thought that in school, if instead of trigonometry and calculus, they taught us basic values like self-esteem and self-love- the world would be a better place to live in.

I was a high scoring student. Mostly at the top of my class. My school report card always had straight A’s and glowing references to how brilliant I was. However in the end there was always a small line that read.....'But needs to develop self-confidence'.

I believe my childhood was difficult and troubled. My parents were basically good individuals but their marriage didn’t work. When all the fighting in the house stopped, there was only endless silence left. Both my parents had high profile careers, which meant I was left alone or with the maids a lot of the time. Surprisingly my sister who grew up in the same environment remembers her childhood as the most perfect loving one. So perhaps it could be me who was the troubled child, or a case where two people in the same situation can have very different experiences depending upon their attitude or maybe it is just good old karma.

At a time when most teenagers start planning their careers, My dream was of having a happy family one day - with lots of affection, love and laughter. Studying in the most prestigious college in India or doing an MBA- should have made me feel ‘brilliant’ or in the very least, at least good about myself. But I felt like a loser throughout.

I was searching for love in relationships and by the time I was 24, not surprisingly all my relationships had failed. About this time my parents met a ‘suitable’ boy's family in the church and decided we were a good match. He was based in Mumbai, very well-read, well-qualified and a high achiever. Our families met for a dinner when he was visiting and soon after we got engaged.

During the six month courtship, he would write me lovely letters and come down to Delhi every few weeks, when we would meet for family dinners. We were having the big fat Indian wedding in a five star hotel and my fiancé was moving back to Delhi, which was my city. It was all like a dream come true, until a month before the wedding when my father was diagnosed with terminal cancer. The doctors had given him only four months to live.

We went ahead with the wedding since it was all organised and paid for. Just after we got married, my husband changed. He rejected me from the start and I didn’t know why. I think I also lacked the maturity to deal with the situation. Instead of being compassionate and understanding and trying to find the root of the problem (Could he have been gay?), I just fought with him and created an emotional mess in the house. We were like two angry strangers living in the same space. Suddenly the bad marriage of my parents that I had so mercilessly judged, I began to have more compassion for…..

What added pressure to the situation was that my father was very sick and I was practically living out of the hospital. The one memory that comes back to me was when my father was in the hospital and getting electric shocks to revive him. I was standing behind the glass door, witnessing his body seizing. It was too horrible to watch and I decided to call my husband for support. I couldn't control my sobs when I requested him to come to the hospital. I really need you here with me, I had said. He said he could not come since he was busy watching TV! That day while my father struggled to stay alive, my already dead marriage died a little more.

Five months after our wedding, my husband took up a job in the U.S. and left without me. I never saw him after that. I moved in with my parents and became very religious. I prayed every day for him to come back and for my marriage to work. It took me a year to realize that he wasn't going to come back and I filed for mutual consent divorce. The irony was that he wasn't even present to sign the divorce petition- he had sent a paid representative who kept apologising to me for what he was being made to do.

So I was 25 years and divorced, and whatever little self-respect I had, now plummeted to the negative. Unfortunately it was a downward spiral from there. My relationships would not work, and at work I would be treated shabbily, I had friends who had problems and my relationship with my parents was rocky. Thankfully my father was still there with us, recovering.

Five years later, I met a man at work who I fell in love with. We started dating and soon enough decided to get married. My parents were dead against this match. For them it was about logic and economics, he was from a poor financial background, the only earning member of a family of six. They all lived together in a one bedroom lower income group (LIG) flat. His family was very conservative where women did not speak to men and almost lived in the kitchen. You are a south Delhi girl from a rich xyz School, how do you think you would adjust with them? My parents had asked me.

You only care about status and money, I had told them, where as I care about love. He cares for me, he gives me love and respect that the well-read husband you found could not give. I am marrying him, with or without your blessings, I had said. I had made-up my mind. Reluctantly, my parents got us married at the local temple with a few shocked relatives from my side and a whole completely alien lot from theirs.

The day of our wedding was the evening I was hit for the first time in my life. Physically beaten, my hair pulled, my bangles shattered, my face smashed against the wall, knife cuts on my back and my body treated like a boxing bag. There was no reason, if there was one needed. I was told by the females in his family that this was normal in marriages and I didn't have to make a big deal of it.

A new phase of my life had begun; he would hit me every evening without fail, and in the morning he would come with roses and apologize profusely. He would say he loved me deeply and didn't know why he behaved the way he did, a very smart Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. My self-esteem was so poor, that I believed if I was a better wife, then he would not get a chance to hit me. However like most cases of domestic violence, the euphoric happy moments were punctuated with horror.                 

Photo by Kat J on Unsplash

Once just after four months of being married to him, he took a pillow and tried to suffocate me. I struggled with all the strength I had, I tried to push him away but couldn't and believed I was going to die. I stopped breathing and that’s when he moved away, picked up his already packed suitcase and left the house for a business trip, just like that. I went to a hospital but the doctors told us that they needed a police report before that could start treating me. I had no strength left, mental or physical, to deal with the police. So I just went back to my parents place.

My father was still struggling with cancer, and when he saw me walk into the house. He was beyond shocked. I remember in between his sobs he put disinfectant on my wounds. In the next few months just as I started regaining my health, my father lost his.

My dad's passing away was the last straw I needed. I had now hit rock bottom. Some months later I fell into clinical depression. For the next three months I could not leave my room. My mother had to quit her job to be with me. I did not even have the strength to lift an arm. I would have suicidal thoughts. I even remember walking into the kitchen one afternoon with the intention of stabbing my stomach with the kitchen knife. It was like I was on auto pilot and had zero control over what I was doing. As soon as the knife reached my stomach I think God's hand came upon me and I dropped the knife and went back to my room. I know I could have killed myself that day.

That episode shook me and helped me to realise that the time to make a change had come. I was a good loving person and needed answers as to why all this was happening in my life. I found a psychotherapist who started me on a richly rewarding journey to self-healing and self-love. We started with small steps to build my self-esteem. Together we worked on understanding what caused me to accept all that I took from the others around me. I realised that I had to love myself enough to get love and respect from outside. I learnt to take responsibility of my own life. I realised that I had to stop playing the victim in my life’s story. Each and everything that had happened in my life was a result of what I attracted from within.

I read all the self-help books I got hold of and with baby steps at a time, worked on courage to implement them. I attended workshops on self-discovery and betterment. I even went through alternative healing modalities such as Past life regression therapy which answered my questions as to why this was happening in my life. I became an avid Buddhist chanter and got a wonderful support group of friends. To this day I hold that when one has a really big problem in life, then family, friends etc. can help only to a certain extent. One needs a higher spiritual power ultimately.

I worked furiously to build my life again. It took me 8 years. I worked on each and every belief system that I had till now. Slowly my life changed, my friends changed, my work situation changed and my mental state changed. My father wasn’t there anymore but personal experience has shown me that one can heal a relationship with a person even after the person is gone. As an adult, my feeling unloved wasn't something I could blame on anybody. I no longer needed a relationship or someone from outside to feel loveable. I was happy with myself. I looked in the mirror and felt good about what I saw. For the first time in my life I was a confident person and knew how to draw boundaries.

And the outer world reflected what I felt from within. From being an unhappy employee who was always disrespected- I became the head of a department of a multinational company. My salary went up 150%. I loved my job and adored my team. I won global awards and walked down the aisle of my office with my head held up high. Each day was exciting and filled with possibilities and new potential.

Now it is time to help others who maybe going through similar experiences like I did, so I decided to share my story. I would like to be there for anyone who might be going through something similar. While I am proud that I made a success of my relationships and career, I am most proud of my unshakable belief in myself that was forged and built one day at a time. I know today that I have a solid foundation within myself.

And for those of you wondering about the family life that I so craved; when I stopped looking for love outside, I found true love. My husband and I have been together for a few years and we have a family of two dogs and a naughty adorable baby daughter.

Photo by Trinity  Kubassek from Pexels

                                             
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