He Always Said He Was Sorry

Today I read an entry by a young girl (she’s 17) who was describing her boyfriend. She says he is controlling and sleeps around  and that when she slept with someone else and told him about it he wanted to batter the guy (fair dos) but she pleaded with him not to because she would wind up being scared of him (understandably) but this guy wants her to be scared of him. Her entry sent a chill down my spine as I felt like I was reading my own memories.

Back when I was 16/17 I started seeing a guy his name was Jay.He was 2 years older than me and we had history from when we were younger.I had been seeing Jay like a fortnight when he started to get all possessive and controlling over me. He got into a fight with this guy who had the nerve to look at me for more than a millisecond and messed him up real bad. The guy was taken away in an ambulance. By the time the police arrived we had long gone.When the police caught up with him he said it wasn’t him and his friends backed him up. He wasn’t charged because the CCTV wasn’t clear enough to show whether it was Jay or not.He carried on. I let him because he said he was sorry. He read my texts, quizzed me about who I was speaking to on the phone, questioned me about what I did during the times we weren’t together of any given day. I put up with it thinking that once he realized it was him I wanted he’d be a bit more normal.Then one night, we’d been together about 3 months by this time, we went out to the pub for a drink with my mates and their partners. We both had a bit to drink and when we got back to his he hit me. He hit me so hard that I blacked out briefly. When I woke up the next day my left eye, top of my cheek and bottom of my forehead were purple with bruising and swollen up. He said he was sorry. He said it wouldn’t happen again. I believed him. I was stupid.  10 days after this he hit me again because he thought I’d been out with my mates.  He didn’t believe me and so he hit me for being a liar. He again said he was sorry, he said he’d had a hard day. He promised it wouldn’t happen again. Not long after this he would hit me pretty regularly if he didn’t believe me when I answered his endless questions. If he didn’t like something I’d done. If something I’d done wasn’t good enough for him. If he was drunk. He always said he was sorry.He cried because he felt so guilty. He didn’t like my friends. He didn’t like my job. He didn’t like me working. He didn’t like the clothes I wore. He didn’t like me going out with my friends. He wanted me to be his. All his and no-one elses. Ever. Whatever I did, I had to answer questions on it if he asked me about it. If I didn’t answer, he would hit me for hiding things from him. Once I asked him if he knew I was scared of him. He said “Good that means that you love me. That means that you’ll be with me forever. A wife should be scared if her husband, a man should always be in control of his wife.”

We weren’t married or even engaged.

One particular night he came back from the pub drunk after watching football down there. He found me asleep on the couch after I had waited up all night for him. Our dinner was on plates in the kitchen covered up. If I’d ate it he would have hit me for not waiting for him .He came in and pulled me off the sofa so I hit the floor as I woke up. “You’re nothing but a whore, a dirty whore, you fucked Billy!”  he screamed at me. I didn’t even know who Billy was ( I still don’t ).  I tried to tell him I hadn’t that I didn’t know who Billy was but he wasn’t listening.
“You’re a dirty lying fucking slag he screamed at me.Then he grabbed my hair and sucker punched me in the face. When I woke up I could taste my own blood and I was at the other side of the room on the floor. The skirting board and the carpet were covered in blood.He picked me up and then noticed my arm. It was covered in scabs from where I’d been cutting my wrists hoping that I’d hit the right spot eventually. “What the fuck’s that?” he growled at me “Nothing” I said. He slapped me and called me a liar. “I’ll ask you again what’s that on your fucking arm?” “That’s what you’re driving me to.” I told him.He threw me into the door, my head hit the brass handle and cut my head open dribbling my blood down the white door that we’d painted 2 days before. “Get this fucking mess cleared up” he spat at me as he walked of to bed. I couldn’t do anything but cry. The next day my friend asked me what had happened to me.I told her I’d been in a fight that night with a girl in a club up town. She took me straight to A&E. He’d given me a concussion, broken my nose and jaw, cracked my cheekbone and split my head open. When he came home that night he brought with him a massive bunch of flowers and told me he was sorry. He’d been drunk. I asked why he did it when he was sober. He said “sometimes you’re so hard to deal with”.  Another night after he’d been to football,  he came in and we had a massive argument. He punched me and knocked me out. I woke up and he was kicking me and stamping on me with his football boots still on. Soon after that I left, after being subject to that torture for 21 months, I’d finally had enough.
In 21 months Jay broke : My nose (4 times), most of my ribs (more than once), my jaw, my left collarbone.
He cracked : My cheekbone, My right collarbone, my shoulder joints, my ribs, my pelvis
Hit hit me : on the head, in the face, on my body, on my limbs
He held me: by the throat, By the wrist, By the hair, By the neck, by the scruff of my clothes.
He kicked me : in the head, in the back, in the stomach (I thought I was pregnant – luckily I wasn’t), on my shoulders, my bum, my legs
He also : stopped me seeing or contacting my friends, cut all my clothes up to stop me going out, made me leave my job,cheated on me 37 times, scared me more than I’ve ever been scared.

To this day my friends and family have no idea to what extent this went on.
If this is happening to you only you can stop it. Stand up and tell the world what is happening. Do what I didn’t and go to the police. There is no excuse for what he did.There is never an excuse. If you love someone then you are theirs and theirs alone. You don’t sleep around.You don’t abuse their love or their mind.You don’t hurt the people you love like this.What Jay did to me was deliberate.He didn’t love me.I loved him.That’s why I stayed with him for so long.I was young and stupid.I loved him and he took that for granted.He chose to deliberately hurt me and to control me.I was lucky to get out. If I hadn’t I would be dead by now.

He controlled me and what I did for 21 months…he always said he was sorry.