Abigail Sinclair is an author and a songwriter who has a passion for raising awareness of domestic abuse. Her ambition is to help others flee abusive relationships and to seek refuge. Abigail hopes that her new book Broken Angels – which tells her story as a survivor of domestic abuse and how she and her daughter ended up living in a women’s refuge to escape her abusive partner - will offer comfort and support for those trapped in abusive relationships, while giving practical advice and suggestions of contacts to whom people can reach out for help.
Broken Angels
He never hit me but I wish he had.
I wish he had punched me and kicked me until I was black and blue and hospitalised. Perhaps then I wouldn’t have stayed quiet for so long. Anything would have been better than that never ending, wearing misery. (An extract from Broken Angels - Abigail Sinclair)
The psychological scars I bear are difficult to put into words. If I had to describe them as physical scars, I imagine I would look quite shocking.
I escaped an abusive relationship five years ago and yet I am still crippled with the effects of it.
I lost my identity and still find it hard to accept myself.
I became a chameleon, desperate to please the bully who reigned over me. I tried changing every aspect of myself until there was nothing left to replace.
I got everything wrong for so many years. My hair, my clothes, my career, my friends, my dog, my family, my voice, my cooking, my cleaning, my songs, my stories, my poems, my mothering skills, my driving, my personality, my laugh, my posture. I was reminded day in, day out, of all the things I got wrong, over and over again.
Each day it was as though I was forced into playing a sick, twisted game. I tried to find respite but just kept getting attacked over and over again. Every time I found an escape route, he would block it.
He still haunts me constantly. If I am able to get through the day without being afraid, night terrors will wake me, reminding me not to relax and to stay alert.
My thoughts and memories are now mangled forever in a thick, contaminated sludge.
Agoraphobia incarcerates me within my home. Panic attacks grip me each time I attempt to go anywhere. Claustrophobia suffocates me. I feel as though I have been buried alive.
The tics I had as a child have returned with a vengeance, causing terrible headaches.
Paranoia hovers over me like a toxic cloud. Each tiny crumb of trust I manage to collect gets contaminated by it, reminding me not to trust anyone.
He gained possession of my spirit, taking with him each and every last scrap of my confidence.
I no longer have any faith in relationships. I have since married a kind man. A friend I have known for years. Yet my acute vigilance makes it almost impossible to stay married sometimes. Is he lying? Will he take money from me? Will he come between my daughter and me? Is he having an affair? It is an exhausting, self-destructive pattern.
No, my ex-partner didn’t use physical violence to abuse me. However, in a way, I do wish that he had as maybe then I wouldn’t have stayed quiet for so long.