“Every second I was afraid that my husband would come back and kill me”

Telling my story is the hardest thing I’ve done in years. I say and as if I find myself in the past again …

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When I started dating my first husband, I was a little over 20. I saw the world the way it was accepted in my family. Dad treated mom cruelly, was constantly dissatisfied with everything – “wrong” removed, “wrong” stroked, “wrong” cooked, and it seemed to me the absolute norm.

We moved in after 5 months, and scandals began almost immediately. Any little thing could be the reason – a badly ironed shirt, not polished shoes, in a word, anything. I lived with this and did not try to argue, because he behaved in the same way as my father. During the day I worked, in the evening I studied, on weekends I cleaned the apartment “not like that”, I cooked “not like that” for a week, I talked “not like that” …

At that moment, when I was tired of these quarrels and began to talk more and more about parting, he realized that he was losing power and offered to marry him. Our relatives joined in: “if a man proposes, you need to go”, “a woman cannot be alone”, “it’s time for you to have children”. Yes, I did not want this, but my father knows better what I need. And five months later we played a wedding where I was not a happy bride.

I understood that I was going “in the wrong direction”, but I myself could not stop, and no one helped me. A few days before the painting, my fiancé announced that we were moving to Canada. I didn’t know about these plans. I had my own life, study, work. But he insisted that I should go with him as the wife of a Decembrist. Relatives agreed with him, the whole woman should be “under the man”, he makes decisions. I gave up, as usual, and we left.

“I thought I was married”

In Canada, things got even worse. If until the moment of moving I simply felt that it was all wrong, then when we ended up in another country, hell began. There was no one who could support me. There was only her husband and his parents.

I went to study at a language school in order to go to college later. I met people from different countries there, I really liked it. Organized joint trips to parks, festivals, clubs. This part of my life inspired me a lot, because it was my little world where you could communicate with people, and not make excuses. But a month later everything was over, because my husband was strongly against it. In his opinion, I had to give all my strength and time to my family, that is, to him.

He now defended his beliefs by beating me. I ask myself why I didn’t leave then. I just thought that something was wrong with me, I was “defective”, I myself was to blame for what was happening.

My husband introduced me to his company. There, of course, there were girls with whom I was interested, with whom I wanted to spend time together. Once I went to visit one of them, sure that my husband would not find out anything, because he was on a business trip.

He found out, and after another scandal, I could not leave the house for a week, because my face was broken: my eyes were swollen, my lips were swollen. My husband intimidated me: if I go to the police or the social services, then I will be deported from the country, I will be in a bad position, I will have a criminal record.

Once he beat me up because I poured too much ketchup on my plate. This, according to him, meant that I was wasting money. And I don’t care about our family. After that, the bruises did not go away for many days. So, with bruises, I went with my husband to a meeting with friends.

One of the friends I met in the immigrant hangout took me aside and asked what happened to me. Of course, I lied about falling off my bike. She looked at me strangely, as if she knew the truth, and offered to give me the phone number of the center where they would help me. They say that social assistance to women in trouble is very developed in Canada. I thanked, but refused, said that I did not need it.

Later in the same meeting, he nearly killed one of his buddies who just came up to chat with me. They were separated and we left. A scandal broke out at home, he yelled, called me a whore. But he didn’t hit. Going to bed, I suddenly believed: he finally realized that beatings were not an option.

That night he raped me. I only remember how I rushed about half the night, looking for where to hide from him.

Then he threw my things out the window and yelled to the whole street that it was my own fault and let everyone know about it. Neighbors looked out of the windows and watched this picture. Then I called a friend and asked her to give me the number of the help center. She came for me, collected my things from the sidewalk and called 911.

Steps to freedom

Even to the police, I couldn’t tell the truth. I asked them to send me to the center whose contacts were given by a friend. It was there that I first saw a therapist. I lived there for a month and a half, talking to a psychologist three times a day, and this was probably the first person in my life who did not judge me.

He explained to me seemingly elementary things: that life is not built on pleasing a man. That I can work where I want, study what I want, without asking permission. My life has changed. It was as if I recognized myself, I realized that I am a separate person, not part of a man, and his actions and words are manipulation, not the law.

My ex-husband started following me. They gave me phone numbers to call if he showed up. I should have gotten him an injunction, but I didn’t. Because he suddenly became kind to me. I believed him again… As a result, everything ended with new beatings, and I stopped all contacts with him.

But at that moment, something inside me broke. I even wanted to die. She didn’t eat for four days, she began to faint. My friends saved me and sent me to the doctor. Then I went to a psychiatrist.

For a while I took medication, they helped me calm down. Sometimes, when I was still in the clinic, it seemed to me: he would come into the ward, and I could not do anything. Every second I waited for him, I thought he would come to kill me. I had a feeling that he created me and must destroy me. This expectation was so unbearable that it seemed to me that I would rather do it myself …

Take out the “litter from the hut”!

A year later I worked with a psychologist. This year has made me me. I came to him with such stories that he then wrote statements to the police. But I was no longer afraid.

Before, I didn’t seem to have the will. But the psychologist returned it to me. I am mature enough to deal with legal issues. Hired a lawyer. I have the strength to fight. I realized that each of us has such an opportunity.

We were divorced, I returned to Russia, happily married. I will not say that this marriage was easy for me. I dragged a lot of things from the past into new relationships. But they are not violent.

Now I know that help is always there. You just have to make up your mind and “take out the dirty linen in public.”

It is time to contact a psychologist. If someone had explained to me before marriage that our relationship was not normal, none of this would have happened. A person gets used to everything – we can sink to the very bottom and live on it. But if someone reads this, thinks about it and asks for help, there will be fewer such stories.

After a divorce from my first husband, my mother said that no one would marry me now, because I was a “divorced woman”. But the truth is, now I didn’t need a man to be happy.

Unfortunately, in the family of my parents, everything remained as it was. I cannot change this. But I can help someone else. Convince: it does not happen that the abuser is corrected. Never.

I still go to a psychologist, my second husband does too. This help makes us happy. We recognize ourselves, become whole. We become ourselves.