Domestic violence. A personal update

Last night, my husband and his friend (who also works with him) told me late night that they wanted me to do an email version of a brochure I had designed for them on the night before. He wanted it in the morning. He also kept asking me to sit and talk with them as they were drinking. I kept saying that I needed 2-3 hours to work on it, but to no avail. A little while after going to the bedroom, He’d come to call me out. With son sleeping, I couldn’t refuse, because he’d simply raise his voice and wake the kid up. By the time they slept for the night, it was past midnight. I worked on it for a while, but it wasn’t ready by the time I got really sleepy and stopped.

This morning, he asked me if the email was ready. It wasn’t. So he told me to get out. To take my kid and get out of his house. Earlier experience had shown that it was no use going to my parents. My father would simply abuse me till I went back. I had friends I could ask, but I needed time to do it. Nothing doing. GO. NOW. He didn’t need a third rate woman like me at home.

Worth noting here is that I do not want to do any correspondence for him, and it is all done to avoid being bullied (more). I do not get paid for any work for him. He considers it my job to do it if I want him to contribute to household expenses  which is a couple of thousand rupees on months he does give.

The household logic is that I must pay electricity bills because I am at home most and use the computer. I must pay for the internet because I use it more, I must pay for the groceries because I go and buy, I must pay for the cooking gas, because I use it, I must pay for the maid because she makes my job lighter and so on. I don’t do the housework properly and I don’t help him get business is why I don’t deserve any contributions to running the home.

It was a wake up moment. Here I was sitting on the floor. Looking at the house that apparently wasn’t mine.

I called up my mother-in-law to ask her if she would care for the child for a few days till I could figure out a place to stay. She said that she physically can’t do it, as she is old. She talked with my husband who told her to kick me out as well.

I reached out for help on Twitter. In the meanwhile his friend staying with us tried to calm him down. He said that if I could make the email immediately, I could stay. I made it.

A friend came to advise me on the possibilities available to me. I have to file NC and DIR and stay home while I can and find some money to afford to move out and so on. It is overwhelming. How do you pick up your things from a house you were nurturing and go? Yet email received, the husband continues to taunt me about when I’m moving out.

Not a hand was raised, yet I’ve got a blinding headache from the hurt and grief and anger. Yet I know I have to ignore him and find a way to make an exit work. It isn’t that help isn’t available. It is pouring in. People offering to help me move if I need, some saying I can stay with them for a while. Others sending me money. Yet it hasn’t started computing. I need to get my act together and use the help and walk out of this bloody mess once and for all.

But I’m scared. Scared of living in a rented place with a child. Scared that I don’t earn enough to survive. Scared that kid will suffer. Even as logic says that I can ask for help, kid is better off without daily taunts to his mother and so on. Today may be worse than usual, but it is hardly unique.

Another day of calling domestic violence normal. Another day of trying to be larger than it so that it becomes a smaller and smaller part of my life. Another day of not really knowing what the hell it is that I’m doing with my life in this relationship.