There were good times and bad times living in that very small one bedroom flat with a young child....
During the day time there was some form of relative calmness and normality , it was just me and child no1 so we were reasonably free to do what ever we wanted to do , we went for nice walks , went to the local park to play or feed the ducks , collected blackberries when they were ripe and did all the other normal mother and young child things to help fill our days but we always had to make sure we were back in plenty of time to check everything was neat , tidy and dinner was cooked ready for his father when he walked back in through the door after finishing work and God forbid if it was ever late , the variouse accusations that could possibly follow if it wasnt done were simply just not worth it so I played safe . I learnt fast and successfully managed to get it right most of the time but you could garrentee just when I thought I was getting good at it more rules and conditions would get added to his list of complaints or demands so it became a bit of an endless task .
The evenings and weekends were the times when things could possibly get a little bit more unpredictable. I learnt fairly early on that any friendly chatting to the neighbours was much better off being done during the week when he was at work so he couldn't see it happen and even though we had a phone it wasn't really worth me using it because I noticed he always checked to see all calls made or recieved when the phone bill arrived so I left it for others to call me instead ( which were very few and far between ) .
Once I was actually allowed to get myself a nice little office cleaning job ( I say allowed but it was more a case of him telling me I had to do it ) so 3 times a week I got to escape for a couple of hours . The pay wasn't that bad but I of course never got to see or keep any of it for myself because I was regularly informed there were bills to pay and we were poor so it all had to be handed over. I also had to get my timing just right or else I'd get accusations I was meeting strange men and habing an affair if I dared to be more than 10 minutes late coming back home ( me walking home all by myself in the dark was obviously not a major issue to him ) .
As time went by I was begining to understand things a bit better as to why his ex- wife had wanted to leave him taking their child with her and that maybe just maybe he hadn't been 100% truthful and honest with me about a few things from the begining , perhaps just perhaps she may of actually had perfectly good valid reasons for doing what she had done 🤔 .
This is when I first started to build a sort of emergency plan of action involving a couple of people I could trust and call on if neeeded , I had even sorted out a temporary place I could go to when I felt brave enough to run away and excape . He was steadily beginning to get more abusive , spiteful and controling by the day and it was also around this time that he first began to look like he could seriously lash out at me any time whilst he was in one of his really bad nasty moods . The belittling comments , the temper tantrums , the evil killer stares and the dramatic big silences had finally begun to really get to me so I picked what I thought was the right moment and told him I couldn't do it any more and had found somewhere else for me and child No1 to go .
There was only one small unforeseen , unplanned problem with my great master plan.....
He decided to ring my mother playing his favourite abandoned poor me victim card and in return I had a call from her telling me how terribly unfair I was being to him and our child and did I really want to end up a single parent like she once was when i was growing up ? , so yes as you've proberly quessed I ended up feeling guilty and gave up my plan and I stayed putting yet again someone else's needs before my own .
Maybe I should have followed through with my action plan and not allowed my emotions and guilt to be controlled by him or anyone else . The darkness of being suffercated by putting his wants and demands first were now begining to decend yet again . My planned happy days just weren't meant to be and the dismal life I was living was due to keep on continuing . The cracks in the thin ice I was permanently walking continued to grew every day , the sound of the front door closing became the trigger button to my nervousness.
To this day I still sometimes think back and wonder what would have happened if I had actually left him at that time and how my life might of have been improved ? 🤔
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