Hello,
I have recently seen a post of yours shared on Facebook which talks about educating men in respect of the violence, and fear many women experience at their hands.
I wanted to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume your call for education on this subject is genuine and, I would assume, also applies to yourself? And I hope that you may be open to receiving said education from a woman.
A woman who knew you well and for a long time, and a woman who regularly feared for her safety at your hands, who cried to her family and friends about the emotional abuse she suffered during her relationship with you and who begged them not to say anything to you in case it made the situation worse for her. A woman who's confidence and sense of self was so shattered when you'd finished with her that she was unrecognisable to those who knew her best. A woman who was scared of saying the wrong thing to you at any given time and the reaction it would produce, and who's home was full of holes from your fists, who's doors were torn from their hinges and who's walls were left marked by the objects thrown at her head. A woman who was pinned against walls and had her space invaded by you in moments of such utter rage that she felt the fear of death in those moments. A woman who has been irreparably damaged by the emotional turmoil she was subjected to by you daily and as a woman who still suffers nightmares about you where she wakes up sweating and crying and needing to be consoled by her husband and reminding that she is safe and not back there in her old life.As a woman who lived with and still lives with that, because of you.
As that woman, I wanted to say that I can only assume and hope that you now understand how despicably you treated me and how wrong you were. I can only assume you must be eternally sorry for what you put me through.
Because to post something otherwise so hypocritical, how can you not? How can you look at yourself in the mirror after making such a statement and not realise that you are one of the men who requires the education you speak so valiantly of.
And if not, then I can only hope that this message has in some way helped to educate you as to the fact that you are part of the problem you apparently wish to change, that intimidation and threatening violence by your aggressive actions is still violence, it is still not acceptable to make women fear you in order to gain compliance from them. Bruises, broken bones and death are not the line in the sand that you think they are. You crossed it many times.
And if this message does help to educate you about a subject you are apparently so concerned about, then maybe I may begin to let go of the weight of your abuse that I have had to carry with me since the day I left you.