i think i was attacked. i was drunk & can't remember. not feeling great

[superfrenchie1]

i rarely post on mn but i am so stressed about this i really need to get it off my chest. i am a wreck, shaking and shivering. sorry i will try to be as concise as possible. this is what happened to me last friday...

went out after work starting at 6pm, drank quite a lot (so did everyone else), no food, great time, got to about 11.30 and realised i was pretty drunk & wobbly and didn't need any more to drink so told a couple of colleagues and they helped me out to the cab rank (they were also v drunk) all my colleagues - i work for a very young company all aged 25 - 30 - stayed out til 2am, all very drunk. i am 29 btw and the only one with kids, not that that matters.

i remember being on the main road near my house having an argument, which is very unlike me - someone was being very aggressive and i was saying "stop! you'll kill me! i've got two little children!" that was at 1am. possibly because i had got into a cab without cash and asked the driver to stop at a cashpoint. (i did have cash and would have paid - it was payday, i had money and bank cards etc)

at 4am dp let me into our flat, he found me in the communal area with my jeans around my knees and covered in bruises and blood. turns out i have a broken cheekbone, cnojunctival haemmorhage, huge dark red black eye which is so swollen i can hardly open it, severe swelling and bruising - i look horrendous. nothing was missing / stolen.

feel so bad that my kids had to see me this way. i don't go out that often; this was a rare work night out, i had a great time in the bar and everyone says i was great fun and on good form. i remember snippets of being in the bar but have no idea what happened to me between 1 and 4am & i can't remember how i sustained these injuries. i have worked from home this week because i look so gross. my colleagues are really shocked. dp is disgusted with me and thinks it's all my fault, he hasn't been sympathetic at all, the opposite in fact.

have reported to police and they are looking for cctv footage but said that there is not really any evidence that there has been a crime. been to hospital and been x-rayed etc and have follow-up appt to drain blood from big swollen blood clot in cheek. also am in touch with victim support and am meeting one of their volunteers next week to chat for an hour.

i don't know how i feel about this. i feel so embarrassed and as though it's all my fault. i don't even know if i was attacked or not - maybe i just fell and hit my head and passed out for a bit. or maybe i was beaten and raped. i guess i'll need to do pregnancy & STD tests at some point - hopefully victim support can advise about this

i am so depressed (unlike me - i am ALWAYS happy) and feel like the worst mother in the world. plus i want dp to fall off a cliff, he's been horrid and abusive for a while and this feels like the final straw.
i have to go back into the office on monday & feel really self conscious (have been wearing sunglasses 24/7) and don't know how to answer when people ask what happened

any idea what i can do to help myself?

sorry for rambling

i'll be offline today as going out but will check back again when i can. any help really appreciated

I'm so sorry to hear this happened to you . What a frightening experience. You poor thing.

I'm really surprised that the police didn't suggest you have some sort of swabs taken / internal exam on the day you reported it, to rule out a sexual attack . If you were raped or sexually assaulted in some way the physical evidence would have been very useful.

I hope your meeting with VS helps you out a bit with where to go from here. Perhaps they can also advise on how to handle your DH? It's awful that he is being so unsupportove at such a scary time for you.

Best of luck, and give yourself plenty of time to recover form this ordeal.

its not a known thing

but possibly what you remember as an argument could have been a bloke trying to help and you got scared he got defensive etc

but you maty alrea\dty have fallen etc

clearly you were really not capable for some reason

it is possible to go from drunk capable to drunk incapable for various reasons time iof the be kind to yourselfmonth/anaemia/spirits instead of wine/lack of food etc

whatever the situation dont get too wound up

good your colleagues are nisce

dp is probably shockefd/thinking you hate him

your relationship with him is not sounding great, he may just not know what he feels

be kind to yourself

zippi - i like the "time of the be kind to yourself month" which month is this? can it be this month?

yes i am looking after myself, as much as i can. chocolate, early nights, taking it easy at work, went shopping and treated myself.

i want to figure out a one-line reply for when people ask me what happened.

"i had an accident"?
"i don't want to talk about it"?
"i was drunk, I think i was attacked"?
"i was assaulted"?
"i fell over"?
"I had too much to drink, i can't remember"?

obviously for those i don't know that well and at work i will just say i had an accident - and i guess if they ask any more questions I will just say i don't want to talk about it?

but i don't want to pretend that nothing happened and to convince myself that it was just a drunken accident because i think something else happened... hmm

yeah my life is pretty complicated at the moment... things with (d)p not great by any means and i need to sort things out... maybe i will muster the energy to post on mn about it one day!! hoepfully in the not too distant future because it does need sorting soon. thanks again

my answer would be

oh dont ask but i wont be doing it again

which doesnt mean you shouldnt poursue the cctv witrh the police etc

but im not sure you will get further than something inconclusive

superfrenchie.....I have been reading your thread over the course of the day, and althought I have no advice for what you should do or how to deal with your DP, but I just wanted to add my voice of support in saying that you most certainly didn't deserve anything bad happening to you. I hope you can get through this; maybe your GP can arrange some counselling? and I hope that you can resolve your relationship with your DP in a sensible and amicable way.

Some not very MN {{{{{hugs}}}}} to you.

yep the police near me are talking to the police in the place where i got the cab. and they are trying to find cctv footage. i know i went into a shop with a cashpoint at ten to 1, apparently the shop does not have cctv or something but other shops between there and my house should have.

but yes there is so little evidence i doubt anything will happen. still worth reporting though in case something similar happens to someone else, and so the police know about it, even if they can't pursue the investigation. i wish i could remember - hoping i will remember something soon...

thank you lackadaisycal. i think counselling would be good in general, yes, i will ask my GP. thank you

Try not to let your difficult feelings about what happened to you get in the way of really pursuing the truth about this. It would be easy to try to forget about it and not push the police for answers. If your DP were reacting in a normal way you can be sure he would be fighting for justice for his woman, not saying it was your fault.

Aww this is hard, I'm sorry this has happened. Something similar has happened to me in the past.

The problem is that without witnesses and memory, there is really nothing you can do except move on. There ARE logical reasons that you might have had your pants down, e.g. going for a pee and blacked out. I have a friend who broke her jaw and skull when drunk and had to spent three months in hospital!!! And I've blacked out when drunk MANY times (in my youth), with no drugs involved.

The strange part to your story is how your DH came to find you. How far were you from your flat? Why did he come looking - did he heard you? Where were the children? That's the one part of the story that is odd IMO.

Sorry this has happened, and that other things are shit. This is really NOT your fault.

One other thing: How do you know it was 1am when you arguing on the road?

Perhaps with the right sort of counselling, and victim support should be able to help you on that, you'll start to remember what happened.

Perhaps a sit down and frank and honest chat with your DP is in order?

I'm sorry you've had such an awful experience. However it is difficult to work out whether you were attacked, or maybe fell and were injured. Maybe you tried to have a wee and fell over? When people are very drunk they sustain the most awful injuries as they don't have adequate reflexes to protect themselves.

I still don't remember what happened a month ago when I was drunk like that. Unless you get CCTV confirmation I very much doubt it will come back to you now. Did you use your cash card at the shop or can you remember going in?

i dont think yopu will remember

the only time somegthing like tghis has happened to me in the last ten years was at the mn do

i still have a broken ankle to show

i dont now if i had a spiked drink

or the fact that i hadnt been drinking for a year lack of food hormones menatl staet etc was the cause

but i also drank a lot

if i hadnbt mns around then im sure i would have er died

ok i remember going into the shop (vaguely) plus I have a receipt for something i bought (i spent £2.08 - god knows what i bought!?) AND i withdrew some cash from their machine, presumably to pay the taxi driver. this would all tally and would make sense if i got the cab around 11.45 and arrived at the shop at 12.45 (receipt says 12.49), it takes an hour to drive from the bar to where I live. The shop is round the corner from where I live. I remember someone - a man - who I think was the taxi driver being very aggressive. I think because i had got in the cab without any cash and had not stated this upfront. There are a million possibilities...

...i could have fallen asleep in the back of his cab and he could have physically dragged me out of his cab & i could have fallen onto the pavement

...i could have got out of the cab, gone into the shop, withdrawn cash and then drunkenly staggered off and forgotten to go back and pay him and he might have got really angry

...can't actually think of any more but there are obviously loads. i could have paid the driver, said goodbye, and staggered into a road and been run over by a totally different car. I am an idiot yes.

oh and as for being found in the communal area - we live in a converted house, we have the ground floor, so i was found just outside the door to our flat, but inside the main door. so dp probably heard me moving, or decided to check whether or not i was outside. i need to ask him exactly... but don't want to make him angry - need to phrase it thoughtfully

and don't worry the kids were alright, tucked up in bed sound asleep, dp had been looking after them that evening - he'd had the afternoon off work & picked them up from school & childminder for me as i was going out. despite his weirdness with me he is great with the kids so don't worry they were ok.

oh and i remember the aggressive shouting happening in the street outside where the shop is. which would make it around 1am. so i got out of the cab about 1am but didn't make it into my flat until 4am... i am going to ask dp now about how and why he found me...

dp says he heard me banging on the door to our flat at 4am. which is why he let me in. which is stupid because i had my key and had presumably let myself in the main front door from the street. i could have been in there a while and fallen asleep... who knows. i am so frustrated and so so cross with myself about this...

i dont think you wil find out

dont be ashamed

obviously if you feel it was an attack or specifically a sexual attack then you should try and follow that and get he help you deserve

but i think it might be possible if you had such a long taxi ride you might have seemed lucid on the ride not had the moiney gone to the cash pint argued or beeb saced etc do you smoke could that be cigarettes or a sandwich a boittle of coke

very hard to know if you were drunk

as me i would be inclined to think really factors outsiode my vontrol (hormones/lack of food/social anxiety) meant i got drunk

its rare

i got hurt

but nothing seriously bad happened

however your relsationship is obviously a bit sour and hars to cope with and this will have made it worse

hopefully you can try and get to grips with that aqt some point

could you have fallen down the stairs at your flat

Bloody hell! What a horrendous thing to have happened to you. And how awful and truely strange, a reaction from your 'DP'. Even if things have been rough between you guys, you'd have to be a cold-hearted bastard to react like that to someone, who is the mother of your children, coming home in that condition and telling them they brought it on themselves.

Maybe, once you get through this tough stage, love, you consider your situation with this so called 'DP'. You deserve better than that. You deserve someone who loves you and will support you. Not someone who calls you 'fat' and brings you down and can't support you in a crisis.

Sorry, I'm not trying to ignore the awful situation of your ordeal, I'm just so shocked at everything else as well! Good luck with it all and lots of (((((hugs))))).

P.S. - Sorry, hope you don't mind me calling you 'love'! I don't mean it in a builder sort of way!

that's ok slickbird love, thanks for the thoughts. you're right, (d)p is not giving me what i need. we have some problems. he doesn't support me. i do deserve someone better.

a while back i made the decision to stay with him mainly because he refuses to move out - or even acknowledge that there is a problem. so to leave him would mean me taking the kids away from our lovely garden flat, schools, friends. oh and it would be super complicated because we own our flat through a shared-ownership scheme. so we'd have to sell it and each take a quarter of what it's worth or something. we don't have any savings and we both earn around £25K so too much to get any benefits but not enough to live on in london and pay rent / childcare / food / bills etc etc. anyway i know practical things can be overcome but it just seems a bit too much to handle - PLUS i love my home and i want to stay living here.

ok i'm oversharing now, it's easy to do on mn, right? thanks everyone and see you all soon. i honestly feel so much better having talked about this. i'll be ok. thank you xx

How awful. It does seem weird that you have 'lost' the 3 hours between 1 and 4am, and it would suggest that your drink may have been spiked. Make sure you follow up the hair analysis with the poice in a couple of weeks.

Have the police spoken to the staff at the shop? Did they see anything?

I think you may need some help coming ot terms with the uncertainty of what has / has not happened, and hopefully victim support may be able to put you in touch with the right people.

FWIW, in terms of what you say to your colleagues, I would just say you don't really want to talk about it.

I meant to ask - who in the police is dealing with this? Is is it a specialist unit for dealing with potential sexual assaults?