True
Stories
Domestic Violence True Story of Alison Yates
*Alison never thought she’d end up in an abusive relationship. To those who saw her, she was the attractive, chatty blonde with lots of friends, a loving family, and a free spirit. Here she tells Cheers how she escaped domestic violence, made a new life for herself, and now spends her life giving encouragement to those looking to do the same.
*Q: What was your life like before you met your boy-friend?
Alison: It was already difficult. My Dad suffered from the disease M.S. from the time I was 4 years old. He was in and out of hospital throughout my childhood, and my older brother was disabled. From the ages of 13 - 16 years old different family members began to get ill and pass way. In all, I attended five funerals in 3 years. That was hard enough, but also at 15 my parents got divorced. I felt like I’d been torn in two. I was traveling back and forth between them. My mum re-married and had a baby straight away. At 16 years old I got a full time job to support myself, after finishing my schooling. I began hanging around with bad crowds. I wanted to numb the pain from the loss, separation and rejection. The pain made me lose who I really was. I was lonely from losing those close to me, not having a stable life or constant parental care and he was there. He began spending more time with me than with his own friends, but he started to get possessive. At that time, I was working at a local nightclub and knew everybody which he didn’t like at all. He became very jealous and suspicious, angry, obsessive and wanted to be with me all the time. While I was working hard, he would get drunk with his friends and start fights. I was already broken so I went along with it all, hoping things would change.
Q:How did the violence BEGIN? What were the warning signs?
A: The violence began when we moved in together. He would go into fits of rage for no reason. There were no signs, he would just erupt. We had moved 80 miles away from all our friends and family. It was his decision. Yet after we’d moved, he wanted to go and visit them all the time, leaving me working and running the house. It didn’t seem fair to me, so I told him my feelings, but it ended up causing our first major fight. First he smashed up my entire living room with a baseball bat, only just stopping in the kitchen because I managed to wrestle the bat from him. Then he grabbed me in a head lock and spun me upside down landing me on my back. I was stunned and so angry that I fought back and busted his nose. But he managed to pick me up again, slamming me this time into the kitchen units. Later that night, he got angry again and with both hands grabbed my face, leaving two bruises down each side of my nose.
We’d had arguments before, but nothing physical like this and his attitude and aggression got worse with no friends around him to help calm him down.
There was a specific time I thought he would kill me. Again he had been out all day getting drunk with his friends and we were supposed to be doing something together. I asked him why our plans had changed and he started shouting at me and smashing the bedroom up. I was sat on the bed and he grabbed our double wardrobe and tipped it over and smashed it on top of my leg, just missing my face. Then he stabbed a knife into the door, which snapped in two, nearly severing his little finger off.
When I finally got free from the wardrobe, he was walking around my house, dripping with blood. It was all up the walls, on the floor, everywhere. So I ended up phoning my Step-Dad to take him to the hospital, even though he was the one who’d battered me.
*Q: How did you ‘rationalize’ his abusive behavior? What excuses did he give you?
A: I thought it was because he had never been away from anyone he’d grown up with or been out of his parents home before. He’d never lived out of his hometown. But the truth was that he had been smoking weed for years and he didn’t have a supplier where we moved to, so he was drinking more heavily. I thought he was bored not having a job and so I kept hoping things would settle down once he found one. He complained and was angry because he didn’t drive, and I did and I was speaking to people and meeting people and he wasn’t. But he was jealous and had a lack of drugs.
*Q: How did you family react to the violence?
A: My family would constantly try to help calm things down, but to him it was like they were interfering. My Mum didn’t know half of what went on, as I tried to protect her from it. It was only after when we moved to a house nearer to her that they (Mum and Step-Dad) saw some fights in front of them. A couple of times it got so bad that my Step-Dad had to step in. They tried to offer me support and treated him as their son-in-law, by constantly forgiving him and trying to guide him towards a better way of life. But after a period of time, everyone close to me knew they had to back off, as their attention towards me caused more arguments between us.
*Q: How did the abuse affect your daily lifestyle?
A: I started smoking weed and drinking heavily. I was working full time and work felt like the only place I could be myself and exist without arguments. But on weekday nights, when work had finished I would get high to try and numb the pain. I’d left all my friends behind, only visiting a few times and then because of all the arguments my visits caused, I eventually stopped contacting them altogether. My only other acquaintances were at work and that’s were they stayed. I began to withdraw from other family members except for my Mum and my Dad; I visited my Dad every weekend as he still needed medical care, and so did my brother. So I would travel 80 miles to get to them. I would make sure their medication was sorted out for the week that they had clean clothes, and the house was attended to and help pay bills, that sort of thing, and then make the long journey home.
Then my brother died in 1999 and my Dad later in 2004. And again, I found myself totally alone. Mentally, I tried to block everything out. I focused on each day, the work I needed to do and on running my home. I knew I had to stay strong and keep it together. I thought I could avoid admitting how bad things were by not thinking about it or dwelling on the bad stuff. I was angry at him, but trying to reason with him would make things worse, yet, when I stayed quiet, he hated it too, so I couldn’t win anyway. I would go 4 or 5 days without eating, I’d only manage handfuls of salted peanuts or a bag of potato chips. I couldn’t stomach actual food; it would make me feel worse after than not eating at all. I always looked ill, I was too thin - 5”9 and weighing only 7 stone, but though I was ill, I would always try to mask it by making sure my make-up, hair, and nails were done. I’d wear the latest clothes; try to get a tan, all so I didn’t attract undue attention. My self esteem became very low and some days I wouldn’t leave my home. Then I started to get sick of covering up and began to fall into a depression. My understanding about love was confused because all the relationships in my family and his were all broken, or separate, and distant. I was surrounded by people who were lonely themselves in all aspects of their relationships, so I wasn’t really sure what love was supposed to look like.
*Q: Despite the difficulty, what made you stay?
A: I stayed for nearly 10 years. I tried to leave several times but he would threaten my family and several times he would stalk me by sitting outside my house for hours, even in the snow. After his barrage of phone calls, constant harassment, and declarations of love, I would always give in. It became a predictable routine. When you are in it (abusive relationship) you can think that you can control things to a certain extent. You learn to handle the verbal abuse and the emotional abuse; you recognize the patterns, so you can think it’s safer sometimes to be in it, than out of it. Once you have been with somebody for so long you want them to change and keep hoping things will get better. We met when we were young and so I was waiting for him to mature and grow out of his behavior. I made excuses for him. But I began to realize that you can’t heal what’s broken without God. He said he loved me but jealousy and drugs were eating him alive and so was the possessiveness, and anger. I couldn’t help him stop feeling that way.
*Q: How did you know when ‘enough was enough’? How did you escape?
A: 6 months after my dad had passed away, I reached my breaking point. Even the day before my Dad died, I had taken so much verbal and mental and physical abuse, that physically I could not get up and go to the hospital to see him. The next day he died. I had to live with the fact that my bad relationship possibly stole what could have been the last living moments with my Dad.
The fights were gradually getting worse and I just knew that it was over. I sat on my couch and I remember hearing God say clearly to me, ‘I am going to get you out of here girl’. I went to see my Mum and whilst visiting found out about a shelter near her house. I went to the local council and told them my situation, and right away they managed to get me into a shelter miles and miles away from him in a safe area.
*Q: What gave you the courage to see through the escape plan?
A: Once God had spoken courage into me, I felt at peace and I knew that I was never going to be alone again. It had gotten to that stage where all the options had been exhausted. I knew that I needed to be stronger than ever before and I knew that whatever it took, I needed to get away. I was in the house for three hours thinking it all through before I finally left. All that time, he stood outside screaming, banging on the doors, windows, making threats. But those powerful words ‘I’m going to get you out of here girl’, kept going through my head and at that moment I knew this crazy, painful, twisted period of my life was finally over.
*Q: How hard was it to start over?
A: It wasn’t as hard starting over as it was living in all that abuse! The healing pain of rebuilding, starting over, and being renewed was easier to bear, because eventually all that hurt turns to overwhelming love, joy, strength and freedom. With God all this – and more, is possible. I learnt that only God can bring us to where we are supposed to be and after all the hurt I’ve endured, I can say it was worth it to see where I stand today.
*Q: What did you learn about yourself?
A:I have learnt to feel real love from only God, for in him alone I trust. That I deserve to be happy and that I have the power and right to stand up for myself and not accept any abuse or disrespect. I learnt that I am stronger than I even knew I could be. And I have learnt to love who I am, and how to be myself without hiding behind a mask. I’ve also learnt to live and not just survive and found my purpose in life, which I believe is to help save other women like me.
*Q: What are you doing today?
A: Today I am a missionary and part of an amazing ministry that is saving lives and doing Gods work around the world. We help women who have been broken through domestic violence. We help broken women, pregnant teenagers and the homeless. We also help prisoners and their families. Spiritually I had been longing to rebuild my relationship with God again as I hadn’t been in the church through those 10 years. Through this ministry, I received God’s healing power and am now where I should have been all along. God is using all I have come through and survived to help touch so many other peoples lives.
*Q: How would you encourage other women in these circumstances today?
A: GET OUT NOW! I encourage you to pick up the phone or in the very least let someone else do it for you! You don’t need to collect any of your material things before you leave. You will be safe; you will come through it with such peace and a transformed life. Cry out to God or to a spiritual place within yourself and know you need to get out. You have something powerful inside you that no matter the hurdles, obstacles or walls in your way; you will make it. There are a lot of places that you can go to and you will be safe again. And please know that you deserve more, far more! God will give you back more than you’ve ever imagined. God loves you and wants the life He originally gave you to live to come to pass.
If you are suffering from domestic abuse & violence please visit ourEND THE VIOLENCEsection for more help and resources. Please
REJOICE!..because life should be celebrated!
