When I Couldn't Leave the House

So we'd done it.

After everything that had happened before the wedding, we were actually married.

Pinocchio No Strings had become my husband.

We'd had the wedding.

We'd gone on honeymoon with the kids.

Then we came home and went back to ordinary family life.

Except something started happening to me that I didn't understand.

I started having panic attacks.

And they got bad.

Really fucking bad.

At First, He Didn't Understand

Unless you've experienced a panic attack, I think it can be difficult to understand just how physical it is.

It's not simply:

I'm feeling a wee bit anxious today.

Your body genuinely behaves as though something terrible is happening.

And mine gradually became so severe that I reached the point where I couldn't leave the house.

Not:

I didn't fancy going out.

Not:

I'd rather stay home.

I couldn't do it.

And my husband didn't understand.

We'd argue about it.

Which, unsurprisingly, did absolutely fuck all to help.

I was already frightened of leaving the house.

Then I had the additional pressure of somebody thinking I should just be able to get on with it.

And I couldn't.

I couldn't control what was happening to me.

I couldn't simply decide:

Right, enough of this nonsense. Off to Tesco.

My world was becoming smaller.

Home was becoming the only place that felt manageable.

Until one day it got so bad that even he finally realised this wasn't something I was choosing.

The Ambulance

I had a panic attack so severe that my husband had to phone an ambulance.

And that changed something.

For the first time, I think he properly understood.

He saw it.

This wasn't me being dramatic.

It wasn't attention-seeking.

It wasn't me being difficult.

And it definitely wasn't something I could just switch off because somebody told me to.

I genuinely couldn't control what was happening to me.

After that?

He started supporting me.

And I think that's important to say.

Because if I'm going to tell this story, I'm going to tell the whole fucking thing.

Not just the bits that make somebody look terrible.

He Did Help Me

My husband had already hurt me.

He'd lied.

There had been other women.

Red Diesel.

He'd punched me.

All of that remains true.

But this is true as well:

When he finally understood how severe my panic attacks were, he supported me.

And with that support, eventually I started managing to leave the house again.

Little by little.

Until eventually I could go out by myself.

That mattered.

And I won't remove it from the story simply because it makes the relationship harder to put into a nice little box marked BAD.

Because that's not how my marriage worked.

And I actually think that's one of the reasons relationships like mine can be so difficult to understand from the outside.

He Wasn't Horrible Every Day

There were times we laughed.

Times we behaved like a normal family.

Times he supported me.

Times he was good with the children.

Family holidays.

Christmases.

Ordinary days where absolutely nothing terrible happened.

There were good memories.

Real ones.

I don't need to pretend those memories didn't happen in order to acknowledge everything that happened later.

Both can be true.

You can love somebody who hurts you.

You can be grateful for something somebody did for you and still be angry about something else they did.

You can have beautiful memories with somebody who also gave you terrible ones.

And I think that's partly what made everything so confusing for me.

If he'd been horrible every second of every day, perhaps I would have left and never looked back.

But he wasn't.

There was always enough of the man I loved still there to make me believe maybe that was the real him.

Maybe the other stuff would stop.

Maybe we'd finally got through the worst of it.

So life carried on.

And years passed.

Then Covid Arrived

By the time Covid came along, we'd already been through a lot together.

He'd just come back from Dubai.

And he decided to build himself a man cave.

At first, that probably sounds fairly harmless.

Plenty of people have sheds, gaming rooms, garages, somewhere to escape for a bit.

Except in our marriage, it became somewhere he could disappear.

And once again?

I hardly saw him.

He had his space.

His own little world.

And I was somewhere else.

Still married.

Still a family.

But increasingly living separate lives under the same roof.

Then grief hit both of us.

Hard.

And almost at exactly the same time.

Thursday and Friday

His dad died on the Thursday.

Then my gran died on the Friday.

One day apart.

Two families grieving.

Two huge losses.

You might think something like that would pull a couple together.

That we'd cling to each other.

That grief would make everything else seem unimportant.

But instead?

We seemed to drift further apart.

He spent more and more time in the man cave.

And the distance between us grew.

Eventually the schools went back.

Life started trying to resemble normal again.

And then I got another lovely update about my marriage.

At the school gates.

Because apparently there are some things you really need to discover while standing amongst a group of parents waiting for your child to come out of school.

Sugar Daddy

I was at the school when somebody grabbed me to tell me something about my husband.

Apparently he'd been messaging one of our daughter's friend's mums.

Flirting.

And signing messages off as her:

Sugar Daddy.

Fantastic.

Because apparently finding Red Diesel messages privately hadn't been enough.

Now I could get updates on my husband's behaviour at the fucking school gates.

Another woman.

Another humiliation.

Another thing to argue about.

Another reason to wonder what the hell had happened to the marriage I'd fought so hard to keep.

But then something happened that made every stupid message and every marital argument feel completely insignificant.

My mum became ill.

Mum

My mum died.

Even writing that feels different.

I've written about relationships ending.

I've written about being cheated on.

I've written about violence.

I've written about rape.

I've written about things that completely changed parts of me.

But losing Mum?

That's different.

Because relationships can end and eventually you learn how to live without that person.

Somebody cheats and one day you don't care anymore.

You can divorce somebody.

Block somebody.

Move house.

Start again.

But your mum dying?

There's no breakup from that.

No fixing it.

No argument followed by an apology.

No deciding six months later that you'll try again.

She's just gone.

And I wasn't remotely prepared for what losing her was going to do to me.

A week later?

His gran died too.

More grief.

Another funeral.

Another loss.

It felt relentless.

But when I needed my husband most — when I was grieving one of the most important people in my entire life — something happened that I don't think I ever really forgot.

Mum's Funeral

After Mum's funeral, we went back to Mum and Dad's house.

I wanted my family around me.

I needed them.

And I needed my husband.

On the day I'd just buried my mum, I wanted the person I'd married beside me.

Instead?

He left.

He went to meet a mate.

On the day of my mum's funeral.

There are moments in a relationship where the action itself might only last a short time, but the feeling it leaves behind stays for years.

That was one of mine.

I needed him.

And he left.

Then came the comments.

About Mum's drinking.

Saying it was her own fault she'd died.

She was an Alkie etc..

Saying he hated spending time with my family.

And something inside me started changing.

I'd forgiven cheating.

I'd forgiven lies.

I'd forgiven being let down.

I'd even returned after he'd put his hands on me.

But this?

This was my mum.

I was grieving.

I was already struggling to hold myself together.

And instead of my husband making that grief easier to carry, he was making it heavier.

Eventually?

I'd had enough.

I Told Him It Was Over

I told him our marriage was finished.

I started sleeping on the couch.

And if I'm being truthful, by that point I'd been emotionally lonely for a very long time anyway.

I was depressed.

I was grieving.

I felt alone.

I wanted somebody to notice me.

Not Mum.

Not wife.

Not cleaner.

Not organiser.

Not the person waiting for everybody else.

Me.

I wanted somebody to ask how I was and actually care about the answer.

Eventually, I started talking to someone.

And I went and met him.

My husband knew I'd already told him our relationship was over.

But he went through my phone.

And then accused me of cheating.

I reminded him:

We were over.

And this time?

I left.

My Own Flat

I moved into temporary accommodation.

My own place.

Finally.

A line underneath the marriage.

A chance to breathe.

A chance to work out what I wanted without constantly being surrounded by the relationship.

This was it.

Surely.

I'd finally left.

And I spent exactly...

one night there alone.

One.

Because after that?

My husband was there every night.

And eventually?

I moved back home.

Again.

I know.

That fucking word.

Again.

But our story still wasn't finished.

Not even close.

Because after I went back there would be my 40th birthday.

There would be weekends at his mate's pub.

There would be days lost to hangovers.

There would be drinking.

And there would be one night when he couldn't find his green and decided I must have hidden it.

A night when he came into the bedroom while I was in bed.

A night when my husband leaned over me.

And put a knife to my throat.

Next: The Knife.