I’ve been dancing around the topic of domestic violence since I first began this journal, it has remained hidden in the shadows. I've needed to talk about it and at last I’m ready to talk about it.
Loïc and I were still in the honeymoon stage of our relationship when we moved to Japan. One day in the first months we were there, he went with me to a professional photo lab that had done a batch of prints for me which were washed out grey machine prints, not the handmade professional prints I’d expected, and I didn’t want to pay for them. Instead of initiating a discussion with them, he flipped a switch, and went into a shouting rage. I’d never seen anything like it before in public. The poor Japanese, for whom any conflict is anathema, were trembling with fear. As we walked out of the shop, I told myself that when, and not if, he turned that violence against me it was going to be physical and extreme: “Get out as quickly as you can, before anything happens,” I told myself. However, leaving a relationship which is really wonderful, and potentially, but not yet violent, isn’t easy to do. So I told myself to do it while the memory of this event was still vivid in my mind.
I’d always told myself, as everyone does, that if a man were violent, I would leave. Some woman, perhaps especially well-educated professional women think: “It will never happen to me.” What nobody knows is what they will actually do versus what they think they will do. And I know from having been attacked more than once, that knowing how you handled an extreme situation once doesn’t indicate how you’ll handle it a second time. Anyway, I couldn’t leave Loïc immediately because we were still living in the hotel which has company was paying for, and I had no money of my own. I’d found a job, but there was a two month delay before it started, and once I started working, it would take months to save up to get a place of my own for airfare and shipping. And then there was the question of where to go. My belongings were all in France, and I preferred the idea of returning there than to the US, but I didn’t have a work visa for France, but then I didn’t have a clue what I’d do in the US. Most of all I wanted to stay in Japan, but the obstacles to doing so were enormous. There was time to think it through, or so I hoped.
When I mention that my ex was violent, most people assume that it was in the heat of an argument, and when I say: “No, not at all. Usually we weren’t even arguing,” they reply: “Oh, well then was he an alcoholic?” “No, he was a tea toatler.” From what I’ve read on domestic violence, what it always comes down to is the issue of control. The first time Loïc was violent it cold-blooded and pre-meditated. Clearly, he had an agenda, as I was able to observe in later incidents where he tried to assert his superiority and power.
Loïc worked into the wee hours of the night and on weekends, whereas I worked a light schedule, so naturally I was in charge of all household duties, and keeping the apartment tidy. He started leaving his socks around and snapping at me to pick them up, which caused some discord because while I was happy to clean, I felt he could pick up his own socks, and that he was leaving them around deliberately. When we went to bed each night, we each folded our clothes and set them down on our sides of the futon. One night he ordered me to put my clothes in the closet. When I pointed out that his clothes were also next to the futon, he said we weren’t discussing them, we we discussing mine, and then ordered me again to put my clothes away. When I said I wasn’t there to follow his orders, he lept up, pinned me down, and began pounding his fist on my head while pulling my hair upwards, creating a torsion in my neck, which threw it out of line. It was excruciatingly painful, worse than any pain I’d experienced, worse than when I’d been attacked by two men and had my head kicked in with a steel toed boot, because the beating went on and on. He just wouldn’t stop. I screamed and screamed as long and loudly as I could, afraid for my life. Still he didn’t stop. “Why haven’t the neighbours come? Why haven’t the police come? It’s a five minute walk from the police station to here, they should be here by now! They’re not coming! Will he ever stop?” When he did finally stop, it really was a good five minutes that he’d beaten me, but with that level of pain it seemed like a hell of a lot longer. All he said afterwards was that it was my fault, because I wasn’t French, a French woman would have been more obedient. I seriously doubt that, but it wasn’t a random excuse. The beating was a gambit to gain control over me by instilling fear into me.
I went into a severe state of shock that lasted for a good week and then transformed into a profound depressive state that made it nearly impossible to think through my situation. I was half way around the world from both my homes, didn’t yet have any friends with whom to talk, and I didn’t contact my parents because I was sure that they wouldn’t be helpful. The only person to whom I spoke of it was my osteopath. The next time I went in for an appointment to work on my bad hip, he looked at me and asked me what had happened to my neck. It was amazing that he was able to see that from across the room. Embarrassed, I replied that I’d taken a bad blow to my head during karate practice. He approached, took a good look at my neck, and said: “No, someone took your head and twisted it around.” We didn’t talk much more about it, he just switched to working on my neck instead of my hip.
I’d had tinnitus, a ringing in my ears, since I was thirteen. It started the same day my migraines started, and has never stopped since. It’s said to be in your ears, but I hear it as localised in my head not my ears. Anyway, after the beating, it became horribly loud, erratic, and unbalanced to the side that the beating had been on. To this day it is louder on the left side of my head. But something much deeper down inside myself broke. I can’t say what exactly, I just have the word “broken” to describe it. I’ve healed a lot since then, but “broken” is still there, the healing is not complete.
Loïc and I were still in the honeymoon stage of our relationship when we moved to Japan. One day in the first months we were there, he went with me to a professional photo lab that had done a batch of prints for me which were washed out grey machine prints, not the handmade professional prints I’d expected, and I didn’t want to pay for them. Instead of initiating a discussion with them, he flipped a switch, and went into a shouting rage. I’d never seen anything like it before in public. The poor Japanese, for whom any conflict is anathema, were trembling with fear. As we walked out of the shop, I told myself that when, and not if, he turned that violence against me it was going to be physical and extreme: “Get out as quickly as you can, before anything happens,” I told myself. However, leaving a relationship which is really wonderful, and potentially, but not yet violent, isn’t easy to do. So I told myself to do it while the memory of this event was still vivid in my mind.
I’d always told myself, as everyone does, that if a man were violent, I would leave. Some woman, perhaps especially well-educated professional women think: “It will never happen to me.” What nobody knows is what they will actually do versus what they think they will do. And I know from having been attacked more than once, that knowing how you handled an extreme situation once doesn’t indicate how you’ll handle it a second time. Anyway, I couldn’t leave Loïc immediately because we were still living in the hotel which has company was paying for, and I had no money of my own. I’d found a job, but there was a two month delay before it started, and once I started working, it would take months to save up to get a place of my own for airfare and shipping. And then there was the question of where to go. My belongings were all in France, and I preferred the idea of returning there than to the US, but I didn’t have a work visa for France, but then I didn’t have a clue what I’d do in the US. Most of all I wanted to stay in Japan, but the obstacles to doing so were enormous. There was time to think it through, or so I hoped.
When I mention that my ex was violent, most people assume that it was in the heat of an argument, and when I say: “No, not at all. Usually we weren’t even arguing,” they reply: “Oh, well then was he an alcoholic?” “No, he was a tea toatler.” From what I’ve read on domestic violence, what it always comes down to is the issue of control. The first time Loïc was violent it cold-blooded and pre-meditated. Clearly, he had an agenda, as I was able to observe in later incidents where he tried to assert his superiority and power.
Loïc worked into the wee hours of the night and on weekends, whereas I worked a light schedule, so naturally I was in charge of all household duties, and keeping the apartment tidy. He started leaving his socks around and snapping at me to pick them up, which caused some discord because while I was happy to clean, I felt he could pick up his own socks, and that he was leaving them around deliberately. When we went to bed each night, we each folded our clothes and set them down on our sides of the futon. One night he ordered me to put my clothes in the closet. When I pointed out that his clothes were also next to the futon, he said we weren’t discussing them, we we discussing mine, and then ordered me again to put my clothes away. When I said I wasn’t there to follow his orders, he lept up, pinned me down, and began pounding his fist on my head while pulling my hair upwards, creating a torsion in my neck, which threw it out of line. It was excruciatingly painful, worse than any pain I’d experienced, worse than when I’d been attacked by two men and had my head kicked in with a steel toed boot, because the beating went on and on. He just wouldn’t stop. I screamed and screamed as long and loudly as I could, afraid for my life. Still he didn’t stop. “Why haven’t the neighbours come? Why haven’t the police come? It’s a five minute walk from the police station to here, they should be here by now! They’re not coming! Will he ever stop?” When he did finally stop, it really was a good five minutes that he’d beaten me, but with that level of pain it seemed like a hell of a lot longer. All he said afterwards was that it was my fault, because I wasn’t French, a French woman would have been more obedient. I seriously doubt that, but it wasn’t a random excuse. The beating was a gambit to gain control over me by instilling fear into me.
I went into a severe state of shock that lasted for a good week and then transformed into a profound depressive state that made it nearly impossible to think through my situation. I was half way around the world from both my homes, didn’t yet have any friends with whom to talk, and I didn’t contact my parents because I was sure that they wouldn’t be helpful. The only person to whom I spoke of it was my osteopath. The next time I went in for an appointment to work on my bad hip, he looked at me and asked me what had happened to my neck. It was amazing that he was able to see that from across the room. Embarrassed, I replied that I’d taken a bad blow to my head during karate practice. He approached, took a good look at my neck, and said: “No, someone took your head and twisted it around.” We didn’t talk much more about it, he just switched to working on my neck instead of my hip.
I’d had tinnitus, a ringing in my ears, since I was thirteen. It started the same day my migraines started, and has never stopped since. It’s said to be in your ears, but I hear it as localised in my head not my ears. Anyway, after the beating, it became horribly loud, erratic, and unbalanced to the side that the beating had been on. To this day it is louder on the left side of my head. But something much deeper down inside myself broke. I can’t say what exactly, I just have the word “broken” to describe it. I’ve healed a lot since then, but “broken” is still there, the healing is not complete.
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