I drove to pick up the kids without the radio on this week. Driving is usually my thinking time anyway but I felt like I needed to pay extra attention to my thoughts. My inner voice is often quietened by the busy lifestyle I lead. I work full time in a nine day fortnight. I have two bright and energetic kids. My father is terminally ill. I like to stay active. All this means I have precious little "me time.
So on my drive a million things flowed through my mind. My children. My boyfriend. My father. My mother. My sister. My troubled teen of a nephew. My sick niece. My best friend. My job. The usual suspects.
But the repeating theme was my mental health. There is no doubt that I struggled with my separation and, nearly three and a half years later, my divorce is finally through. On Monday at 1000 I was officially unmarried. It was a non event in the end. No email confirmation from Births Deaths and Marriages. So I logged into my online account and had to put on my wet suit and go deep diving in search of the documentation. Fifteen minutes later (that site needs a serious overhaul) I find the divorce papers and email them to my ex.
Now, I would never be one to have a divorce party (honestly, I find them disrespectful and inappropriate) but I would have liked a nice lunch or dinner to mark the end of an emotionally draining time of my life. However, with my father in hospital, it turned out that there was no time for such frivolities.
So, I drove in the silence of my beautiful new car, and thought through the journey I have been on.
As a teen I was quietly confident. I knew what I wanted and I knew how to get there. I studied hard, played plenty of sport and had a solid friendship group. I was happy.
In uni I was dating a guy that ended up being a complete jerk. I moved to a country town in second year where I was away from said boyfriend four nights a week. Apparently it was impossible for him to keep it in his pants for that long and he had an affair. I'm not sure how long it was going on for when I found out but I don't tolerate such behaviour. As such, I ended the relationship. This marks the start in the decline of my mental health.
The boy in question (and I refer to him as a boy because a grown man should not behave in such a way) lost it. He had it in his mind that he wanted to marry me and could not cope with the fact that I was not interested in being with him anymore (at this point I was singing in my head Katy Perry's Dark Horse). He became obsessive. He would call me hundreds of times a day. He would make midnight trips from Melbourne to try to beg me to take him back. He would stalk me at work. In short he made my life a living hell.
I got a new phone number. I had campus security on alert for his car at uni. I had my locks changed. I called the police. Many times.
I started having trouble sleeping. I saw a psychologist. My grades were dropping. I was on high alert all the time.
On a train trip home from the city he tracked me down and raped me. While I reported it to the police they persuaded me not to put in a formal charge as convictions against a known predator were not often successful. I was warned that of the case went to court I would have to relive the events of the day. I was essentially bullied into walking away from the police station without completing paperwork that would give, in the words of one of the male officers, a "heartbroken young man" a criminal conviction.
Sadly, that's not the worst of it. The pinnacle was the night he drove from Melbourne to my country campus and too all my sleeping meds with a fuckton of vodka. A near lethal combo of Valium, various other prescription pain medication and a bottle and a half of Smirnoff. I came back from a game of netball to find him unconscious on my bedroom floor. My lock had been broken. My room was a mess. He was laying on my floor. Lifeless. I called into the corridor for help and help came. One of the guys I played netball with and my now ex husband helped me man handle him into a car and we drove at top speed to the local rural hospital.
I called the paramedics. Through my fear and rage I managed to get instructions on how to induce vomiting. I tried and tried to make him throw up with no response. We met the ambulance on the bridge over the highway. I will never forget that night.
It was a cold night. The kind there must hangs low and frost forms on the grass. I was still in my netball gear but I didn't feel the freeze. I was in a panic.
I mindlessly jumped into the ambulance and held his hand. I loathed the man for what he had done to me but I did not want him to die. I remember the ambulance officer telling me sit behind him; hold onto him and to speak to him. I have no idea what I said.
I recall phoning his mother from the ambulance as two paramedics worked to bring him back. A lovely lady, his mother apologised; told me her son was a fool to muck me around. I recall telling her through my tears to get in the car and get to the hospital. Her son was dying in my arms. He spent nearly a week in hospital but he survived.
The mind is all powerful.
