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    For Bad and for Worse: A Diary of Abuse
    For Bad and for Worse: A Diary of Abuse
    For Bad and for Worse: A Diary of Abuse
    Ebook100 pages1 hour

    For Bad and for Worse: A Diary of Abuse

    By Astrid van Buren van Duym

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    About this ebook

    A diary about mostly mental abuse during fourteen-year marriage, the diary starts with the separation and flashbacks about the earlier years.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAuthorHouse UK
    Release dateApr 25, 2016
    ISBN9781524632687
    For Bad and for Worse: A Diary of Abuse

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      Book preview

      For Bad and for Worse - Astrid van Buren van Duym

      AuthorHouse™ UK

      1663 Liberty Drive

      Bloomington, IN 47403 USA

      www.authorhouse.co.uk

      Phone: 0800.197.4150

      © 2016 Astrid van Buren van Duym. All rights reserved.

      No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

      Published by AuthorHouse   04/20/2016

      ISBN: 978-1-5246-3269-4 (sc)

      ISBN: 978-1-5246-3270-0 (hc)

      ISBN: 978-1-5246-3268-7 (e)

      Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

      Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

      Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

      37504.png

      This is the true story of my marriage filled with psychical but more mental abuse, I was pushed nearly over the edge but I managed to keep it together and get out, I have cried so much that I have no tears left, my feelings are numb, I can’t get excited or sad over anything anymore, and it’s awful to feel that way, I so desperately want to FEEL again and I hope by writing it all down I can put it behind me and start a life with no fear and no abuse.

      When your husband often puts you down, hits you and tells you to shut up when you say or do anything he does not like, tells you that you are fat, although you are a size 10, then somehow you recognize other women in a similar position, I was driving along the road, down south, near the coast, when I saw this woman, she was sitting on a little wall, in a floral dress holding her bag, she was mid-sixties and although there were a lot of people walking about on this sunny day, she looked so lonely and lost, then I spotted the man, he was walking on the other side of the road, looking at her and pointing 2 fingers to his eyes: as if to say I am watching you, I could feel the woman’s fear and then it came to me as a shock, that is me in a few years’ time if I don’t get out.

      Because I have no family I can talk to, and was always too proud to tell other people about my husband’s behavior, I decided to start this diary, just before the separation and subsequent divorce.

      Of course many colleagues have seen my black eyes and strangulation marks but only one girl, whom I used to work with knew the truth and she helped me making excuses, whether people believed them or not, I did not really care as long as they stopped asking funny questions.

      I did some research about his behavior and I think he suffers from narcissistic personality disorder, he has all the symptoms, he often asked me why I loved him and I would have to give him 10 reasons, when I asked him the same question about me, he did not get any further then 2 reasons but made a joke about it, he would ask me all the time if I thought the dogs loved him, he walked out of jobs constantly when somebody would say a wrong word to him: nobody talks to me like that, he says he is surrounded by idiots and clowns and I am the biggest one, he is the only one that understands it all, he is very arrogant and he always needs to be listened to, he won’t let anybody express their opinions or ideas.

      People always used to walk away from us in pubs, we start talking with some nice people, well, HE did, and within 30 min they all leave, fed up with him, but in his opinion because they were too stupid to understand him.

      He said to me once he wished I was ugly, you can understand why, his former girl friends were always on the dole and he loved it, because he was the only person who brought the money in and in his opinion that means that what he says goes.

      I sponsored a dog from a dog charity, £ 8 a month, he cancelled it because there was no need for me to do this. I worked about 40 hours a week but was not allowed to spend 8 pound a month on something I wanted to do. After the separation I put it back on.

      He got into an argument with me and his sister, because we were Facebook friends, he did not want me to be friends with her, he literally said to her: cancel your FB friendship with that thing That thing was me.

      Before I start my diary, I have to tell you the caravan story, because that was the beginning of the end.

      When we moved to England from the Netherlands, he was born in England, but worked in the Netherlands, we found a flat in the Midlands. He found a job pretty quick and I was sitting in that tiny flat all day, I did not speak the language very well and having worked all my live, I was honestly bored stiff. So what’s the obvious: right, find a job.

      When I suggested that to him he told me that I would NEVER get a job in England because I did not have a NI number. I was totally unfamiliar with British law and ways so I let it go for a bit. Then he came up with a blinder, he wanted to move to Wales, where his mother lived.

      We went to visit her earlier that year, his younger brother had moved in with his mother but had rented a place nearby and was about to move, his mother suggested to go and view this place, I answered that I would love to and then he said to me: you are like an effing rash.

      I could see that his mother and brother were disgusted by what he said, I felt so humiliated I could only just hold back my tears.

      But she lived near the sea so I was very excited about moving there, it has always been my dream to live near the coast, we went to Wales and bought a static caravan, we packed everything up, put it all in the car and off we went, as the flat was rented furnished, we only had our personal stuff to take, it was great at first but finding an engineering job was not easy so he started drinking and with that the abuse started again.

      On several occasions he threw me out of the caravan at night, and while I was sitting on the steps I heard him make a phone call to his ex in the Netherlands, another time, when I was sitting on the bloody steps again, he hung out of the little window and pulled a lot of hair out of my head, I had such a headache, believe me, sometimes the security men of the campsite put me in an old caravan for the night and once he rang the police because he wanted me out of his sight and they took me to a small hotel, it was a nightmare.

      He kept drinking, one evening he wanted me to come with him to the pub, he got talking to a girl and I knew he fancied her because he was putting up the jovial nice guy act, later that evening he told me to go to the caravan, he would make sure that this girl and her massive bold boyfriend, who was terribly drunk, would come safely to their caravan, what a load of nonsense, I told him that surely they did not need him for that, but he insisted and I went, I did not want to upset him again as you can understand.

      About an hour later, he came back, his shirt covered in blood, shouting he needed a clean shirt, and off he went. I was gob smacked, never saw him again that night, the next day, the boyfriend and the girl pulled up in their car, asking me where he was, the boyfriend literally said: I am not gonna give you a hard time, love, because I have heard what he has done to you, but tell him not to come back here

      Then he and the girl told me that he tried it on with her and that escalated into a fight. That was the end of another dream, we had to sell the caravan back to the site, obviously with a loss, went back to the same town, lived in a hotel for a few weeks and then, you won’t believe this, we rented back the same flat. The best thing was that a few weeks later he grumbled that he did not like it in Wales anyway.

      One night we came back from the pub and for some reason he did not let me in the flat, I must have said something that he did not appreciate, it was winter and ever so cold. I had to sit on the landing while he was warm inside the flat. My biggest problem was that I had to use the bathroom so I banged on the door and pleaded for him to let me in, he came storming out in a t-shirt and boxers and the door slammed

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