Of all the things I've put on my homepages, this is the most difficult, so please bear with me. I knew that I would have to include something about domestic violence, but it's still very hard for me to truly personalise my experience. In the same vein, I find it very hard to think of myself as a 'survivor'.

When I hear the word survivor, I think of women who have made endless visits to emergency rooms, women who's lives have been endangered by their partners, women who have spent years planning to leave, women who leave with nothing but their children and the clothes on their backs. I am none of these things, but I am here and safe and so is my daughter.

When I met Simone's father I'd come out of a very intense 4 year long relationship. This man and I tried really hard to love each other during those 4 years, but seemed doomed only to hurt each other. It took a very long time for us to finally relinquish the relationship. It tasted of failure to say goodbye, but finally we did.

For the year before the relationship ended, I'd been living on my own and had spent that time finding my way back to myself . Some months after the end, I felt I needed to see new people. I made a date to have a beer with an old ex of mine, just to chat and feel what it was like to be back in the world.

I walked into the neighbourhood bar and saw Richard sitting on his own having a meal. We had a passing acquaintance with each other, having worked together on a show some years before. We chatted briefly and exchanged addresses, and then I went to join my friends.

About a week later Richard and I bumped into each other again. He lived only a street away from me. He came in for coffee and we kind of caught up with each other. We arranged to go out together "sometime" in the next week. At the time it didn't seem like a date to me.

We went out, ate sushi and drank too much sake, all the while pouring our souls onto the delicately curved shrimp. He talked of wanting to settle down (he's 12 year older than me), of leaving his then girlfriend, finding someone younger and having a child with her. I could feel myself falling into something, and I didn't want to stop.

He had spoken magical words; settle down, have a baby. He seemed so gentle. He was so gentle. My mind spun as my body responded to him in a way it hadn't for years. I felt happy.

I got sick and he nursed me back to health. We laughed a lot. I felt I could be 'me' with him. He had a childlike innocence that drew me.

But there were problems. He was critical of me, one night calling me " an old spinster" because I just wanted to stay in.

"He just uses language strangely", I said to myself. I told him it was OK to criticise my behaviour, but criticising my personality would get us nowhere. Still the criticism continued. Outbursts of bile from the blue. I walked home in the middle of the night often.

All the while, we kept talking about having a baby.

The relationship continued to rollercoaster between fabulous evenings and horrible fights.

I recorded one such evening in my journal as a story of some kind and then totally forgot that I’d ever written it. On finding it again recently I was astounded by the pain I felt reading it. It gave me great insight into the relationship. It follows here.

She called. He answered but sounded out of breath.

“Did I disturb you?"

Somewhere, some part of her expected him to say, breathlessly, “Can I call you back, I’m just in the middle of something” his code phrase when the telephone disturbed their lovemaking.

“No, I just got in and I’m having a beer. Shall we go out and get something to eat and then do what we have to do.”

They hadn’t seen each other for more than a week, hadn’t made love for that long. For her doing what they had to do seemed obvious. They would slip into each other and try to find those gorgeous glowing spots that would leave them both satisfied.

Over dinner they talked about his jobs the previous weekend, how at the music festival people had woken up to find someone hanging from a rather morbid decorative noose in the bar where they had played. They laughed about the other muso’s. He asked about her weekend with her parents.

“The thing is that my father has been talking like someone who knows that his best before date is approaching.”

He frowned.

“He talks as if he knows he is going to die soon.”

His eyes held something she could not quite see. She knew that talk of parents and death brought about a strange half-pain in him. He had just 8 months before helped ease his mother over to the other, less pained, non-malignant side.

“I have come to realise” he said, “that because I believe her spirit is somewhere better, I don’t miss her. I don't miss the physical side of her.”

Her eyes held something. He caught a glimpse of it.

She had seen him, a smile on his face and tears in his eyes.

“I was thinking about my mother, she’s dead.”

The laughter and the tears fell out of his face as he finished the sentence. She had been there.

Maybe he felt that.

He sat back. “I don’t know’ he mumbled as if he knew he had been caught telling a half truth. One of those we invent on the spur of the moment.

“Maybe the thing about parents dying is to do with what we want to do with our lives. Whether we’ve achieved that or not. If I were to get home tonight and hear that my father had dropped dead, there is only one thing I would regret for the rest of my life and that would be that he didn’t hang around long enough to see a grandchild from me.”

Words passed and then. “I understand your parents desire for a grandchild but I don’t see that continuity with us.”

Responding to her frown he said, “Maybe I don’t want to have a child anymore.”

She watched the words fall out of his mouth in something like slow-motion, saw that they were heading straight for her heart and allowed her heart to step back and away from them. They fell somewhere close where she could hear them though.

“You’ve said that before” she said from somewhere far away.

“Maybe I don’t think you’re the person I want to have a child with. Maybe now is not the time.” She was smiling and nodding.

Other things were said.

Then “I don’t think you’ve come to terms with your sexuality. I think you have to ask yourself why you didn’t get married after school. Why you don’t have a child.”

All the time she was smiling. Politely asking him to explain things to her that she didn’t understand, trying not to get upset or angry because, at the ordering of their second bottle of wine he had looked up at her earnestly and said, “we’re not going to fight are we.”

“No” she had replied.

Again, this time with something that sounded to her like malice. “You are more at ease with other people than with the person you’re having a relationship with. You spend more time outside this relationship than in it. You’re pathetic. You have to stand up for yourself. You go somewhere and you expect people to treat you as if you are precious.”

At first she tried to find out what the link was between all these things and then realised that she couldn’t because she was listening to what he was saying and not to what he wasn’t saying.

“I think you’re trying to express something that you’re not saying.”

“I don’t mean any of these things as an insult. I just think we need to say them. And now that we’ve said them let’s not talk about them any more OK” settling sideways on his chair as if to open himself to the restaurant.

In her head she thought, “we haven’t said anything. You’ve said a whole lot and I’m not even sure that you’ve said all that you need to say. In fact I’m beginning to understand what you want to say.”- Lets eat and do what we have to do. - “But there are some things that you’ve said that maybe I will want to talk about later.”

She said OK, but he had seen something in her eyes. She saw him angry for the first time. They drove home in silence. Stopped outside her door he said curtly;

“I am going home to sleep now. I am tired.”

Suddenly his hand was in hers. She squeezed and thanked him, said goodbye and then got out of the car. He was moving off before she even passed the back of it.

A part of her thinks, “Fuck I really am hopeless at this relationship thing. Yes, I do expect my friends to treat me as precious, because that is the way I see them, precious, and I handle them with no less love than I expect from them. This is not a bad thing. This is a life skill that I have learnt. No, I will not hang around this relationship while you spend your time looking out for the right person to mother your unborn child. I would rather be alone without anyone than alone in a relationship.”

Then I discovered that I was pregnant. I knew this would place strain on the already buckling relationship. My first entry in my pregnancy journal, was about whether I would have the strength to be a single mother. I also knew that I wanted that baby more than anything.

The first weekend of my pregnancy we spent away with some friends. I remember feeling cold and miserable and not wanting Richard near me. Suddenly the boyish charm seemed fake. The fact that he was scared of the dark scared me. The fact that he was too proud and macho to ask for help with his car angered me.

I chalked up most of my reactions to pregnancy hormones, but he didn't help the situation. We fought everywhere - in the doctor's surgery, in the car, at home. I was called a bitch more times than I care to remember, and all the while I blamed it all on my own moodiness and insecurity. I gave him books to read on pregnancy, trying to get him involved and hoping that he would be more understanding of what I was going through. We fought about the books.

I finally decided not to see him as often, as I just couldn't deal with the strain. We communicated by telephone, but it was all very tentative.

On Friday the 5th of December 1997, my mother and I had been invited for drinks to celebrate a friend's birthday. All day I wrestled with the question of whether to invite Richard or not. At the last minute I decided to call and invite him. He agreed to pick me up and off we went. I was determined NOT to have a fight. I was determined to have a good evening with friends and family.

At first he was Mr Charming, laughing, talking, holding my hand. I felt grateful that I'd made the right decision to ask him along. At one point I commented on how hard his hands were (he's a percussionist) and kissed them.

After dinner I felt his mood change. His body language began to exclude himself from the rest of the party. I turned to him and very quietly said that he should tell me if he wasn't having a good time anymore, that I was ready to leave. He snarled back that we would leave when he was good and ready and that he didn't need me to tell him when to leave. I looked at him with genuine shock at his outburst. "And don't give me attitude!" he added.

Shocked, embarrassed and angry, I slowly left the table and went to the toilet to try and calm down. I kept repeating; "I will not make a scene, I will not make a scene!" I decided that I would say no more about the incident that night. We could deal with it in the morning, when I was more clear-headed and he, more sober.

A little while later he announced that we were ready to leave. I saw the look of concern on my mother's face as we said goodbye.

In the car I was silent. He asked if I was fine and I nodded. He snorted and then was quiet. We arrived outside my house and I thanked him for the evening and for the ride and told him that we would talk in the morning. I got out of the car and gently closed the door. As I approached my gate he shouted: "Trevi, you shouldn't sulk like this.” I didn't look back, but slapped a smile on my face and said; "I'm not sulking". He continued; "Because if you do I'll give you a small smack!" I didn't reply, didn't look back, unlocked my door, stepped into my sanctuary and sighed with relief. I heard his tires spin as he pulled off. That squealing sound still makes my hair stand on end. Then I heard the squealing getting closer. "He's coming back," I thought. My reptile brain told me not to open the door, not to let him in, but when he bashed on the door, like a fool I opened it. I suppose I still felt safe as I was inside my house and he was on the other side of my burglar door.

Right now I don't remember all of what we said to each other on either side of that door. I remember saying to him, screaming to him, "and what do you mean by attitude!" "I'll show you what attitude is", he said as he struck me on the mouth, through the door, in my house, with his hard hand, his hand that I'd kissed not an hour before.

I reeled back with the force of the blow and thought crazily "hey, it's true, you really do see stars!" I must have shut the door. He must have left, but I remember nothing for a while.

Then I was sitting on my bed crying, sobbing as I never have in my whole life feeling all the shame, fear, sadness, loneliness of a life time. I don't know how long I sat there. Eventually the tears and blood and snot had dried up, and so I felt, had my heart. I felt empty.

I got into bed and fell instantly into a fitful shock-sleep and woke at about 2 am. As I surfaced from sleep I realised I had a hollow feeling in my stomach. I knew something was wrong, but couldn't think what it was. It was like slowly waking to a nightmare. I felt the throb of my mouth and it all came crashing in on me again. I began to cry, dryly and loudly, wailing almost, when I felt another throb, and then again. My baby kicked. She chose that unholy night, that unholy hour to announce her presence in the physical world. I wrapped myself around us both and went back to sleep.

The next morning I was in a panic, not knowing what to do, not knowing who to call. I couldn’t face telling my mother. I knew I couldn’t continue the relationship, but I kept thinking that this was the father of my baby, and how would I manage. Finally, desperate with my own silence, I called POWA (People Opposing Women Abuse) and left my details with their paging service. I was glad there was no-one there because as soon as I dialled the number I felt foolish. “You don’t need their help, they have other, more needy women to speak to,” I told myself.

Then the phone rang. It was someone from POWA. I was stunned. I told my story. She listened. I listened to myself tell her that I was never going to see him again, ask her if I was doing the right thing, apologise for wasting her time.

She assured me that I was doing the right thing, that I was brave and strong for calling, that I wasn’t wasting her time. I instantly believed her.

Suddenly I needed to talk to someone else. I called my friend from next door and asked if I could come over. Told her that I had a swollen lip and didn’t want to upset her son, but that I really needed to talk to someone. She told me to come over right away.

I walked in, pointed to my mouth and heard myself say “This is his shame, not mine.”

I have come to realise that statement is true. I then told my parents who supported my choice not to be involved with him. I never hide the reason behind my single motherhood. I love my daughter more than life itself, and every time I look at her, so confident, smart and strong, I know I made the right choice.

Right now we have no dealings with Simone’s father. He pays no maintenance for her. At one point I was so poor that I broke down and called him asking for money. He told me to "F- off", that he didn't feel he had any responsibility to the situation, that the world didn't revolve around me and my daughter. I took ANOTHER loan from my parents and have never again approached him for financial support even though I am legally entitled to. I feel it would give him a sense of entitlement over Simone and I. I have been advised by a lawyer referred to me by Nisaa Institute for Women's Development that I would be fully entitled at any time, for as long as Simone is a minor, to apply for maintenance from him. At one point he had some visits, but the verbal abuse began again, and after a particularly painful racial slur against my family, (he’s white and I am not) I stopped letting him come to the house. He seems to have lost interest though and I’m happy to leave it at that right now.

I’m sitting here thinking of an ending to this ‘story’, but there isn’t one. This is my life.

I will update this page if there are any further developments.

If you feel you are in an abusive relationship, or think you know someone who might be, visit some of the links to get assistance and understanding.

Remember too that abuse is ANY pattern of behaviour that controls another person, causes physical harm or fear, makes someone do things they do not want to do, or prevents them from doing things they do want to do. Abuse can be verbal, emotional, physical, sexual, material or financial.