Author: Teal Beyond Purple

The perfect beginning, it starts small

You’ll always hear professionals say that domestic violence (DV) starts small. Everyone I knew thought that I was the most confident person who would never tolerate a violent partner. They were wrong.

In the beginning it all seemed perfect and I didn’t see it coming. Many people wonder how could someone so confident be so naive? Because it does, in fact, start small.

We met when I was taking leave from a degree that I was apparently good at, I’d always had excellent grades. It’s been seven years now so I don’t even recall why I was taking that break. After we’d been together for a while, he learned I wanted to return to university. He seemed very supportive and wanted me to focus on full time study.

I was working a job I didn’t love and had met this man who had swept me off my feet. He encouraged me to leave my job, and ‘we’ decided that we could afford to live very comfortably solely on his income. At the time, I thought that gesture made him the most wonderful man in the world. I just wish I’d seen his ulterior motive.

It turned out, that wonderful gesture was only the beginning of his controlling behavior and eventual physical violence. I had to leave that degree, and it’s unlikely I will ever go back due to the PTSD effects my life with him caused. Whilst this brief return to study was the beginning of the hardest time of my life, it was also the perfect beginning of some friendships, two ladies who have become life long friends.

It can start small, so small that nobody will see it coming.

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Where to begin?

So I wanted to begin a blog, the diary of the twenty first century, but how to approach it? I thought about many names to describe this journey but why did I choose Teal Beyond Purple? A colour theme may lead some to believe this could be the blog of an artist, it is not. Here you will find the journey, the highs and the lows of living with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), represented by Teal, beyond Domestic Violence, represented by purple . My journey began in 2011, but PTSD began to show its true colours in 2014.

I recall one night a couple of years ago I was out with friends, a couple of nice, polite gentlemen sat down for a chat. They weren’t rude, obnoxious or sleazy, but these men changed my ability to be open about my condition for a very long time. One of the guys had been talking about why he started his health business, his sister had died of cancer, I felt he was being open and honest, so I was safe to do the same. I don’t recall why but the conversation around PTSD was raised. I knew both of men were either part of, or formally military. I did not expect them to be adamant that PTSD only happens to military personnel and there’s no way that Domestic Violence could cause PTSD like that a soldier would suffer. This happened at the beginning of 2014, after that I began to hide my PTSD symptoms the best I could and it’s taken me almost two years to be ready to talk about it again.

You will always find honesty and raw emotions in my posts. This disease does not consume my every day, I live a normal, seemingly happy life. What would I like you to take from this post? Please, never shut down someone when they open up to you, whether it be health related or otherwise. Few people in the world will talk about a serious topic for their own self enjoyment. Be supportive, be caring and be kind to one another.

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