I Did Tell, I Did

by Cassie Harte

  But he was the doctor and he told me I had to, so I did. What happened next was horrific. The first two days weren’t too bad but on the third day I awoke in a cold sweat. Panic overcame me and I shook so violently that I couldn’t stand. All that day I felt as though nothing was real, as though I was standing outside myself looking in. That night I had dreadful nightmares. I awoke to the walls closing in on me and I was terrified—of what, I didn’t know. Over the next two days I lapsed in and out of terror, panic, sickness and violent shaking fits. At one stage I went out into the garden naked and tried to dig a hole in the soil with my bare hands so that I could hide in it. Then I cut my head on a wall during a panic attack. I couldn’t see clearly. One minute I couldn’t move and the next I was running from room to room like a creature possessed. I spent the sixth night huddled in my cloakroom, desperately trying to crawl under the S-bend of the toilet and wanting to die.

  Finally a close friend took me back to my GP. I looked dreadful. I’d lost a lot of weight and had barely slept during the week. I told the doctor what had happened and asked him for help, but he told me categorically that there were no withdrawal effects with benzodiazepine drugs. He didn’t believe that what I was suffering was caused by the tranquillisers. He thought it was all in my mind but said that if I couldn’t pull myself together then I had better keep taking the tablets.

  I went home feeling broken. If what the GP said was true, I must be going insane. I decided that enough was enough. I could take no more. My head was exploding with the cruelty, the abuse, the failures. I couldn’t continue like this. Perhaps I should finish it.

  What happened next is a blur. My girls were at a friend’s house, so I knew they would be out of the way. I took the tablets that this doctor had given me and started to swallow the amount he had prescribed. I’m not sure what I was going to do next—I don’t think I was going to take an overdose—but before I had taken very many pills a friend of mine arrived and, seeing my distress, she called an ambulance. It could have been a cry for help—who knows? The ambulance men were very understanding and made sure I was OK then left. If it hadn’t been for them, and my friend, I might not have survived. But I was alive—and back on the pills.

  Over the next weeks and months I didn’t seem able to think straight because of the medication but decided that if I had to stay on it for life, then that’s the way it had to be. For years it had been part of my daily routine to check that I had enough pills with me before I left the house. Most women check their bags to make sure they have their purse and keys; I checked for my tablets. When I needed more, I just rang the surgery, collected a prescription the next day and took it to the chemist. No questions asked, no hesitation. I would just have to carry on this way because I couldn’t face the alternative.

  After things settled down again, I decided to look for a job and soon found one, working as a receptionist in an accountancy firm. I enjoyed the work and knew I was good at it. There was a nice bunch of people there and I was treated well.

  Then, after the firm’s Christmas dance, one of the junior partners, a man called John, gave me a lift home and kissed me on the doorstep. He was very attractive and I knew lots of the girls at the office fancied him, so I was flattered. I’d got the impression previously that he was married but he told me that he and his wife were separated and filing for divorce, so that was OK. We had a whirlwind romance from the Christmas of 1981 and got married in July 1982. My mother actually came to this wedding, so impressed was she by John’s exalted career and secure financial status. At last her failure of a daughter had married someone with money and position, and she was delighted.

  I should have recognised that the drugs I was taking had affected my powers of reason and judgement. I knew that I wasn’t really functioning properly, but I was so desperate to be loved and wanted that I was vulnerable to making the wrong decisions, the wrong choices.

  It wasn’t long before my fairytale marriage began to lose its lustre. First of all I had a call from the manager of the hotel where we’d had our wedding reception to say that the bill hadn’t been paid. John tried to lie his way out of this before confessing to me that he had ‘forgotten’. Then I found out that he hadn’t been paying the insurance premiums and when one of my cats fell through the roof of our neighbours’ conservatory and they charged us for the damage, it turned out that we weren’t covered. When I confronted John about this, he lost his temper and started hitting out at objects round the house. What else didn’t I know about?

  A few weeks later I was out with some girlfriends on a hen night when a man came over and called me a marriage wrecker. I had no idea what he was talking about. He explained that he was John’s ex-brother-in-law and dropped the bombshell that his sister’s marriage to John had only broken up after she discovered that he was engaged to me! I had no idea that John was still living with his wife when he asked me to marry him, but lots of things fell into place at that moment and I realised it was true.

  What this man said made sense of a few things that had worried me or confused me during my engagement. But I never for one minute thought John was still married whilst we were planning our wedding. I knew he could lie—he had been doing that throughout our very short marriage—but this was different, this was unforgivable. By lying to his wife, he had implicated me. How dare he!

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ John said when I confronted him. ‘You’ve got the wrong end of the stick. Whoever told you needs to get their facts straight.’

  ‘It was your brother-in-law, your wife’s brother. He should know. He said she was devastated and had a breakdown when she found out about us.’ I could feel the panic rising in my stomach. ‘How could you do this, to her and to me?’

  I wasn’t ready for what happened next. I didn’t see it coming. But I felt it.

  I reeled back as the force of his hand knocked me off my feet. Did he just do that? How could he? How could he hit me? I hadn’t done anything wrong.

  The following day he said he was sorry. I was still in shock. This couldn’t go wrong. I couldn’t have another marriage break-up—my third. I had to make it work. I had to believe him. I tried to tell myself that it was a one-off, that it wouldn’t happen again.

  But it always does. This was just the beginning of a different kind of horror.

  As the days went on I found John out in many lies and he always managed to talk me round into believing he would change—but he didn’t.

  Then one evening as we were dressing for a party, he asked me to strip off in front of him and face the mirror. I don’t know why this made me feel uneasy—perhaps it brought back horrible memories—but I refused. He became very animated and insisted I had to strip off in front of him. I was becoming scared, because he had hit me before, but I couldn’t do it. I froze to the spot. He stormed across the room and threw me on the bed.

  ‘You’ll do as you’re told,’ he growled.

  He tore off my clothes and proceeded to have sex with me. Rough, cruel sex. He kept hitting me while he groped my body. I was so scared that I let him do it, and when it was over he got up and left the room.

  I couldn’t cry. This was too big for tears. I felt numb and drained. I felt like a little girl again. A frightened, abused little girl.

  This was the start of a pattern of brutal sex, sexual assault and violence. It was exactly like revisiting my past. I tried to blank out what was happening, and spend my days pretending that things would be OK. I was expert at that. I knew what to do. Just wait, and it would be over soon.

  I very quickly learned to read the signs. For example, I knew it was about to happen if he came home from work and locked both the front door and the back. If I didn’t object, I told myself, if I went along with his wishes, he wouldn’t be too violent, and the quicker I gave in, the sooner it would be over.

  Then one afternoon I was putting things away in the wardrobe when I saw what I thought was a book, hidden under a jumper. I suppose I shouldn’t have looked, but
I did. When I reached up the whole pile came tumbling down and I couldn’t believe what I was looking at on the floor in front of me. Porn films! Not just soft porn but films with disgusting covers that made me feel sick. I quickly put them back. I didn’t want to look at them, didn’t want to touch them. How could he have such things in the house where my girls lived? Melissa was fourteen now and Lucy was just nine, and they could have been deeply disturbed by these images. How dare he bring them into my home? Did he watch these when he was downstairs after I had gone to bed, then come up and have sex with me? I felt ill.

  Flashbacks filled my mind. Flashbacks of the abuse and cruelty I suffered as a little girl—a little girl who had no choice but to suffer the things that were happening to her.

  But I wasn’t a little girl now and I didn’t have to endure this. I didn’t want them in my home; I didn’t want him in my home!

  That evening, when I confronted John, he said he was just storing the videos for a friend of his.

  ‘How dare you bring them here, with my little girls in the house?’ I cried. I knew I had every right to be angry. But again I wasn’t ready. I didn’t see it coming. Before I could blink, he was grabbing at my hair.

  ‘You’re hurting me, stop it!’ I cried, trying not to raise my voice in case it woke the girls.

  ‘I haven’t started yet,’ he shouted, grabbing me even harder. ‘How dare you look at my private things?’ He let go of my hair and slapped me hard across the face.

  I’d had enough; I pushed him out of the way and ran into the hall, aiming to get out the front door, but he shoved me against the banisters and put his hand around my neck, compressing it. I was terrified because he seemed like a man possessed. Then I looked up and saw my girls, my precious children, cowering at the top of the stairs.

  That was the turning point; this had to stop. With all my strength, I kicked out at him and managed to break away. I yelled up at the girls that they should go into their bedroom and close the door, then I sprinted out the front door and ran as fast as I could to the nearest phone-box, where I rang John’s mother. We had a tense relationship, because she was a doting mum who thought her son could do no wrong, but I rang her anyway because I didn’t know who else to call. I told her what had happened and asked her to ring John immediately and bring him to his senses.

  When I got back to the house there was no sign of John but the girls were cuddled up together in the bedroom and it was evident they had been crying. I comforted them as best I could until I heard John coming back with his mother. Surely she would have to stick up for me after what he had done? Surely she would tell him to go and I would be safe.

  But no.

  The surprise words from her were that I had to go. She didn’t believe me; she didn’t want to believe me. He was her son.

  ‘I want him to leave,’ I said firmly. ‘I want him to leave right now and never come back. Our marriage is over.’

  ‘He isn’t going anywhere,’ his mother said, sounding very smug. ‘This is his house, he pays the mortgage, so he is staying. You’ll have to leave.’

  ‘I can’t. I have the girls, I have nowhere to go.’ Fear gripped me for a moment.

  ‘That’s not our problem,’ his mother continued cruelly. ‘He deserves someone much better than you, and you know it.’

  Surely someone too good for me wouldn’t have lied throughout our marriage? Someone too good for me wouldn’t have slapped and punched me. Someone too good for me wouldn’t have tried to strangle me. At first I said nothing, then my neck started to sting. I put up my hand to touch the place where he had compressed my throat and that gave me the strength.

  ‘Yes, I’ll go,’ I told her. ‘I’ll go straight to the police station and tell them of the punches and slaps I have taken over the last six months. I’ll show them my throat!’ I took my hand away to show her the marks, and my husband’s mother gasped in shock and disbelief.

  They both left.

  The following day, upset and shattered, I started the proceedings to file for yet another divorce. I thought I had got it right this time but the man I married wasn’t what he pretended to be. The charm was all on the surface. Perhaps my judgement had been impaired all along. I kept making the same mistakes and getting hurt over and over again, so perhaps it was me. This couldn’t go on. Things had to change.

  Ever hopeful that one day my mother would be supportive of me and her granddaughers, I rang to tell her the news. When she heard what had happened she slammed the phone down on me, but not before saying that everything must be my fault and that John was blameless. What did I expect? Why did I even bother? The only person who could make changes in my life was me.

  A few days after John moved out, I watched a TV programme that was to change my life. It was That’s Life, presented by Esther Rantzen, and it was about dependency on GP-prescribed drugs and the problems people have stopping them. For me it was a huge wake-up call. I had been on medication for twenty-four years by that stage, a lot of the time in a fog of confusion, as though my head was filled with cotton wool. The pills had originally been prescribed to deal with headaches but they had messed with my mind, making me unable to function properly and affecting my reason and judgement. Perhaps my relationships were doomed to failure because of my inadequacies and my drug-filled life, or perhaps the men I had chosen just didn’t understand me. I don’t know, but I vowed that this last marriage would be my last mistake. Life had to change and I had to change it. I had to come off everything—all the poison that was destroying my life—and live drug-free. Then, if I made mistakes, it would all be down to me.

  The producers of That’s Life wanted people to take part in a survey and offered to send leaflets to help sufferers break the habit. I sent for the pack that was on offer and was hugely encouraged by it. Armed with their literature, a great deal of determination and little else, I went to my doctor’s surgery. It was the same practice but I saw a different partner to the one I had seen before. I told him what the other GP had told me, about having to remain on medication for life. I went on to say that although I would appreciate his help and support, with or without it I was going to beat the habit and come off everything. This was my last chance. Although he was a bit sceptical, he agreed to see me regularly during what he said would be a very difficult time. So he knew of the dangers! Why hadn’t someone told me?

  I was taking huge doses of anti-anxiety medication and antidepressants, and I knew I would have to cut down slowly or I would suffer unbearable withdrawal. With the help of the That’s Life leaflets, I worked out a gradual reduction programme and, following their advice, I sat the girls down and told them what I was going to do. They were so supportive that I was very proud of them. They weren’t scared, but were very matter of fact as we discussed the practicalities and how they could help. I hoped it wouldn’t affect them adversely to see me in my worst state, but all I could do was protect them as much as I was capable of.

  At first, as the drugs were reduced I began to feel very weak and had fits of shaking and cramps in my legs and arms. One evening, after about a week of withdrawal, I suddenly felt terrified and ran from room to room, not sure what I was running from. My skin was clammy and sticky and I felt so ill that I rang a friend.

  ‘I think I’m going to die!’ I cried. ‘I can’t do this. I must take something.’

  That was the last thing I wanted to do but the fear and the physical symptoms were so awful that I wanted to stop trying to stop.

  ‘You can do this, Cassie,’ my friend said firmly. ‘You know you can, I know you can. We’ll work through it.’ Encouraged by her strength and feeling safer because she was there, I saw it through. She held onto me while I shook violently and then slumped, exhausted, into her arms.

  This was the first of many such panic attacks and bouts of terrible, inexplicable fear. A few days later, having reduced my dose very slightly by breaking the pills into pieces, I suddenly felt violently giddy and began to hallucinate, seeing black slimy things crawling
out of the walls of my home. It was horrific. I was so scared that my whole body began to shake and jerk in rapid movements. I thought I was going mad. I thought I was going to die.

  The physical problems that were part of the withdrawal included constipation and indigestion. I took herbal remedies for both, but to no avail. I couldn’t sleep because of the shaking and nausea I was suffering. As I reduced the dose of one particular drug, I suffered complete muscular seizures. My body went absolutely rigid and my jaw felt as though it were locking. I was terrified. Along with this, sticky yellow stuff was being secreted in my underwear. It was the most horrible feeling, as though my body wasn’t my own. I would wash for what seemed like hours and still I never felt clean. Of course, this brought back all the fear and terror that I had felt as a little girl, when I had been sexually abused by Uncle Bill. I had vivid flashbacks to the times when I used to rush to the safety of the bathroom after his attacks, lock the door and scrub between my legs until it hurt. I might be a grown woman now but it felt the same, and all the memories and feelings of childhood came flooding back. Association is a very powerful force.

  In between these times, I had severe panic attacks and would run round the house sobbing and screaming until I was exhausted and would fall in a heap onto the floor. Sometimes at night I would manage to get off to sleep but then I would wake, terrified, not knowing why. The walls of the bedroom would feel as though they were closing in on me and I was suffocating. I couldn’t breathe properly. I just wanted it to end.

  I couldn’t eat properly and lost a great deal of weight. Melissa and Lucy would bring me raspberries or chocolate to try and tempt me to eat. Melissa took over the housekeeping and shopping while Lucy spent time with me, encouraging me to keep on with the programme I had set myself. Little notes would appear—‘You can do it, Mum’ or ‘We love you, Mum’—to encourage me to keep going. They really were stars during this awful time.