LIZ JONES'S DIARY: In which I have a shocking realisation
I hadn’t intended to write this.
I was going to write about how David 1.0 texted to say, ‘As I’m desiccating quite rapidly, I think it’s unfair to inflict myself on you.’
But I’ve been watching the news about TV presenter Russell Brand with mounting horror, and it was as though a light had been switched on in my addled brain.
Ah, so that’s why I’ve never had a fulfilling, supportive, equal relationship with anyone, not just a man: friends, employees, workmen.
That’s why I’m alone. Don’t have a pension, a home. Things. Why I’m always afraid, why I don’t eat much or bother to cook: I don’t deserve pleasure.
In any relationship since, I’ve always felt unworthy, so left my real self in a drawer and became funny, successful, bountiful, tolerant
When I was in primary school – it was quite early on, so I must have been six, seven? – I was dragged into the boys’ urinal by a boy (I still remember his name) and he pulled off my navy knickers and put his fingers inside me.
I was horrified; I still can’t use a public toilet, even on a plane. I find men, even the smell of them, repulsive.
When I was 20, in hospital due to my anorexia, a male consultant, having just been told I’d never had sex, put his fingers inside me and said, ‘That’s your virginity sorted’ or something along those lines.
After that incident, it would be 12 years before I dared get in bed with a man. I soon discovered that even he – the one I ‘chose’ after all that time, having lost my entire 20s in isolation – was wanted by the police for assaulting his ex-wife.
In any relationship since, I’ve always felt unworthy, so left my real self in a drawer and became funny, successful, bountiful, tolerant.
I put up with behaviour no one in their right mind, no one with any self-esteem or self-preservation, would tolerate.
My first live-in boyfriend, the one after the wife abuser, refused to sleep with me because I’m white, and expected me to pay for everything.
My marriage? There’s a book – four, actually.
Even a sibling abused and exploited and betrayed me, once raging, when I left the kitchen of MY OWN HOUSE: ‘Liz put the cat fork in the wrong sink!’
A man (OK, David 1.0) texted me the c-word, and I still put up with him.
Most self-help books will say that I shouldn’t have allowed myself to be treated badly. That women aren’t victims. But sometimes we just are.
I’m exactly like my martyr mum: too nice. But because I was abused when I was just forming who I was (morphing from being a toddler, emerging from being a student into the scary world of work), I learned that life is terrifying and bad things will happen, so I’d better protect myself.
Trouble is, when you’re scared, you can’t see straight. You make mistakes, bend and give in, just in case someone hurts you.
There has been a lot of criticism on social media of Brand’s victims. Why did they allow the loquacious tw** (I can’t stand people who won’t stop talking) anywhere near them?
Why, if they want to stop abuse happening to others, did they allow him a couple of decades to carry on?
Well, I never spoke up. Emerging from the boys’ loo, it never crossed my mind to tell a teacher or even my mum, who was at that time a few feet away in the playground, working as a dinner lady.
It was too shameful. I didn’t report the doctor, I shuffled away to continue starving myself. I’m not Happy Valley’s Catherine Cawood. It isn’t our job to police behaviour.
I’m certain most ghastly people – and it’s not just men (one of my abusers, both physical and mental, was a woman; my god, she was controlling!) – don’t even know they’ve done wrong.
I’m sure the boy is a much-loved grandad by now. I’m certain the consultant retired on a fat pension.
My female abuser is still in ‘her’ house, having guests to stay (she would always say, looking at her handiwork, ‘I think it’s the bed of the year!’), baking cakes.
I think victims speak up only when we realise we never managed to get over what happened. It ruined our lives, changed us, for ever.
I still have nightmares. But I’ve finally woken up.
