After the afters.

The crack on that wouldn’t end.

I’ve written this story a million different times in a million different ways. Never quite sure how best to capture something that words fail to rationalise on most days.

My writing started as a prescribed tool, aimed to support me with my healing. But the more I wrote and began to understand what had happened to me, the more I felt like it was something I would one day maybe want to share.

One of the biggest things I’ve had to confront repeatedly is why sharing this is important at all. While some may disagree with me doing this, I keep coming back to the same thing - part of my experience was that I was prevented from ever revealing the full truth about what was happening in my life. And that caused me huge amounts of damage.

Not being able to share my reality, or ever have it acknowledged, has made me smaller. It’s made me feel the need to hide away from my own life. Having to pretend that it never happened, and that I wasn’t suffering at extreme levels for years, has impacted me greatly and left my true self isolated from almost everyone I hold dear.

Giving myself permission to be honest in the most concrete of ways is the biggest step towards fully being able to heal and finally let go.

Breaking the void

In 2014 I met someone that I thought was my best friend. We fell in love in the most whirlwind way and I genuinely believed that I’d found a love and a connection beyond anything I’d ever dreamed of. Fast forward twelve years and I’m two years deep into a medical diagnosis of CPTSD (Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) that has the power and potential to eat me alive every day in a totally new and unexpected way.

There are rarely warnings or opportunities for me to pre-empt and prepare myself for what’s about to happen - I just find myself in situations, sometimes completely out of the blue, where I’m paralysed with fear, unable to communicate and generally just shut down. It has stopped me from being able to function as a normal person for years.

My diagnosis meant that I finally had an explanation for why I was waking up at 2.30am most nights in hot and cold sweats.

Unable to breathe.

Nightmares, terrors and sleep paralysis constantly.

Regular panic attacks with no obvious trigger or ability to control what was happening to me.

Whole body fatigue and brain fog that could last for weeks or months at a time.

Head to toe tension that was so intense the softest of massages felt like I was being physically assaulted.

My phone making a sound, or receiving messages, had the potential to trigger instant panic or confusion like something out of a film.

My stomach would be in knots all day long.

Constantly.

Catching my own reflection in the mirror could cause me to totally shutdown or withdraw, and at times still prevents me from leaving the house for days at a time.

My diagnosis helped me to understand that waking up every morning sobbing uncontrollably wasn’t because I was depressed or unhappy in my present life - it was a sign that my body wasn’t able to fully comprehend the fact that what had happened to me before wasn’t my physical reality anymore.

As soon as my life became safe and happy, I began to unravel in the most unexplainable way.

My illness has been debilitating and life changing. It caused me to eventually have to leave one of the best and most fulfilling jobs I’ve ever had as a fashion university lecturer, prevented me from being able to spend time in my childhood home without spiralling, has caused me to completely detach from some of my favourite people in the world and generally has just stopped me from being able to function as a normal person for years on end.

But it isn’t something that was caused in a vacuum. It’s the result of 10+ years of ongoing emotional and psychological abuse, coercive and controlling behaviour, physical abuse, intimidation and threats - all at the hands of someone who, for a very long time, I believed loved me more than anything else in the world.

Anyone who has known me pre / during / post relationship will be able to testify to how much this person’s presence in my life changed me. Detached me from friends and family, took up all of my time and energy and imposed their own demands and requirements on me until eventually, I had completely lost myself.

He dominated my life in every way. I was sad, confused and frustrated constantly. On edge all the time. The only way I could function was through unhealthy escapism.

After the relationship ended, my symptoms got arguably worse.

As I spent so many years not being able to tell anyone what had really been happening in my life, many of my symptoms only started appearing later - once my body felt safe to express itself freely. I moved from years of fawning / dissociating to extreme fight or flight that became totally uncontrollable.

The secrecy that everything was cloaked in made my healing even more complicated, because the story I had edited for others meant it took much, much longer for me to identify what had been happening and admit to myself the depth of the abuse.

It wasn’t until after we were married; eight years into the relationship; that I slowly started opening up to a few close friends.

But even then, I wasn’t sharing the full picture.

Parts hidden

The word abuse still makes me feel uncomfortable. It makes me feel like I’m being overly dramatic. But I don’t know if anything could be more dramatic than what my day-to-day reality had become.

I remember the first time I used it to frame my experience with my best friend. She cried.

“Finally babe. I never wanted to say it to you, because it was never my job to define what happened. But I’ve known it for years.”

I’ve never felt safe in sharing any of this before because I worried that people wouldn’t believe how much I’d suffered behind the scenes, when on the face of it I was happy and proud of the life we had built together.

I benefitted greatly at times and had lots of fun - but looking back, those parts made up maybe 5% of my overall life and experience. The 95% that it took to be able to have those fun times could not have been further from fun.

Our whole life revolved around creating that 5% - the party.

As event promoters, our personal life, social life and professional life were all tied up in the parties we put on together. I devoted a decade of my life to building a business that completely overpowered every other element of it.

All of my money invested into it.

All of my time and focus.

All of my friends connected to it.

I compromised my health greatly in order to keep up with it.

If any element of the business was doing less than perfect, the knock-on effect would be extreme.

The business dictated everything.

If we lost money or plans had to change, I would either be ignored for days on end or have to suffer in silence while all of his anger and frustration was taken out on me.

Day in. Day out.

Boundaries were crossed continuously, but nothing I did could make it better. I would just have to wait until he was ready to go back to ‘normal’.

Looking back now, this is why my body completely forgot how to relax.

I was constantly afraid of what might happen next. I learnt that I had to earn peace. His calm mattered more than my feelings, because if he wasn’t okay, nothing else in our life could be okay.

Eventually I stopped relaxing altogether because I never knew what version of him I was going to get.

Even when things went well it was problematic - we’d end up on week-long benders that took twice as long to recover from and slowly, over time, just made me extremely unhealthy and sick.

Everything was connected to the success of the business - but it didn’t really hit me how much my life had suffered as a result of it until the relationship ended.

Suddenly I realised that maybe the whole world didn’t revolve around a stupid little club night in Nottingham.

Maybe it wasn’t normal that my husband was only able to be kind to me, show me love, or respect me when things at work were smooth sailing - or if we were around other people.

***

There are literally too many stories of times that I was disrespected or treated badly to share. But anyone who knew us closely as a couple probably has a list of their hardest-hitting ones.

Behind the scenes at our wedding was a particularly exceptional shit-show that I won’t embarrass myself for a second time by having to relive.

But I remember the moment that I truly, truly knew I’d been taken for a ride.

DJ Mag published a ‘15 Year’ feature of our club night that covered everything the brand had achieved in that time. They interviewed my ex extensively and spoke to him about what made the brand a success and wanted to document everything it had achieved over those years.

It was a comprehensive piece. Several spreads long.

But only after rushing to grab a copy did I realise…

My name wasn’t mentioned in it once.

At this point I had been involved for eight or nine years, and it had been my full-time job for almost five. I was a 50% director of the business legally and had invested tens of thousands personally. Take away the emotional grip it had on my life… but even just on a basic journalistic level, why wouldn’t I be mentioned?

The interviewer can’t be blamed. The story was told by my partner, and that’s what was printed.

My name was rarely featured (if ever) in any press to do with the brand and I didn’t usually care. I was happy for him to be the face of things and genuinely didn’t need the public acknowledgement.

But this piece was different.

It was a landmark article that celebrated what all of the hard work and stress had been for.

To know that my name wasn’t even a fleeting thought during an interview that lasted hours was everything I needed to know.

But it didn’t make it hurt any less.

After years of him publicly sharing my involvement; posts on International Women’s Day telling everyone that I was the brains behind the whole operation, and conversations around diversity where he would proudly state that half of the brand was a female POC, I realised my value had eventually been spent.

He had always been one person with me in public and a completely other behind closed doors - but now I could see the tides turning in the real world.

I was slowly being erased.

Warped records

One of the most damaging aspects of this person’s behaviour towards me was the way that my own reality became completely distorted.

Not always through huge lies or obvious manipulation, but through a constant stream of criticisms, insults and carefully planted insecurities that gradually took root.

Over time, those words became the lens through which I saw myself.

They changed my relationship with my body, chipped away at my self-worth and left scars that I still carry with me to this day.

Lying to avoid taking responsibility became the norm and, because most people only ever saw snapshots of what was happening, his version of reality was often much easier to accept than mine.

Particularly after our wedding, there were moments when people would tell me privately that his behaviour wasn’t okay. That they were worried about me. That something felt wrong.

But when it came to speaking to him directly, the message would often soften.

The edges got rounded off.

Things became more palatable.

Which only reinforced what he told me all the time - that I was completely fucking crazy.

So the cycle continued.

His version of reality became more deeply embedded, whilst mine slowly started to fall apart.

One of my biggest fears in opening up about the full extent of everything was that people would tell me it wasn’t that bad. Or that they would carry on as normal and as though I’d never said anything at all. It took a while, but eventually, that’s exactly what happened.

Looking back, I think part of the problem was that almost everyone around us had come into our lives through partying, music and nightlife, and so naturally those remained their priorities.

The person causing me all of this pain was positioned too well in that world, and once things became more serious and uncomfortable, many of those relationships no longer aligned.

I genuinely don’t blame anyone for that.. choosing fun is easier than choosing conflict.

Staying close to someone charismatic is easier than confronting difficult truths.

And honestly, it was never anybody else’s responsibility to carry.

But this broader, unspoken social arrangement allowed for the abuse to permeate in much deeper and longer-lasting ways.

It meant that for years, I found myself trapped in a reality that nobody seemed willing to fully acknowledge. And when enough people keep acting like something isn’t happening, you eventually start wondering whether you’ve imagined it yourself.

Even after the relationship ended something that still feels strange to me is how quickly everything seemed to disappear. People who had celebrated our wedding with us, who had been a huge part of our lives, simply went silent. It was as though this enormous, life-altering thing had happened, but everyone quietly agreed to carry on as though it hadn’t.

Looking back, I think the same cloak of secrecy that existed within our relationship eventually surrounded its ending too. I still don’t know what version of events was shared with other people because, to this day, I was never even given that clarity myself.

But the reframing of reality is so disorientating that I still frequently wonder whether I’m making the whole thing up in my head.. until one of the professionals I now rely on to regularly support my recovery, reminds me why my symptoms exist at all.

***

But for a long time, I too had a vested interest in keeping an illusion going.

If people knew what he did and how he really treated me, the image we had built around our socially conscious brand could disappear.

And if work failed, how could our love - or the illusion of love - survive?

I stretched myself beyond belief to prove to him that I was working hard enough for him to be loving and kind to me.

When we did our first festival as a team of just two, everyone would ask how that was physically possible.

Such a large-scale project.

Twenty-one venues. Over a hundred artists. Just two people?

Mad.

And we did it twice.

But they didn’t know the half of it.

From the moment I woke up to the moment I went to sleep, my priority had to be him.

It had to be work.

There were a few occasions when I couldn’t work for several weeks at a time due to my body physically shutting down - and the guilt, shame and failure that I was made to feel for ever being ill still sits with me to this day.

It’s an indescribable feeling of gut-wrenching proportions, that because I got sick… some of our biggest failures must all have been caused by my selfishness.

It was all my fault.

I spiralled for years afterwards wondering why I was unable to give him more.

Why couldn’t I push myself harder.

Why wasn’t I good enough.

Even when my body was saying no, I wasn’t allowed to stop.

He wouldn’t explicitly say that, of course. It just became an unspoken understanding that unless I wanted to suffer the consequences, it was easier to just do what he wanted me to do.

So eventually, my stress became virtually unnoticeable to anyone but me.

Externally I was seen as hardworking and up for any challenge (if not, short, snappy and pissed off most of the time) but internally I was highly anxious and extremely ill. I was e x h a u s t e d.

Struggling beyond belief just to keep up with my own life.

I remember once begging him to choose between having me as a partner in life or a partner in business. Because I couldn’t do both anymore.

He told me he’d rather have me working on the business.

I should have known then, but I was too heavily entrenched in the Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde reality of our relationship.

He would be horribly mean to me for huge extended periods of time then act like something out of a dream when he was happy, when work was going well, or when he needed something from me.

He was an over-the-top romantic. More loving and vulnerable than anyone I’d ever met. That was who I’d fallen in love with. That was who I thought I was building a life with.

I genuinely believed that if I just kept working harder and doing more, things with work would finally pay off and he’d be able to be that version of himself all of the time.

What started as the occasional blow-up, in between weeks of complete infatuation with one another, eventually became the odd day or weekend of good times followed by weeks on end of pure hell.

It happened so slowly that I barely noticed it but the chase for those better times became completely addictive and I began doing anything I could to improve his moods.

Fixing our relationship and investing myself into his health and happiness became my full time job and obsession. It was the only thing I had energy for.

***

The distortion of my own reality has been so extreme that, while writing, I found myself going through old photographs almost hoping to prove I’d imagined it all. I expected to find evidence of a happy life. Instead, almost every photo triggered the memory of something painful that had happened behind it.

The meals out or entire holidays where he barely spoke to me and spent the whole time being cold and distant, or would spiral into completely irrational and uncontrollable behaviour for huge periods of time.

The particular holiday after my Dad died where I found messages between him and another girl telling her he’s sorry he couldn’t meet up as planned.. his ‘stepdad’ had just died and he was too sad.

His Dad’s wedding where we got dressed up to the nines, but ended in me being thrown around a hotel room for hours on end and then him going awol.

The photos he’d ask me to take of our dog so he could post them online to promote his party.. but when she was in hospital fighting for her life, he was too busy partying to check in on her or find out whether she even survived.

The naughty pics and videos that I had taken for him or we took together, and would later be used against me as threats to instil fear.

The endless screenshots of things I became obsessed with gathering, so that I had proof that I hadn’t made clear as day incidents up in my head.

Tracing the loop

Despite it all, and no matter how many times I tried to explain it to him, I still believe he never fully understood the impact his behaviour had on me.

Either he refused to accept it, or genuinely believed I was exaggerating when I told him how much certain things were affecting me.

Because part of him truly is a sweet person.

I fully acknowledge the role that I played in keeping the toxic dynamic on a loop, and understanding what drew me to such a turbulent environment in the first place has been a big part of my healing and something I’ve spent a lot of time unpicking.

It obviously wasn’t all him. I played my part too. But the fundamental issue is that his needs were always more important than mine, and pushing back on this in any way would have consequences.

I believe a lot of the behaviours I experienced stem from deep insecurity and feelings of low self-worth, rather than from someone who woke up every day wanting to hurt me.

Compounded by years of substance abuse, the volatility became extreme and entirely uncontrollable.

Understanding that has truly helped me to find compassion, but it hasn’t undone the damage.

When I was first diagnosed with CPTSD, I was told that my need to constantly intellectualise what had happened could actually be contributing to the long, drawn-out nature of my recovery.

Because if you can’t accept that someone else’s behaviour caused you enormous harm, the only other place left to put that blame is yourself.

Everything I experienced must fundamentally have been my fault.

So even when that person is no longer in your life…

You’re still left carrying all of the consequences.

Because the real problem must have been you all along.

***

Because my mind had blocked out so much of what had happened to me for years in order to survive, writing out a timeline of events was one of the first things that I began working on with my therapist once I had been diagnosed.

It turns out, going back to the beginning was a quick win in the revelation department.

We met when I was twenty-two and he was thirty, so I was still largely in the mindset of a child. I would constantly comply without question to make him happy.

And when I did… Everything was great.

As I got older and started asserting my own needs, or setting boundaries, things took a turn. A bitterness towards me started to grow that, unbeknown to me at the time, I would never be able to stop. No matter how much I gave him. No matter how much of myself I gave up.

The way the relationship started should have been my first red flag. But I was too young. Too naïve. Too completely blinded by the potential of what I thought this relationship could become.

He told me that he had freshly split from the long-term girlfriend I had known him to be with for ten years. They were a well-loved couple within a huge circle of friends, some of whom overlapped with mine. He assured me things were over, but he just needed to be careful about us being seen together because he didn’t want to upset her while their life together was being finalised and fully coming to an end.

We snuck around for weeks and I believed wholly and truly that it was because he didn’t want to hurt her feelings.

Not that he was being unfaithful.

Not that I was participating in an affair.

The fallout landed largely on my lap after one of her friends saw me coming out of his house one day. I became public enemy number one to a whole group of women almost ten years older than me. I received horrible messages for weeks on end and found it difficult to be seen in certain places for a really long time after that.

When I realised what had happened, he assured me they had been broken up for ages and she was just struggling to accept it.

He hadn’t done anything wrong. She was just crazy.

Looking back now, I think this was the first time he really started to distort my reality and create a scenario that made me want to hide from my own life.

I still carry huge amounts of guilt for playing any part in that situation, and in her pain.

Years later, several people reached out to me to discuss what had happened and some apologised for how they treated me at the time.

I now understand that much of the shock and anger directed towards me back then was actually a culmination of some of what I’m feeling now.

In many ways, a cycle repeated.

I should always have known that if he was able to show that level of disrespect to a partner of ten years once, he would be able to do it again.

But I was too lovestruck.

Too young.

Completely blinded by the potential of what I thought this relationship could become.

The dragged out afters

After years of turbulent behaviour, it all came to a head when he walked out on me on Christmas Day after I found more texts on his phone between him and yet another girl.

Then he ghosted me for over seven months.

Refusing to address any of the emotional, practical or financial issues that come with ending ten years of life together, a marriage and shared businesses and responsibilities.

To this day I have never heard the words,

“Our marriage is over.”

Or been offered a truthful, transparent conversation that brought any real closure to the decade we spent building a life together.

For the whole of 2024, I had no idea what the status of my marriage actually was. When family and friends asked, I couldn’t give anyone a clear answer because I genuinely didn’t know.

Obviously I knew… but I was never offered the clarity that would allow me to fully separate my life from his and move on. Too many loose ends were left hanging for far too long with no consideration for what that would do to my life and my mental state.

***

In the months that followed, my family were forced to carry the consequences of this person’s actions while trying to process the sudden loss of my Dad the previous year.

Instead of being given the space to grieve, we were left dealing with problems he refused to take responsibility for.

My Mum bore the brunt of it.

All of his belongings were left taking up whole rooms of her house for almost a year, with little to no communication about when they would be collected or what she was expected to do with them.

After my Dad died, we moved in with her so she wouldn’t be on her own.

We arranged to move all of my Dad’s belongings into storage to make room for my ex to move in.

When he left, he stopped paying for the unit regularly which put all of my Dad’s stuff at risk of removal.

Because it was registered in his name, there wasn’t much we could do.

For more than eighteen months, my family lived with the constant fear that the last remaining possessions of my Dad could be thrown away without us even knowing.

We came close to losing everything more than once.

No matter how much I begged him to engage, he refused to for months on end.

To add insult to injury, he had used my Mum’s address to accrue a significant amount of debt after he had left me, and the threat of bailiffs harassing her simply became the norm.

He had zero regard for the position he left my family in during one of the most vulnerable times of our lives.

I’ll never understand why doing all of that was easier than just responding to us while we were trying to sort things out amicably and kindly.

The whole thing became an unnecessarily long and painfully drawn-out nightmare.

More abuse, just in a different form.

***

But the way things ended was potentially the most damaging.

The feeling of having my whole life pulled out from underneath me, with no clarity about what was happening, overnight, without warning or explanation…

That is what finally broke me.

I spent months trying to work out what had happened to my life.

I remember one day texting him countless different scenarios for what could be going on in his head.

I numbered every single one.

I begged him to just reply with the number that was closest.

He didn’t have to explain himself.

He didn’t even have to speak to me.

Just send me the number.

At least then I might finally be able to sleep.

Had he properly met someone else?

Was our marriage over?

Was he taking time away from our relationship to decide what he wanted?

Did he still love me?

Was I single?

He never answered.

He didn’t confirm anything.

He didn’t move his belongings out.

He didn’t respond to requests to deal with the practical realities of ending our life together for the best part of a year.

So in my mind there was still part of him that wanted to work things out.

When I said my vows, I meant them and I genuinely believed that that was my person for life.

I would have worked through absolutely anything because I was so deeply under the illusion that what we had was a love like no other.

No part of me thought I was in an abusive relationship until years later.

***

Looking back now, this all seems so mental because obviously it was over.

But this was a pattern of what he would do to me all the time.

He would confuse and disorientate me to the point where my reality became so warped I couldn’t see the wood from the trees.

I couldn’t function.

I couldn’t lead a normal life because my life was so far from normal… I was constantly waiting for him to tell me what he needed next.

So when he wasn’t there anymore telling me what to do, or telling me what my reality was… My brain became foggy and confused and I suffered from huge bouts of fatigue.

I felt totally untethered.

I had become so used to living in extreme situations that the craziness had simply become my baseline.

I didn’t know how to live any other way.

To go from being in a relationship where we were together twenty-four hours a day…

Working together.

Living together.

Travelling together.

Building everything side by side…

To not hearing anything from him for over six months overnight, while I was still deeply grieving my Dad…

Was completely unravelling.

The shock and trauma of it all still sits in my nervous system today. I’m constantly bracing myself for everything I love in my life to be snatched away from me without warning. The fear becomes debilitating.

Days and landmark occasions that should be joyful often end up becoming some of the hardest for me to navigate and often cause me to completely shut down.

Obviously, while everything was still so up in the air, I understood why I couldn’t function. But when my body was still in pieces years later… I knew something was seriously wrong.

The comedown

Shortly after he left, I became extremely sick and was diagnosed with PTSD.

At the time, I honestly understood it in the way most people do colloquially - almost as though it was just another way of saying I’d been through a really stressful time.

I didn’t think much of it.

Looking back now, I realise there was another layer to everything that I wouldn’t understand until much later. At the time, I had no idea that some of what I was experiencing had been shaped not only by prolonged trauma, but by a compounding of experiences that my brain had blocked out and my body had never truly recovered from.

The following year, I was lucky enough to meet someone new and give birth to the baby I’d always dreamt of.

I had finally met someone who loved me more than I’d ever been able to love myself.

I was being treated like an equal partner for the first time and my feelings actually mattered. My day-to-day became calm.

I felt appreciated, cared for and treated with genuine kindness and respect by my partner for the first time in my adult life.

I finally understood what a healthy and happy relationship looked like.

Our home was, and still is, filled with so much joy and laughter.

But I was still crippled with anxiety.

Body riddled with physical symptoms.

Still unable to lead a normal life.

That’s when I realised things were far worse than I’d ever been able to admit to myself.

***

As a new mother, something that made my diagnosis even more complicated was separating my symptoms from postnatal depression.

I was experiencing bouts of CPTSD during what should have been one of the happiest and most joyful times of my life, and that is one of the things I feel most angry about.

What set it apart was that whenever doctors asked whether I was experiencing symptoms associated with postnatal depression, I could categorically say I wasn’t - because I had absolutely felt those things before.

That question opened the door to a huge realisation.

After losing two pregnancies with my ex, I now believe I was experiencing severe postnatal depression during the last few years we were together. It was a very real hormonal and psychological response, but without a baby to care for afterwards, and after telling hardly anyone about it, it remained invisible to almost everyone, including me.

For the three years that followed, I was living in what I now recognise as a postpartum body and mind: hormonally dysregulated, emotionally adrift and physically changed.

He never understood that. Neither did I.

But while he criticised me for my body, many of the changes he was shaming me for were actually scars from babies I’d carried into the second trimester, twice, but were never born.

While he told me I was crazy, my hormones were completely out of balance.

I was deeply grieving.

Having since experienced a healthy pregnancy, birth and postpartum period, I can now see just how extraordinarily vulnerable I was back then. I endured some of the worst abuse of my life during a time when my body and mind needed the greatest care and compassion.

I don’t expect him to have understood the full extent of what I was going through - I only truly understand it now myself. But realising how many layers of trauma, grief and physiological change were happening at the same time has helped me understand why the impact has been so profound.

***

One of the hardest parts of this has been the fact that as soon as my life became safe and I was finally happy.. that’s when I really fell apart.

For years I’d wondered why I couldn’t just move on, why I couldn’t simply be grateful for the beautiful life I’d been given. Why was my body still behaving as though danger was everywhere? Why was I feeling worse when my life was calm than I did when it was chaotic??

My diagnosis helped me understand something that completely changed the way I viewed myself.

I hadn’t failed to recover. I wasn’t holding on to any love for him or hope for reconciliation.

My body simply hadn’t realised the danger was over, and finally had the quiet to process all of the fear that had been built up; but I couldn’t freely express; over 10 years.

The consequences of this fundamentally changed my life. But they didn’t end there.

Sobering up

I couldn’t go back to ‘normal’ work because the fear of disappointing people became too overwhelming and I was failing to consistently show up in the same way each day - I never knew what would trigger me or send me into a spiral on any given day so regular working patterns became really challenging. Plus I had a newborn baby.

Instead, I threw myself into another venture - a new self run business.

Looking back now, I think part of me was recreating an environment my nervous system already understood.

High pressure.

High stress.

Constant responsibility.

It wasn’t healthy. It was familiar.

With a new baby, it probably wasn’t the best decision. But familiarity has a powerful pull when chaos has been your normal for so long.

I struggled to open up to my new partner about how I was really feeling inside because I was terrified he’d think I was completely mental. Or leave me too.

So I did what I’d become very good at doing.

I stayed quiet.

I detached from people.

I carried everything on my own.

I avoided anything that reminded me of my previous life, believing that if I could just leave it behind, I’d eventually feel better.

But I didn’t.

I became sicker than I’d ever been.

That’s when I was diagnosed again and found out that my PTSD had almost certainly been CPTSD all along.

It didn’t magically make things easier. But it finally made everything make sense.

I found it mind-blowing that everything I’d been experiencing was already written down in books. My therapist understood it all.

The symptoms that I had been struggling to make sense of for years were all recognised responses to prolonged trauma.

For the first time in years, I stopped believing that I was losing my mind.

***

My healing journey took a positive turn. I started to unpick what had actually happened to me and why it was leaving me feeling the way I did every day.

I found it mind blowing that everything I had been experiencing was already written down in a book. Other people felt the same things too. My therapist wasn’t surprised by any of it.

The confusion, panic and fatigue were all common symptoms experienced after someone has mentally and emotionally dominated all of your time, energy and dictated how your day was being spent for years on end - and then completely disappeared.

It was a huge relief.

I was feeling good and strong. I was finally able to accept that he wasn’t going to give me what I needed to move on and I genuinely stopped needing it.

He wasn’t going to tell me why he walked out on me or explain where we stood. He wasn’t going to acknowledge the pain he had caused me, the times he’d hurt me or accept that how he treated me was wrong.

He wasn’t going to pay me back any of the money that he owed me or make anything right with my family. He wasn’t going to feel shame promoting and celebrating twenty years of a brand that I’d spent ten years building; and paid for with my sanity and wellbeing; while simultaneously refusing to engage with any of the unfinished legal or financial realities that continued to affect multiple areas of my life.

But it was okay.

I no longer looked to him as being the source of my closure.

I found it myself.

I went deep into alternative healing practices and continued my lifelong interest in energetic healing by continuing a pretty intense and extremely sacred shamanic initiation. It’s a lifelong journey, but something that became extremely potent at this time to help me understand what had happened to me and create a better future for myself.

I decided to let go of trying to recoup any of the money that was owed to me and accepted that there were no routes to justice available to me for everything that had happened.

I just wanted to get on with my life.

For me, the chapter was finally closed.

End of the end

But then…

Several months ago…

More shit.

After already having assumed thousands of pounds of debt on his behalf, I was issued with a CCJ for rent arrears that he had racked up after I moved out of our shared house. Because our landlord couldn’t locate him, I was the one left carrying the consequences, with a six-year mark on my credit report and thousands of pounds I’m now court ordered to pay.

I got in touch to sort things out, but it was the same story.

“I’ll call you tomorrow.”

“I’ll call you next week.”

Tomorrow never came.

The disrespect continued.

I had done everything I could to make peace with what had happened and move on, but the chaos just kept finding new ways to seep back into my life.

My Mum was still dealing with the fallout. The letters became more regular and the bailiffs stepped things up. But instead of redirecting them towards him, she worried about him. She assumed that if he wasn’t replying to any of our messages and had got himself into this much debt, things must be really bad.

But she wasn’t seeing what I was seeing online.

While we were still living with the consequences of everything that had happened, he was carrying on as normal.

DJing. Getting booked. Launching new projects.

Promoting a life that, from the outside at least, looked absolutely fine.

Watching him continue to publicly celebrate a life and a business that I’d spent ten years helping to build, while simultaneously ignoring every attempt I made to resolve the legal and financial consequences of that same life, felt painfully familiar.

It echoed the relationship itself.

The public version continued. The private consequences remained mine.

Despite everything, I don’t want this to be the memory I have of someone I loved deeply and shared so much of my life with. I still think he’s incredibly talented and I still think the world is a better place because of his creativity.

But it’s impossible to truly put the past to bed when someone continues proving publicly that they have the time, energy and resources to build a better future for themselves, while refusing to engage with the practical consequences that continue affecting yours.

As someone who had built a career around solving problems, I eventually reached a point where I genuinely didn’t know what to do.

I was totally powerless to a multitude of issues that were slowly invading every corner of my life.

So I reached out one last time and told him I needed an end to all of this.

If he wasn’t going to offer me any closure, I needed to create it for myself. I told him that I wanted to share my story so that I could finally draw a line under everything and move on. Enough was enough.

Even then, I still couldn’t quite bring myself to do anything without speaking to him first or getting his approval.

He told me that I didn’t need to do that - he was ready to start taking responsibility and wanted to sort things out. He didn’t have any money and was really struggling to live, but he could pay me something.

So for three months he sent me insulting amounts of money, but I was just happy that he was sticking to some kind of monthly commitment to make things right with me. The amount didn’t matter, but the sentiment really did.

But then it stopped.

When I asked what was happening, I got nothing. Ghosted again.

I explained the impact that the CCJ could have on the new business I’d been working so hard to build. I gave him every opportunity to engage calmly and reasonably.

I was careful with my words. Considerate of his schedule. Really patient.

In return, I was ignored again. Week after week.

And while avoiding my messages, he started to post pictures of holidays, meals out and everyday life online. It was weird because before I had reached out on this occasion, I hadn’t noticed much personal stuff on his stories at all - it was all work promo. But now, the things he had begged me to believe he couldn’t afford just a few weeks before seemed to be in overdrive.

That’s when I finally realised that I was waiting for something that wasn’t coming. The manipulation was just continuing in a different form.

I didn’t expect him to stop living his life, I just hoped he’d take responsibility for the impact his choices had continued to have on mine.

Instead, he has actively avoided me for more than two and a half years, preventing me from ever fully moving on, fully healing or being able to live fully in my truth.

When does it end?

My body has taken a hit.

My mind has broken repeatedly.

My ability to maintain close personal relationships has suffered.

My finances have been depleted and future opportunities for me to grow my new business or buy a house have been hugely impacted.

I’m a completely different person today than I was twelve years ago.

As slow and arduous as the recovery is, I’m fortunate that I have the people around me, and the tools, to eventually overcome this. Without that, I truthfully don’t know where I’d be today.

I will never quite be able to put into words what the effect of living in such heightened extremes has done to me over an extended period of time, but sharing this feels like a huge step in my healing journey.

Truthfully, I don’t know whether sharing this will make me feel any better. It might actually make me feel worse.

But what I do know is that when you’re living with something like CPTSD, one of the biggest frustrations is that your body is basically keeping a secret from you that it refuses to share. You can feel confused, panicked and completely shut down. Yet have no idea why that particular moment has caused it to happen.

So in sharing this, I’m hoping that getting everything out into the open might help me to process it differently.

If I’m no longer holding onto this secret, maybe my body won’t have to either.

🤍