an honest life update
finally
It has been a while. Life has moved quickly since the last time I wrote and I’ve been running behind trying to catch up to it as fast as I could. I think I’m nearly there.
In the last couple of months, I have moved to Paris to begin my master’s degree. The move here was extremely rocky. It’s true what they say about the rental market in Paris, but I have been lucky enough to have found a place to call home. Finally, I have my first very own home and I don’t think I could love it more. There’s something so special about having your very own apartment. My own apartment that I can fill with special friends on special occasions. Despite only having known each other for a short period of time, I have met people that I have been able to wholeheartedly count on when the going gets rough.
My masters is also going remarkably well. For once in my educative life, I don’t feel like a fish out of water, and I have learnt so much about the world in such a short space of time. One of my lecturers was the head of a UN Committee investigating the role of Israel in the 2014 Israel–Gaza conflict. He has been able to give us, as a class, an exclusive insight into the South Africa’s genocide case against Israel. Last week in class, I interviewed the Polish Ambassador to France, and earlier this month I found myself chatting to one of the Deputy Irish Ambassadors to France over a Guinness with my friends at an event in the Irish embassy, just around the corner from the Arc de Triomphe. These opportunities are just some of the ‘pinch me’ moments that have been regularly occurring since my arrival at Sciences Po.
I come from a small town in Ireland. Opportunities to be in the same room as ambassadors and diplomats and heads of UN Committees were few and far between. Sometimes I think I’m dreaming to have these experiences, but I know that all throughout my education, this was the aim. To be somewhere like this. And I feel so grateful, I feel like everything has paid off.
For now however, my feet are still firmly planted on the ground. I am lucky enough to have a two sisters who say it as it is and will let me know if I am developing any notions of myself (to be confirmed after my trip home for Christmas). Life feels easier and despite my increased pain au chocolat intake, I feel lighter. Long may it last.
I’m at a stage in my recovery where I feel like I can say publically on my blog that I was a victim of domestic abuse. Those horrific stories that you hear about in the news, the horrible headlines that you read that make you snap the newspaper shut for fear that it will jinx you, that happened to me. There is no sugar coating it, and there are no words to describe the depths of the horror I went through. I genuinely lived my worst nightmare. I went through hell, and I am not ashamed to say it. I actually think that, on the contrary, it is so important that I do say it, and that I’m honest about what happened to me, without feeling ashamed. Because I didn’t do anything wrong. Not one thing. And it was not my fault.
I left my relationship in February and spent the rest of the year picking up the pieces of myself that I had to discard in order to stay safe. Pieces of my soul, of my humanity, that I had hidden in dark corners of a haunted house, booby trapped with an explosive, angry man and accusations of provocation. I had to come to terms with the horrors of what had happened, why it had happened and how I was going to move forward. How I was going to live my life alongside the realisation that this terrifying and vomit-inducing thing had happened to me. This involved months of sleepless nights, spells of intense depression and anxiety, a lot of writing, and enough tears to flood the Sahara. I don’t think I’ve ever been as deeply affected by anything in my life. On my second week in Paris, while my peers spent their weekend getting to know each other at predrinks, I spent mine in psychiatric urgent care waiting room. I feel extremely privileged to have had my call for help answered. Since February, kind doctors, psychiatrists, psychologists, jurists, friends and family have all helped to haul me back onto my feet and hold me up until I could stand by myself. For the first time since I left my relationship, I finally feel like I can stand up all by myself, and more than that- I’m really, really enjoying it.
I’m getting to know myself again, and I feel like I’m a really great person to get to know. I love art again, writing and singing and playing music. I love getting ready for the day ahead and putting my lipstick on. What colour will I go for today? What look am I going for? I love reading and trying new restaurants and chatting with strangers in coffee shops. I love debating with my friends on issues that I care about. When I get up in the morning I feel so happy to wake up in my own apartment and so happy to go to school. I’m so happy to learn and so happy to participate in class. I'm wondering if maybe, things are starting to fall into place.
I have enough experience at this stage to know that there will be more down days, maybe even down weeks or down months, but at least I know now that happiness is possible. And at least I have been honest on my blog- something that feels rather liberating. I admit that this situation has been holding me back from writing for months. At the beginning, I felt so ashamed I could barely make eye contact with others. I thought that no one would want to read about what happened to me, that it would be too much information, that I should just suck it up and get on with it. But that’s precisely it- the silence. It is the silence that is so deadly; keeping secrets, not being honest with yourself or others about what is going on behind closed doors. I wish I knew this before but unfortunately, this was a lesson I had to learn the hard way. That sometimes, all of the time actually, you have to say the hideous, unspeakable things out loud.
I am not under any impression that I am fully recovered or no longer impacted by the things that I had to live through. I still suffer a lot. More often than not I still struggle to accept what happened to me. I continue to go to therapy and say the hideous, unspeakable things out loud. I do hard things daily. However, day by day, I am learning to live alongside this experience, to be brave enough to accept the truth and I’m so excited to see where things go, now that I’m finally free from the heavy weight that pulled my chest down to deep dark the ocean bed.
-12th November 2024
If you need feel like something is not 100% right in your relationship, do your best to be honest with yourself and talk to someone you trust for support. Here are some tools that I found useful:
https://www.womensaid.org.uk/information-support/what-is-domestic-abuse/