My ex, meanwhile, lives without stigma. I know I will be maligned for one more reason when this essay is published—airing dirty laundry in public. A man can do it with no fear of social censure, safe in the knowledge that even his wife’s own family would disown her. I fear censure, for it is but a form of rejection. I have feared rejection all my life. And yet, I had to tell my version of my story, for this is not my story alone. It is the story of countless other women like me.
A feature I did for the Morning Herald with a senior colleague in the late nineties comes to my mind. It was a heartbreaking interview with Kamala, whose alcoholic husband had set her on fire in a drunken rage. Kamala had refused to implicate her husband up until her death a week later. Afraid of retribution from her husband and his family in case she survived the burns, Kamala claimed the fire was an accident. The story quickly made national headlines. Public sympathy for Kamala grew into a massive wave, pushing the police into action. The husband was labeled a monster. The law quickly caught up with him, and as far as I know, he is still serving out his life sentence.
Not all monsters are egregious. Some stay hidden in plain sight. They wear a “normal” mask. They don’t set you on fire. They crush your spirit slowly, until you die every day, from loneliness, purposelessness, worthlessness, hopelessness. The monster is not the perpetrator alone. The ones who breed him, the ones who victimize the victim—the relatives and neighbors and town people who judge unfairly—they are monsters too.
The monster is the anachronistic mindset that needs to change.
I was expected to exist for society. I chose to live. To love. I take heart in the knowledge that the monsters around me do not sully me, because the names they have for me are not the names I give myself.