Maid in Work In Progress

Bloody hell.

If you haven’t watched Maid on Netflix, and intend to, I’m going to be dropping spoilers all over the place so maybe don’t read this.

But fuck me, was it triggering for me.

Watching Alex try to raise her baby with an alcoholic father, and the abuse she suffered, it was like watching what my life could have been like. What it was like in some respects.

The waiting for the car to pull up, noticing the beers he came in with, never knowing what mood he’d be in. The arguments and walking on egg shells. The knowledge of how much money he was wasting.

Honestly, watching her almost get away and then getting dragged back in, I can totally relate to. I don’t think I’ve ever admitted it but Joey and I had a lot of rows about his drinking early on in our relationship, and I had my bags packed more than once. Every time he’d do just enough for just long enough to persuade me that things could be better, and in the end it just becomes your life.

I never thought I’d say I was a victim of abuse but the way he behaved in our relationship, the way he used to tell me to my face that I was crazy about his drinking, even when I had found hundreds of empty bottles behind the fence at the end of the garden, or the time I confronted him with his bank statement, having highlighted all the obvious alcohol purchases......

I’ll always be grateful that when he pushed me too far, with the accusations of me being with another man constantly and continually when I had told him I didn’t want to be with him, that I had a place to go. That I was able to ring my mum and ask her to come and get some of our things, that I could put V in my car and go to their house and that I had the opportunity for that breathing room.

When I left, I didn’t have a plan, I just knew I couldn’t be there any more and needed to get out for V’s sake. Standing holding your newborn baby, reading messages from another woman on your fiancé’s phone as he’s passed out drunk on the settee, nobody should have to do that. The row that followed was explosive and I think that was the moment I realised that he wasn’t going to change so it was up to me to make the decision to do what was right for V. Throwing a phone at someone with one hand while you have hold of your daughter in the other isn’t normal. It’s not normal. It’s terrifying and even writing this now it seems crazy to me that this was MY experience, that this happened to me. I didn’t even realise I was in this emotionally abusive relationship until I was out of it.

I couldn’t imagine anything worse than V being in the middle of some of the arguments we had and being old enough to be scared and traumatised by them. It’s not the life I wanted for her.

Being able to walk into our own home now, albeit rented, and close the door on just us two, is one of the single greatest achievements of my life. We have a nice home, in a nice area, where she’ll go to a nice school, with nice kids. She has nice things, she wants for nothing, and I did that. I did that.