extracts of a diary

I don’t have much to write about at the moment so I have decided to write some extracts from my diary I had to keep for the police while I was going through the break up of my marriage.


25/5/05 I am woken at 5am by him shouting and cursing. He has found an email from my friend in North Carolina. He has completely got the wrong end of the stick anyway. Calls me allsorts of names takes my car keys, says he is going to take my car (it’s in my name bought with the insurance money from my cancer). He puts his hands around my throat for a split second ranting about the football club. Saying he is going to destroy all my paperwork. We both rush downstairs. While I am retrieving the papers from the garden he gets my phone from under my pillow (I had recently taken to sleeping with it there as he has made me paranoid about it). When the boys are up he takes youngest to school telling him mummy will have moved out by the time he comes home from school.

He comes back we argue some more. He wants me to move out. I won’t neither will he. I am upstairs sorting out laundry, we talk if neither of us will move out we will have to try to live together. He says that if we don’t have sex one of us will end up going else where. He pushes me onto the bed and starts pulling my clothes off. I really thought he was going to rape me. I started to cry which seemed to stop him.

28/5/05 He goes to the pub and gets very drunk, he wants me to take him to our eldest son’s gig, I refuse telling him he must eat something. He gets very abusive calling me names, saying anything I cook will be poison. He decides he is leaving, #2 son is very distraught. I talk to #2 explaining the situation and that we will manage. During the evening he rang me a dozen times saying he didn’t know where he was. At 11.30 I went to meet #1 son from train. Found SF outside the pub. He wanted to talk, but all he did was give me abuse so I left him to it. 12.30am he is kicking the door in, so I let him in. He was very nasty and demonstrated what he was going to do to my friends. He poked me in the eye, punched me in the cheek and put his hands around my throat. Grabbed my phone from my pocket looking for my friend’s phone numbers, demanding I tell him their addresses. He goes on the computer to find website that tells you how to kill using bare hands. I had changed my password which made him angry, he’s shouting and throwing things around. I called the police who were here in 5 minutes. They won’t leave us both in the house together, after much negotiating he gets difficult and they take him away.

29/5/05 At 5am he is brought back by police officer saying he has calmed down and wants to pack his things and go. But once the police officer has gone SF starts being abusive again. I manage to get the boys out of the house while he is asleep, we go to #3 son’s cricket match. About midday SF appears and begs for another chance, I tell him this is positively the last chance.

8/6/05 I am late home from work, having called on one the boys in the football team and chatting to his mum for a while. SF thought I must be at K’s house (chairman of Football club). I have never been there and as far as I knew he would be at work. SF has to know where I am constantly, he has to know what I am doing. It is like living on Big Brother. He wants my attention 100% of the time. He is constantly asking if I love him (this is what started it off). I have told him to give me space, it is hard to adjust to having no affection for 18 yrs to getting constant affection. He wants to be hugging and kissing me all the time. I can only put up with so much of this then I have to imagine it is someone else.

25/6/05 this has been a good week. SF has kept calm we have had no rows. The other day he found a well hidden letter I had written to my friend apologising for him getting dragged into my marriage problems when he had done nothing to warrant it. After reading the letter SF realised he had been behaving like an idiot. The other odd thing he has done is telling me how many pages of my book I have read each day. Telling me the page number I was on the previous day and the page I was on now.

13/9/05 SF phones me at work begging me to have sex with him. I tell him I cannot have this conversation I am at work, I will put the phone down. I leave the room, when I return he has called 3 more times. About 2pm my mother in law phones, SF has phoned her out of the blue demanding she phone pretending to be my mum, so she can ask me to give him another chance. She didn’t even know we had split up last week. I call her back after work, she is only surprised I had stuck with him as long as I have.

16/9/05 #1 son wakes me at 1am with phone , it is SF needing to be picked up from town. I get #1 to come with me. We find SF slumped on the pavement. We take him home, he gives us verbal abuse all the way. He goes to bed and I settle on the sofa, #4 joins me. SF comes down and insists I sleep in the bed, he will sleep on the sofa. Not long after this he returns to the bedroom insulting me and playing loud music. I go back to sofa. #4 joins me again. SF comes back down sends #4 back to bed then tried to get me to have sex with him. He punches me in the face when I refuse. I yell at him to go away and never hit me again. He goes away and #4 returns upset he has heard the row. SF returns with more insults and tells #4 he is going to stab me with kitchen knife. #4 cries so SF changes tactic saying he has taken overdose of his anti depressants. He goes to the kitchen and we hear rustling noises, before he goes back upstairs. He returns looking for clean boxers that he needs for his funeral. He goes into the kitchen where #4 and I see him take 2 tablets. He goes upstairs and I call an ambulance. He tells the ambulance crew he has taken 2 weeks worth over about 12 hours as well as drinking about 12 pints. I take #4 to my mums while I go to the hospital. He keeps trying to make me give him another chance. There is nothing wrong with him he has not overdosed at all. Mental health adviser says I must support him while he is getting over his drink problems, he’s said sorry and I should put it behind us. I CANT. I detest him for what he has put us through.

4/11/05 3.50am I am at my mum’s with #2 &3. #1 has opted to stay home and #4 is away with school for week. I am here because SF came home drunk whilst I was asleep on the sofa, he got on top of me demanding cuddles. When I refused he became abusive, refusing to leave me alone. He thinks that as I am still his wife he has a right to have sex with me. After about an hour I escape from under him and run upstairs. I phone the police who arrive within 10 minutes. SF has fallen asleep (in the same place as when he was on top of me) so there is not much they can do. They wake him up and talk to him. The officer comes back to me saying she can see why I am divorcing him. Sf won’t leave the house so the police tell me to go to my mother’s.

This is only a sample of the things we went through. There were a lot of other entries in my diary but I can’t bring myself to include them here.