Why Did We Stay in the House?
Report by: Debra Pickman
Many people often ask and wonder why we stayed, knowing the physical abuse and dangers that we endured. How could anyone feel the need to stay in such a situation? It is certainly a question that is most difficult to answer let alone defend
First off Tony and I were a young couple with our first child. We had depleted all our reserves to move to this house; a house we thought was suitable house for bringing up our children in. This meant using what little saving we had, and borrowing beyond that for utility deposits. We certainly didn’t have the money to make another move so soon after this one.
In addition we had spent a significant amount of time and money in small structural changes, decorating, painting the kitchen and nursery, buying curtains and more. For us, it simply was not easy to walk away from something you have poured so much of your heart and sweat into.
As we became aware of the activity in the house, a blanket of denial lay over our life for a very long time. We tried to explain things away logically, or blame it on the excessively tired minds of being new parents; we often came to think our minds were playing tricks on us.
In fact, much of the time we lived there we went through two states of viewing our situation, it was like a teeter tauter effect. One day or week we would feel everything was normal and not have a concern in the world. The next day or week, we would have noticeable activity bringing us back to the reality that something was definitely wrong.
During the periods of reality, we had often talked about moving or handling the situation in an other way, however we were very naive in what to do. Then, as if to calm our nerves, the activity would cease again and we felt all was normal again.
This teeter tauter effect continued and under different circumstances which continued to afforded us with the idea that if we stayed it would all work out alright.
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