Gaslighting With Sharks

The House of Commons today held the Second Reading of the Domestic Abuse Bill. For those of you who don’t know — which I suspect will be most of the not many of you who read this — I work for a charity. The charity supports vulnerable people across a range of different circumstances. One significant strand of the work we do is within domestic violence and abuse.

To my understanding, my mother’s first husband tried to kill her. There was abuse, and at some point, he attempted to kill her. During the proceedings today, the Member of Parliament for Canterbury, Rosie Duffield, delivered a haunting speech outlining her own experience of domestic abuse. It must have been incredibly difficult and it was obvious that those in the chamber were deeply moved, with her colleagues expressing their appreciation and admiration, citing the power that sharing her story would have for those who were themselves in abusive relationships or might be one day. To speak and to be believed.

Josienne Clarke wrote a very open and honest post about her stunning new song, If I Didn’t Mind, which was included on last week’s playlist. The song is written from the perspective of someone who is in a coercive and controlling relationship, laying bare the many ways in which an abuser can cause their target to doubt their own experience of reality. Gaslighting. It’s a song written from her own life. She describes it:

It is a slow death by a thousand slights, a crushing, cloying, cold and suffocating strangling in silence.

To speak and to be believed.

There can be no default but to believe. As painful as the retreading of trauma may be, these women are presenting the dark realities and hidden harms that have for too long gone unchecked or unacknowledged. Art can be a powerful means for reckoning with these matters, and it is the responsibility of creators to decide if and how they will tell their own stories.

Seeing someone who is in a relationship like this, when they don’t see the signs, is troubling. It’s what led me to start writing Sharks a few months ago:

When we first met

We were swimming with the sharks

The blood in the water

Was pouring from my heart

Then you kissed me

I was sure that I was saved

Caught up in the mystery

Of a world under the waves

Tongue-tied by the tide

I used to be so confident

I used to be so bold

Now I shrink just like a violet

And I do just what I’m told

First, you say I’m pretty

Then, you say I’m not

Somewhere in this city

Someone’s desperate for what I’ve got

But all I’ve got’s to go

To speak and to be believed.