'Normal'
Recently, the hospital that I work in closed down and myself and the rest of the staff were moved to another unit. One of the members of our team had a habit of pretty much doing what she wanted. If she didn't want to look after a certain patient, she'd get someone else to. If a patient wanted to go out, they'd go where she wanted, with whoever else she wanted to take along with her. If she didn't get her own way, she would get signed off by the doctor for a couple of weeks after telling them she was anxious. When we got to our new hospital, we worked together with the existing staff. After a week or so, while I was having a conversation with one of my new colleagues, they told me that this particular team member had been so uncooperative and rude that people were in shock. She asked if she was always like that and it was only then that I realised; yes, she was.
It made me realise, we hadn't realised quite how unreasonable and manipulative this person's behaviour was, until people from outside of the workplace saw her behaviour and were shocked by it. it was like we'd been conditioned to expect her behaviour, so it was normal for us.
It reminded me of a couple of occasions with my ex partner. I was driving my friend to work one day and got a phone call from him. He was angry with me because he was lost. He was driving to a job interview after recently moving from London to Portsmouth to be with me. He couldn't find this random industrial estate and it was my fault because it was my "area". He became so relentlessly aggressive over the phone that it reduced me to tears. My friend had of course heard the whole thing as I was driving so the call came through the speakers in the car. I felt mortified, frightened and angry at myself for not knowing off the top of my head how to find this industrial estate. My friend was shocked. He didn't speak for what felt like forever but it wasn't an awkward silence. My head was too busy asking myself how I could have been so stupid for not being able to tell him how to get there. I'd let him down. Later, he'd reinforce my feelings of guilt, telling me how selfish and ungrateful I was. He'd moved down to be with me and I was leaving him to do things on his own.
My friend, after his shocked silence, asked me if I was ok. I'll never forget the look on his face. Wide-eyed, stumbling over his words. I said I was fine, apologised profusely for crying and explained that my poor boyfriend was just stressed because he was trying his best for us. Going to a job interview so that we could have nice things; I should have helped him more. Should have planned a route for him. It didn't occur to me that actually, he was a grown man capable of doing these things for himself. That I hadn't got home from work until 9 the night before, then left the house at half 5 to make the hour drive to work for another 12 hour shift. That he had spent the past month of living with me unemployed, watching sky sports on my sofa, playing bingo on his phone and drinking lager all day.
"Does he normally talk to you like that?" was the next question that my friend asked me. I realised that he did. But made more excuses. He was stressed. He just wants to provide for me. "What's going to happen when you get home?", "It's not your fault", "Has he ever hit you?". All questions that I brushed off. I had no idea what would happen when I got home. It might be over, or the abuse could continue for a good few days until I did something else wrong and it would start again. I guessed it depended on how the interview went. He hadn't hit me. But the truth was I was praying that he would. In my head, that was the only thing that would justify me leaving.
That was the first time anyone questioned his behaviour towards me. About 3 months into my relationship and it was already too late. It had started to become my normal.
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