Leaving is not the end of it

Public attention is fixed almost entirely on the moment of escape. It makes for a clear story, with a door closing and a person walking out of it. Survivors will tell you that the door is somewhere near the beginning.

What follows is a long administrative grind conducted by someone whose nervous system has not yet come down. Housing applications. Court dates that get moved. Custody arrangements that require continued contact with the person you left. Bills in your name for debts you did not agree to. Employers who are patient for a while. A body that starts producing symptoms now that it is finally allowed to.

Post separation abuse is a recognised pattern and it is badly under discussed. Litigation used as a weapon, with repeated filings designed to drain money and time. Children used as messengers. Financial obligations ignored precisely because enforcement is slow. Fresh partners drawn into the campaign. New addresses discovered through school records or a mutual acquaintance who meant no harm.

There is also the grief, which nobody warns people about, and which arrives with a great deal of shame attached. You can be relieved to be out and still mourn the relationship, the house, the future you had planned, the version of that person you first met. Grieving is not evidence that you were wrong to go.

Communities frequently withdraw at exactly this point. The crisis has passed, in their view, and attention moves on. Meanwhile the survivor is eight months in, still filing forms, and now doing it alone.

This is where we try to be useful, and why our support does not have an end date attached. Practical help with the paperwork. Someone in the room at hearings. A check in during the third month and the ninth, when the calls from everyone else have stopped.

If you know someone who left last year, this is a good week to contact them. Not to ask how they are coping. Just to ask whether they want company on Saturday.