The Chronicles of Australia Part Two of Three

The Chronicles of Australia Part Two of Three



Eastern Brown Snake

When she came out as trans I felt relieved, maybe this has been the problem all along. I let her use my makeup and things, and we made a system that when she said she liked some kind of girly thing, she would say "that would look good on you" and I'd buy it for her: nylons, makeup, clothes, plus she could use mine all she liked. (The ironic thing about this was that as long as I'd supported her from every angle including transition, she never supported my identity, gender or otherwise, once. She was constantly needling me to wear dresses, higher and higher heels regardless of my back, hips, and knees, and it was just more and more. I wanted to make her happy, so I went along with it. She had this game "we" played- Sophaniel would suggest what she wanted me to wear and I would do the same for her in her male form. So each of us would have the look that the other liked. Doesn't that sound like fun? Well first of all she lucked out because I'm not fussy about clothing so it was a long way in before I said anything but my two suggestions were just obviously too horrible and gross and yucky to do. 1) I like Converse. I thought some high tops would be cute, but Daniel didn't/couldn't because she uses arch supports so has to wear shoes that can support them. Ok fair enough. I suggested a side part rather than always in the middle. That was also vetoed because when Daniel was 10 some bullies beat him up over a side part. "So you're letting bullies from grade school still bully you? Do you think they will even remember? Wouldn’t it be empowering to shake it up a bit?" Nope. My two suggestions were too extreme.


Once she got drunk and decided he wanted to have sex- we hadn't in a long time- so long that I stopped using the NUVA ring- stupid hormonal birth control makes me irritable and takes away my sex drive and I'd rather do as little as possible to encourage cervical cancer if that's ok. I wasn't protected and I kept saying that I wasn't in the mood, no no no, please don't, please stop, and "can we do a safe word? the same word is NO the safe word is STOP. No! Stop!" the strength in my arms was gone and I couldn't push him off me and when he was done I just went in the bed and didn't leave it except to eat or use the washroom for three months.

There was a thing with the bathroom too. This happens to women my age, they feel like they have to pee all the time regardless of if they have to. It would get worse when there was tension I'd have to pee and it would drive me crazy cause it felt like I'd have to piss like a racehorse and three drops would come out and I'd still feel like I had to pee and there would be nothing there. Daniel would accuse me of needing to pee as an excuse to ignore the "talks" and so he tried to control how often I could go to the bathroom. That was extremely fucked up and sadistic.

He also accused me of throwing away or taking things, it started with a cleaner that said in all caps "DO NOT USE IF  YOU OR ANYONE IN TEH ROOM HAS ASTHMA, MAKE SURE THEY ARE OUT OF THE ROOM FOR 24 HOUR OR MORE". I do have asthma and I didn’t see any reason for it's use so I put it in the back of a cupboard and didn't really think about it but then Daniel started getting paranoid. That was missing, this was missing, the other ting was missing. I'd help look for them and they would usually turn up eventually. Catch 22 was of course if I found it, clearly I'd found it in the place I'd supposedly stashed it. Then his phone disappeared. That was a tense couple of days. I could feel his suspicious gaze burning a hole in me. After a couple of days went b he got an email from his mom saying someone had found his phone out by the intersection. He got his phone back but the sense of distrust wasn't repaired.


I didn't feel safe anywhere. She got meaner, she would scream "GET OUT OF MY APARTMENT" but I didn't know where to go. Once I went to go pick up my meds and I just lost it and I sat on a bench crying and a nice lade came and sat with me and she showed me where to go for help and they asked if I wanted to press charges (I had a tiny bruise on my wrist where I'd gone in the bathroom when he didn't think I should and right when I was on the other side of the door he whipped it open and it slammed into my arm. that wasn't the first or even the worst physical violence but it was a definite step up we were now at stage 5 out of the 7 stages of abuse, 6 was broken bones and 7 is death. That was as high as it had gotten with Dan S.

Funnel-web Spider

He would head to Newcastle, the town where hi parents live, once a week to lecture at Newcastle Uni- his mom would chauffeur him around because he was too scared to learn to drive himself- it was really stressful witnessing the way he treated his mom, he would give her about 15 minutes if he was being generous to be ready to drive him wherever he wanted to go. I was vocal about this that I didn't think that it was ok especially in his 30's to be expecting that of his mother and treating her like that but at the time I hadn't considered that was how they control each other.

His mom was able to assure that she wouldn’t be abandoned by her youngest and was able to control him and he had a robot that would so whatever he wanted. I'd never seen this sort of dynamic before and I was unfamiliar with it. I couldn't see what either was getting out of it as I was always extremely independent as a kid, even if I didn't want to be, no adult I knew would put up with that kind of toddler bullshit that Daniels mom put up with from him but I guess she liked the control and keeping him in fear of things was an excellent solvent.

A story that illustrates what I mean perfectly. Before we met, Daniel was telling me about this time that he wanted to learn roller blading. His mom was very worried so he was sure to get all the safety equipment- knee and elbow pads, the wrist things so you don't break your arm if you fall, helmet, the whole nine yards. Daniels mom said she was still worried and that Daniel was way too important and she didn't want to see him get hurt and she would rather he didn't. He really didn't do any kind of outdoor activities even though there were a lot of cool things to do there from snorkelling and SCUBA, regardless of the beautiful beaches, he didn't even surf. People even did hang gliding off the beach cliffs that looked super fun and I would have loved to give it a go if my spine wasn’t trashed. He had never done team sports, that's fine, it's not everyone's cup of tea, he doesn’t even know how to ride a bike (which is weird in a way but thin of that on the mom-as-controller perspective: if he would have been able to just cycle to wherever he wanted to go, he wouldn’t NEED her for transportation).  Ok so back to the story,  she says to him she doesn’t want him hurt and he's too important to get hurt. So he took back the roller blading stuff and never followed up on it. What kind of a kid would do that, just like that?  12 year old Daniel might have been upset but gone along with it. 14 year old Daniel might have been mad and maybe done it in secret, 16 year old Daniel might have flipped off his mom and done it anyway, 18 year old Daniel might have told her where to go and got them anyway. Ok, it's audience participation time. What age was Daniel when he obediently gave up his dream of roller blading because of hand-wringing mom and returned the equipment? Have you chosen and locked in your answers?  BZZZZZZ. Wrong. All of you are wrong. He wasn't a teenager. He was twenty fucking eight years old.

That's just not mentally healthy.

So there's this weird thing going on between Daniel and mum. She didn't like me and she expressed it in what I call "Catholic School Girl Bullying Style:- being mean but being so subtle that unless you weren't paying attention, you could miss it. Like on my birthday, there was a Uni ceremony and it was a long day and my pain was going up and I was getting exhausted. I'd missed birthday because on days I spent at their house I'd get allergic and when you are allergic even if its environmental, you can only eat certain things. People without allergies don't know or understand this. So I didn't have breakfast or lunch and then a 9 pm we tried to find an open restaurant and by then even though my blood sugar was very low, I felt too sick to eat so there was a dish offered that was churros and ice cream and some dipping sauces- the menu wasn’t clear about this but I really just wanted the ice cream. The ice cream was meant to be a dipping sauce (guh?) and was in a small deep dish. The waitress only brought cutlery for three so being the new one and under pressure to be polite (even though I was under extreme anxiety from Daniels bossing me for 3 solid days prior and feeling faint and packed with anxiety I passed along the cutlery to the rest and was trying to ask for another set.

In Daniels family they have this rule that makes no sense (or maybe it's just Daniel) that you can't ask a server for anything because it's a low key insult and it's rude or something. I just needed a spoon. Later I asked what people did when they weren't given cutlery and Daniel said they just go with it- I was like- you drink your soup by slurping it from a bowl and eat your pasta with bare hands? He said you just deal with it. This is another thing that was part of the crazy that started to slowly rear its ugly head.

Anyway I was in a bench and Daniel was by the aisle and they wouldn't let me out to see if I could get some cutlery. No one would ask on my behalf. I ended up having a panic attack and blacked out. Later Daniel said I had been almost shouting and making a scene about  needing a spoon, which since I was in panic attack blackout it COULD have been possible but it seemed very out of character. Why not just give someone a fucking set of cutlery in a restaurant? Isn't eating at least semi-politely expected rather then slurping ice cream from a sauce dish?

Later I relayed this story to my GP and my psychologist they both said that not being able to ask a server is weird and that behaviour by Daniels family was flat out abusive.