NAAVoices was not created from certainty, but from lived experience and professional insight. As I migrate earlier work from the original platform, this post has been reviewed and approved for transfer. It remains true to its original context, with only minor clarity edits where needed. Some moments do not require rewriting to remain honest.

Two Years On — Reflection

Reading this back now, I can see the pattern far more clearly than I could then. At the time, I only knew that I was exhausted, frightened, and falling apart. Now I can name it for what it was: the slow, cumulative damage of being passed from officer to officer, team to team, having to reopen the same wounds every single time.

People talk about re-traumatisation like it is an unfortunate side effect. It isn’t. Not when the system keeps making you start again from the beginning. Not when every handover means retelling the worst parts of your life to strangers and hoping this time somebody will actually understand.

Content warning: descriptions of trauma response, hypervigilance, and distress connected to police contact.

Back at the Starting Line

I cannot shake the feeling that I am right back at the starting line.

Back at the beginning of a fight I never asked for, and one that still does not seem to have an end.

I do not know how much fight I have left in me. So much of me has already been worn down. It took everything to speak in the first place, and even that now feels like it has been pulled apart, reframed and handed back to me as something else.

The police have my files. My words. My evidence. Pieces of my life.

And I do not trust that any of it will come back to me whole.

The Fifth Set of Officers

I saw another new set of officers this morning.

The fifth.

I thought I would be okay. I told myself it was just another meeting. But there is nothing simple about sitting down again and dragging yourself back through things that nearly broke you the first time.

My body reacted before my mind had a chance.

The dread.
The panic.
The tight chest.
The feeling that my skin does not fit properly.

It was all there again.

The officers seemed pleasant enough, which somehow made it harder. The male officer had once worked at the same hospital as me. You would think familiarity might ease things slightly.

It did not.

It made me feel more exposed.

When they knocked, I only opened the door part of the way. I still do not know whether that was intentional or just panic. The female officer seemed to sense my hesitation and gently asked if they could come in. By then, I had already stepped back.

Cleaning Before They Arrived

They arrived earlier than I expected.

I had woken with the kind of anxiety that turns into frantic movement, as though keeping busy might stop the fear from catching up with me.

So I cleaned.

I scrubbed the kitchen. Emptied and cleaned the fridge. Swept the floor. Rushed through the bedroom and bathroom. Put washing on. Wiped every surface. Hung laundry outside. Mopped. Hoovered.

All in less than an hour.

I told myself it would help me feel more in control.

It did not.

By the time they sat down, I was on the sofa with my laptop, shaking.

I messaged a friend, hoping it might steady me. It helped a little, but the loneliness still sat there. That awful feeling that no matter how many people care, some parts of this are still only yours to carry.

And underneath it all, life still had to keep moving.

The day still had to be managed.
The children still needed me.
Everything still continued, no matter how shattered I felt.

What You Cannot Un-Give

By then, I had handed files over to two separate offices.

Pages and pages of my life.

Evidence. Records. Disclosures. Things that had cost me dearly to gather and organise.

And still, I had no real sense of whether anyone had properly read them, understood them or kept them in order.

Some things had been picked out. Some things had clearly been framed in certain ways. And I was not there when that happened.

That helplessness is hard to explain unless you have lived it.

The feeling of your own life being handled by other people, sorted and interpreted by strangers, while you are left outside the process.

I keep wondering what real change any of this can bring. Whether everything I poured myself into, all the documenting, all the evidence, all the attempts to make sense of what happened, will simply disappear into another file.

By that point, my trust in the police had gone.

The Envelope

While looking through folders today, I found an envelope I had forgotten about.

Inside was my will, and a letter I had written months earlier to the officer who is now the subject of an investigation I never asked for.

I could not bring myself to read it again.

I did not need to.

I remembered the state I had been in when I wrote it.

I had once emailed myself a copy from my work computer, during a rare moment when my head felt steadier. I found that email too, but I still did not open it.

When they were going through the files, I handed it over.

There is something deeply unsettling about giving away pieces of your life that you can never fully take back. Once they are out of your hands, they are no longer just yours. They become part of a process. Part of a file. Part of someone else’s interpretation.

And I kept thinking about the first officer.

The one I had originally tried to disclose everything to.

I remember myself then, speaking too fast, tripping over my words, apologising over and over while trying to explain what had been happening.

Apologising.

As if I needed to make myself smaller while telling the truth.

As if I had to soften my own pain to make it easier for someone else to hear.

That still stays with me.

Music, Driving and Holding It Together

When things get bad, I use music to regulate.

I know from the outside it probably looks strange. The same song on repeat, over and over. But it is not really a preference.

It is survival.

After the officers left, we drove for several hours to stay with family overnight.

The drive was awful.

I cried behind my sunglasses for most of it. Silent crying. The kind where you are trying to keep your breathing steady so the children do not worry, while feeling like you might fall apart at any second.

I tried to sing along to the music because sometimes it gives my brain something to hold onto.

That day, it barely touched it.

I kept being pulled in and out of flashbacks while trying to stay present enough to keep driving.

My middle son sat in the front beside me with his headphones on, like he often does. He knows what PTSD looks like. He knows my triggers. He has watched what this has done to me in real time.

He has watched my trust in the police disappear piece by piece.

At one point, he rested his head on my shoulder while I was driving.

There was something heartbreakingly tender about that.

Your child trying, in the only way he can, to comfort you while you are still trying to be the one holding everything together.

Explaining the Coping

On the way, I messaged my grandma to explain that I might need music in my ears while we were there.

I did not want her to think I was being rude. I just needed her to understand that sometimes music is the only way I can drown out the memories and thoughts racing through my mind.

Other times, when everything becomes too much, I need silence.

Complete silence.

I do not know whether that is good or bad. I only know that both are part of how I am trying to survive.

The people close to us can feel it. They know when things are not right, and that creates tension around everyone. The children had a lovely day with their grandma, but I struggled with patience and tolerance.

I hate that.

I used to love visiting her. It was one of the places I felt happiest and most at home.

Now, nothing feels the same.

Nearly Three in the Morning

We are staying in a lovely Airbnb with fairy lights around the room. The kind of place that should feel peaceful.

But it is nearly three in the morning and I cannot sleep.

Tomorrow, I have to travel to sign further documentation connected to the ongoing investigation.

It is a lot to cope with.

I wish I could talk to someone about how I feel, but I am finding it hard to trust people’s motives now. I have never tried to use anyone for personal gain, but after everything that has happened, I find myself questioning who is genuine, who wants something, and who might take advantage of my vulnerability.

My mind keeps racing.

On the way here, I kept remembering the day I learned that the first officer I disclosed the abuse to had given a talk about fathers’ rights at my son’s nursery.

I was already unwell at pick-up, with palpitations and chest pain. By the time I got home, I could barely stand.

My sister had to collect my son. My two older children helped me crawl across the landing and into bed.

I took cardiac medication and, honestly, in that moment I did not care much what happened next.

I just remember crawling.

That is the image that stayed.

Not strength.
Not resilience.
Not the polished version of survival people like to talk about.

Just me, crawling, because my body had finally had enough.

And the thought going round and round in my head was this:

No matter what I do, something else finds me.

What Changed, and What Was Taken Back

Then in March, something changed.

Someone finally listened.

Someone understood post-separation abuse. Someone did not look at me and decide I was just a woman trying to alienate her ex-partner. Someone recognised what I had been trying to say all along.

More than that, they acted.

For a moment, it felt like maybe I was not losing my mind. Maybe I had not imagined the gaps, the failures, the things that should have happened and did not.

And then that support was taken away.

Now I feel like I am back where I was in December.

Eight months later, sitting in front of another team of officers, trying to explain the same danger, the same harm and the same reality.

I did not create this cycle.

I did not choose it.

I have just been the one forced to live inside it.