Love Isn’t

A PREFACE TO ‘LOVE ISN’T’

Trigger Warning: Domestic Violence discussed in preface & poem

Let me be blunt about a few devastating facts. On average, one woman a week in Australia dies at the hands of a current or former partner.

At the time of writing, we are at the beginning of our 19th week of 2022, and 18 women have been murdered.

We know that according to a government literature review in 2019, men account for 75-94% of all perpetrators of domestic violence.

Although it seems obvious in reading those statistics, it is important to recognise that domestic violence (DV) is a national crisis.

DV comes in many forms and does not always present itself in such a physically violent manner. There are often no bruises or cuts or handprints to point to. And it can be that very narrow media representation of DV that leads so many victims / survivors to invalidate their own experience. Or indeed, even once this barrier is overcome, victims / survivors are further invalidated by police who are not adequately trained, and the legal system who have yet to reform to a degree that serves all.

In preparing for Elle Dit this year, I struggled to know how to write about my experience with DV, because in all honesty I am still trying to comprehend it myself. But I knew that this was something I had to do. I knew I wanted to write about it, because I understood the importance and impact of feeling seen. Of knowing – as someone who experienced and witnessed domestic violence in its emotional form – that my story, my trauma, was just as valid. I came to conclude that the best way for me to tell my story, in the place that I am now, is the same way I have always relied on expressing and indeed healing from my past. Through poetry. And so this is part of my story, in Love isn’t.

If this piece raises anything for you, please know that you can reach out to the following resources:

1800RESPECT – 1800 737 732 Lifeline – 13 11 14 UofA Counselling (non-emergency) North Terrace / Waite - +61 8313 5633 Roseworthy - +61 8313 7932

UofA’s Mental Health Triage (emergency) - 131 465

LOVE ISN’T

Words by Grace Atta

Love can be many things, but I tell you what it isn’t: it isn’t the sound of tears swallowed folded away with the tissues in your sleeve tucked under pillows secretly after hearing words sharper than the knife in the kitchen drawer Incompetent Hopeless Who do you think you are? You can’t be trusted. Say sorry! Say SORRY! SAY SORRY! you always said sorry But he never did Want it Hear it Say it

Love isn’t silence

for hours days

weeks

months

playing the game is all you can do –drop an egg and wipe it up buy another hold it tighter

gently god don’t let it break you know it’ll never be enough a hen hiding from the fox we walk on the ghosts

of eggshells

sitting side by side remnants of his military graded shells tell me about shock is that why I quake when an egg breaks? a year into two

Love isn’t ‘forgiveness’ recorded in a book dates and times he’ll circle back to the crime it is true in circles we live circling the truth at school a speaker told us it is the cycle of abuse

Love isn’t a glint in his eyes at the possibility of power his chest puffing to prove any point that pushes you to cower if he controls the peace of this place the mutters, frowns, and sighs the signs and symptoms of terror is there ever really peace in this place?

Love isn’t checking you turned all the lights off three times locking the door and walking back to be sure because you know there have been lesser evils with great hells

Love isn’t being told deep wounds were self-inflicted in fact…now that he thinks of it what wounds? that blood on the floor that’s not yours, it’s mine he so desperately decrees and don’t forget those wounds of his you caused

Love isn’t love shouldn’t love won’t be any of these atrocities.