Anon 008

For five years, her partner called her names every day. Ugly, fat, stupid and disgusting became part of the language she lived with.

He insisted they were “just words”. Because he did not hit her, he said it could not be abuse. When she named what was happening, he accused her of “minimizing real victims of abuse”. Her pain was dismissed using the same distinction she was trying to challenge.

She wants people to understand that repeated humiliation can cause harm without physical violence. She should not have needed bruises for her experience to matter.

Music, friends and her cat are parts of her life beyond that relationship. The message she wants her portrait to carry is direct: “I survived.”