This could be the most important piece I’ve written, it’s not what I expected but what arrived. I don’t know who it’s for but if it’s you, no matter where you are, what you are doing, what situation you are living in, even if you’ve just said yes to an engagement like Lisa, you are walking down the aisle, or standing at the alter.

That moment when you know you are in the wrong place, muster the courage within you and walk away.

I know it’s hard, I’m not pretending it’s not, but it’s nowhere near as hard as what will arrive if you stay. The support you need will be there, it is available no matter what you’ve been told.

Even if you have to leave all your belongings behind it’s not worth your life, or the potential years of pain that lay ahead trying to undo the unthinkable.

Yesterday my day was flourishing, then a text message saying a show I was interviewed for 9 years ago about the murder of Lisa Harnam had aired again on Australian television. And out of nowhere, it was like being punched in the stomach, it bought me completely undone, to the point of feeling like vomiting.

It had my attention.

As it’s a story I’ve shared in the past without emotion, the very intense visceral response was telling me to stop and take notice.

I knew it was here for a reason, and it felt like for the first time it was a story to be written about, not because I want to, but because well actually it feels like Lisa is speaking to me and through me.

It’s a story about a beautiful young woman who simply fell in love.

Not realising she was entering a world of punishing trauma, a world that would quickly lead to her feeling like, in her words ‘a mere shell of herself.’

As emotional and mental abuse is not quite as distinctive as physical abuse. The bruising and scars live on the inside, often unseen hidden in the shadows under the confusion, shame, and fear.

Lisa’s Prince was both loving and diminishing, kind, gentle and punishing, suppressing and controlling.

After all, everything he does is for you, he loves you, you are his world, or at least that’s what he said.

Pushing her down to the point of breaking, and just as she was about to break he’d be loving. Pulling her back into his charming pool of disarming dishonesty.

Making her doubt her doubts, question her questioning, fogging her seeing.

Lifting her high enough above the clouds for her to confess her undying love, as the cycle of suppression and immersion, perceived love and aggression kept spinning in an effort to evoke submission.

Trapped, alone, and cut off from friends and family as his overbearing, aggressive nature saw her caged and separate.

Completely isolated she was not allowed to work, walk down the street, and look at anyone, not even leave the building to go to the gym.

Slowly, unknowingly his overbearing, demanding nature saw her bulimic, with vomiting as the only thing left she felt she had any control over.

The moment came when she knew she had to leave, but still, somewhere in there, she said she felt like if she could only get it right, do better, and say the right thing the beautiful part of him she loved would override the villain.

So she faltered, she didn’t leave, she wanted to give it one more go, as after all she loved him … and that falter seen the realisation of the unthinkable.

The phone call to her mother was too late, Lisa didn’t see, she didn’t see just how dark his controlling, ownership of her was until it was too late.

The tapped phone, the cameras monitoring, the listening in to keep her trapped in the prison of illusion and pain.

Until she fell, until she was thrown in a rage uncontrollable, he and she went over the edge and they both fell into the unthinkable deathly, heartbreaking end.

There are variables to this story, degrees of control, degrees of diminishing, degrees and anger, and rage.

And they all lead to unthinkable places, often without you even knowing it until it’s too late and the damage is fierce and punishing in its own unique way.

If a piece of this writing even whispers to you, I beg you to stop and check-in.

Stop and check in before it’s too late, walk away.

Just walk away.

Everything you need will come to you, just walk away.

You are more than enough, worthy, deserving, and valuable no matter what they say.

If this piece is for you…

Walk away.

Don’t let the fear of the unknown keep you trapped, as there is a solution even if you can’t see it yet, there is a better way.

I know this piece doesn’t even touch the edges of a very big story.

I am following an emotion so intense, I can’t turn away.

As I remember the moment in my own life, when I saw it, I remember it vividly now, the moment I first saw the rage, only to suppress it, and turn away.

For support call:

1800RESPECT

1800737732

Lifeline

131114

Lisa Harnam Foundation

1300 732 848