“I stayed silent for a long time. For years, I had been telling myself it would pass, that it just wasn’t a lucky phase of my life, that he would change. The first time, he humiliated me in front of others. The second time, he pushed me. The third time, I realized I was living in fear – but even then, I stayed.” These are the words of Tanja, a woman from Podgorica, who had been a victim of domestic abuse for years.
She says domestic abuse doesn’t start with a slap, but with control.
“It starts with questions like, ‘Where were you?’, ‘Who were you talking to?’, ‘You’re nothing without me.’ Little by little, I began to believe it. I lost my confidence, my friends, my job. I lost myself,” Tanja continues in her account to the CdM portal.
For years, she believed things would get better, but, as she says, she was wrong.
“When I finally left, I thought the worst was behind me. I packed a few things and left with my three children. That night, I didn’t have a plan – but I had a decision: that I would no longer live in fear,” Tanja said.
She soon realized that leaving the abuser was only the beginning of another battle.
Family and friends often asked her: “Why didn’t you leave him sooner?” It hurt, she says, that few ever asked, “How are you now?”
“And now it’s hard. When you’ve spent years being told you’re worthless, it’s not easy to stand in front of the world again. I had no job, no money, and I carried the burden of stigma. In our community, everyone knows everything, or thinks they do.”
She sought professional help only after realizing she couldn’t cope on her own. Conversations with a psychologist gave her, for the first time, the space to say out loud everything she had been pushing under the rug for years.
She learned she wasn’t to blame. That violence is never deserved. That courage lies not in enduring abuse, but in leaving.
She wishes to remind the society that women who survived domestic abuse don’t need pity.
“They need a chance. A chance for work, for support and understanding. They need a society that won’t look away or ask questions that hurt more than the memories themselves.”
