by Linda C J Turner
One of the most important things I ever did during decades of emotional and psychological abuse was this:
I documented everything.
Not because I planned to use it one day.
Not because I was preparing for court.
Not because I wanted revenge.
But because I was living in so much confusion, denial, and gaslighting that writing it down was often the only way to stay connected to reality.
After every argument, every silent treatment, every incident of stonewalling or emotional deprivation, I went straight to my computer and logged it.
Sometimes it came out as a letter to him.
Sometimes a plea.
Sometimes a desperate attempt to explain what was happening.
Sometimes begging him to stop.
Sometimes begging him to get help to save our marriage.
Most of the time, it was an attempt to make sense of his behaviour when nothing made sense.
These logs became a lifeline.
A record of what I could not speak.
A mirror to what I could not face.
A truth that trauma tried to blur for years.
And here’s the part people don’t realise:
He tried to wipe the computer.
He tried to erase the records.
He tried to destroy what he didn’t want to face.
But he couldn’t erase:
- the printed copies
- the backups
- the stored devices
- the handwritten notes
- the timestamps
- the MRI images
- the medical records
- the psychological reports
- the linguistic patterns
- the behavioural evidence
- the truth my body carried
MRI images don’t lie.
Contemporaneous notes don’t lie.
Documented behaviour doesn’t lie.
Only abusers do.
For anyone trapped in denial, confusion, or psychological fog:
Document everything.
Not for revenge.
But for your clarity.
Your sanity.
Your healing.
Your future safety.
Your legal protection — if it ever comes to that.
Your trauma may distort memory.
Your nervous system may shut down to survive.
But your documentation becomes the thread that leads you out of the maze.
I look back now and see that my logs weren’t love letters.
They were survival notes.
Evidence of a brain trying to stay alive in an environment designed to break it.
And today, those records stand stronger than any lie ever told about me.
Because no matter how hard someone tries to rewrite the past…
the truth remains exactly where you stored it.
