Content note: This article discusses coercive control, domestic abuse, psychological manipulation, suicidal thoughts, threats of violence, child abuse, animal cruelty and trauma, including my own lived experience. It also contains spoilers for Curry Barker’s Obsession. Please look after yourself while reading and step away if you need to. Support information is available at the end.
BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR
Sitting on the sofa with Mum, scrolling endlessly through streaming platforms, deciding what to watch, I remembered friends had seen Obsession and asked me if I’d watched it yet. I decided to give it a go. It had clearly stayed with them, why not?
I knew nothing about the film other than its title, Obsession. That’s the way I like to go in, blind and with no expectation. I’d somehow managed to avoid online spoilers too, which I’m grateful for, now I’ve seen it!
I didn’t expect a film to play on my emotions so much, from “Awwwh that’s sweet” to “WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK?” The premise is: a lonely music store employee uses a magical novelty charm to force his longtime crush to fall in love with him, unleashing a dark and violent nightmare.
Nightmare… the dictionary definition of that is usually associated with a “bad dream”. A vivid, unpleasant dream during the REM sleep stage that causes strong negative emotions like fear, terror, anxiety, or sadness. You’d be forgiven for thinking some weird entity was stalking people in their sleep, maybe Freddy Krueger style, but no…
Its alternative meaning: A stressful, shocking, or extremely unpleasant real-life event or situation. This film was so terrifying because the monster isn’t always so far from home…
LOVE ME - OR ELSE
Opening with the adorably awkward Bear, practicing how he’s going to ask his crush out on a random waitress, I felt for him immediately. We’ve all had that nervousness when deciding to tell someone we like them. He was relatable and seemed very innocent which immediately made me fall for the “underdog” character he projected. I wanted him to succeed in the form of winning his crush’s approval and living happily ever after!
Even with his “wish” for Nicky, his crush, “to love him more than anyone else in the world” I was still rooting for them… the amount of times I’ve wished on stars and screenshotted weird times on my phone “as a sign” 11:11, 12:34 etc. as though wishing on those and actually having the evidence would make my plea stronger… weird I know!
Very quickly after the beauty of the film’s start, things began to look a little darker… as SOON as Bear had wished, Nicky begins acting very strangely to say the least… It’s startling and shocking and you don’t really FULLY understand the consequences of what he’s done, although I think even at that point I started to realise, even in some small way, that he’d probably undo it if he could. She wasn’t “HER” anymore.
It really felt weird, it felt forced and I was more on Nicky’s side of things now, I was still torn between, had she seen him make the wish and was fooling around? Or had it actually worked? If it had… was that her will? It felt a little wrong to mind control someone into loving you, no matter how much Bear wanted it and no matter how pure I’d thought his intentions initially were.
I could see a lot of myself in Bear wishing and wanting someone he loved to love him, but it was Nicky, whether herself or “possessed”, that really began making me worry. It jumped from the screen to the sofa as I watched. This wasn’t the first time I’d seen reactions like that…
THE MONSTER DOESN’T ALWAYS LOOK LIKE ONE
The film is so terrifying to me because the fear goes beyond a fictional monster, it’s real people, each dealing with their own version of one fucked up situation. I lived through a family member and their own version of this “posession” in the form of alcohol. As with Nicky, I didn’t blame them, they were being controlled but that doesn’t make the behaviour acceptable.
Watching Bear struggle to find excuses and essentially treading on eggshells definitely echoed my own life. I used to do anything I could to appease them, as with Bear, I’d be frightened to tell the truth in case it sparked some big blow up from them and I spent many sleepless nights wishing I wasn’t alive, ultimately, what Bear goes through in the end.
The coercive control of not being able to go anywhere or to be back at a certain time “or else”, slowly alienating everyone around you in “protection” of them which they would never realise. The party scene really hit home for me. Maybe not a direct comparison but I remember being at an after school club and wanting the world to swallow me up as they swore and shouted at my best friend’s Mum, drunk driving, nearly hitting them and this was somewhere I had to go back to every week.
I was a young child and it started before I can even remember but the effects of this live with me. I AM SAFE NOW but it’s important to talk about I think. So many people had no idea what was going on at home, they thought my family member was just “different”, no one ever has or probably will understand the extent of what we went through.
The Sarah scene really hit the nail on the head, Bear reaches the point of sneaking out to see her, something I had to do many times, for safety and respite even for an hour. KNOWING I’d have hell to pay when I got home because they were drunk and angry and even poverty and world hunger was my fault…
Bear goes to see Sarah but he knows that if Nicky finds out he’s going to be in huge trouble, he doesn’t directly realise, I don’t think, that she’s in danger too. Something I lived through in being told that if we ever tried to leave, if they couldn’t find us for any reason, they’d set fire to the house of friends and family members and kill them. That threat was very real and we couldn’t risk the lives of other people so we just did what we were told. Sarah, in the film, is a depiction of what we feared growing up.
Even the cat scene where she feeds Bear his own deceased cat brought up trauma for me, I was bought a puppy and then the family member shot it in front of me when I was around 7 years old. That is the single most terrifying and horrendous thing I’ve ever experienced in my life and so I can really relate to the feeling of Bear’s realisation that the memory of his beloved pet has now been tainted and corrupted by someone else’s actions. It shows that NO ONE is safe when people act like this, man or beast.
A CAGE BUILT ONE BAR AT A TIME
In the film, Bear doesn’t seem to fully relax when he’s in the car with Sarah because he likely knows he has very little time and/or that he’s being monitored by Nicky. Having lived this experience, I knew it was only a matter of time before Nicky appeared. We would have to flee the house a lot and there was never a warning of when the family member was going to “blow up” and we’d need to run. No one knew so how could we ask for help? If we involved anyone we’d endanger them too.
SO many times I got detentions for not doing homework when I’d spent the night before sleeping on the school carpark in Mum’s car. Begging her to take us home so that we could sleep properly but knowing that if we did go home we’d end up taking physical and mental attacks until school time. We were safer away from the house but we knew that there was EVERY chance that this person would turn up to where we were, that they were out trying to find us.
We only had a family mobile phone at the time, a 3310, thankfully no location sharing then, but we still turned that off just in case. We’d turn it on when on our way home only to find 50 voicemails and missed calls ranging from pure rage in wanting us to come home, to blackmail, to weeping, begging and guilt tripping for leaving them alone.
I felt guilty being away from the house rather than it being enjoyable, I could never switch off the fear and panic that I was going to be summoned back or that the family member would turn up. It was safer not to have friends because how in the hell could they come over to mine? I LOVED going to friends’ houses but I knew that would leave my other family members in the line of fire so I rarely went anywhere and we stuck together as a unit most of the time like some secret service group that had more information on trauma than anyone would ever want to know.
When people say “why didn’t you just leave?” I find that really difficult to hear, for one, it’s documented that that’s the most dangerous time for someone when they say that to their abuser and if they were killing animals we owned and threatening our extended family, what the fuck do you think would’ve happened? There is no way we could have escalated what happened bringing it to the doors of other people, we were already in real fear of our OWN lives being taken how could we put that fear onto anyone else? We believed it was contained as long as we “played the game”. For a very long time it was.
It wasn’t all horrible, they loved us, they truly did and their were real moments of sincerity even if they were clouded by copious amounts of whisky. The difficult thing for people to understand is that I loved this person with all of my heart and I knew they were struggling, they had stints of sobriety and they were the best days, I held them dear when I was staring down the barrel of a gun aimed at my face, I tried so very hard not to be resentful because I believed, even as a child, that this wasn’t their CHOICE.
That’s the problem though, as with Nicky, you get moments of real love and beauty and then BANG you’re slapped in the face with the harsh reality that it won’t last. The strength of the love and care is equaled by the rage and malice that replace it.
SURVIVING IS NOT THE END OF THE STORY
I am safe, physically. This person thankfully became sober and we lived a couple of years as real family before they died of natural causes. The scars left behind are faded but still exist. The up and down, back and forth, was exhausting and brought on PTSD for me and my Doctors think it may have been a trigger for my M.E. (Myalgic Encephalomyelitis) to be triggered. I could take the physical abuse but the mental torture is what has ruled my life, even today.
It has affected the way I love people romantically, anxiously attaching because I’m so very scared of losing them. I can see myself in Nicky to some degree, in her anxiety. Before I got help, reassurance wasn’t ever enough for me. I had real fears that everyone in the world was going to leave me in some way, be it by choice or death. Seeing Nicky crying and begging to hear “I love you”, in fear of abandonment and searching for reassurance, held a mirror to me I didn’t really want to see, thankfully I’m healed enough to realise that’s what I could be like too! NOT the violence however, I’d seen so much I couldn’t bear to inflict it, I even became vegan!
I’ve spoken about what happened to me for many years but it took until this year, age 38, to realise the true extent of what had happened. I went to psychology for cognitive restructuring therapy and we got to some real deep wounds that had shaped the way I think about myself. Feeling unworthy, unlovable, that the world was a dangerous place physically, because I lacked protection as a child from one of the people I was supposed to trust with all of my heart.
I see myself in Bear, the way he felt the only way out was to end his life. For me however, I’m glad, despite feeling like that a lot of the time as a child, I made it through. I’m here at 38, long free of this situation, TRYING to help others with my story.
TAKING BACK THE NARRATIVE
After being afraid to speak for so many years, having a voice feels very strange. Sharing this with you, I admit, feels a little wrong because for many years I couldn’t tell anyone. I guess now I have this platform, I want to free myself of these secrets as well as helping people to recognise coercive control and domestic violence. Even if one person reads this and is encouraged by my story, that’s a success for me.
I’m learning a lot about boundaries and what I deserve in love, I’ve often gone back to abusive relationships romantically because I believed that’s what I deserved, maybe even felt drawn to. How could I relate to safety when my body was used to beating it’s own heart like a drum, alert constantly. I think wanting to heal people and going to extreme lengths to “help” people has led me to realise that some take that for granted and it can alienate others.
Love, to me, is safety, it isn’t feeling like a fire alarm is going off and that you need to find the quickest exit or run back into the fire with a bucket of water trying to put it out. It’s setting healthy boundaries and the ability to say “no”. You do NOT have to live your life pleasing people, YOU are a person that deserves some loyalty too. It took a long time to accept that it wasn’t selfish to think of my own needs and is still a work in progress, but I’m hopeful. Psychology REALLY helped me unravel what I’d been through but more so how it has affected me now. That’s something I’d really recommend talking to your Doctor about, it isn’t for everyone but it really did help me. There is so much strength in asking for help to change harmful behaviours, even when they’re from you and directed at yourself.
I think I’d want someone to take from both my story and the film Obsession, that coercive control and domestic violence can look like everyday life. Even long after the abuse has ended we can struggle to see the reality of the situation, but when you take a step back, see someone else going through it, it looks terrifying. For me, Obsession makes that hidden fear visible but often it happens behind closed doors without people, beyond those suffering, ever knowing or receiving the help they desperately need… and THAT is scary.
YOU ARE NOT ALONE
If you’ve recognised something of your own life in this piece, you don’t have to tell your story publicly to deserve support. Whether it’s happening now or you’re still living with the effects years later, you matter. You can love someone and still deserve protection from them.
These services offer support in the UK:
Refuge’s National Domestic Abuse Helpline — Support for women experiencing domestic abuse. Call 0808 2000 247, free, 24 hours a day. Online support is also available through the website.
Men’s Advice Line — Confidential support for men experiencing domestic abuse. Call 0808 801 0327, free, Monday–Friday, 10am–5pm.
NAPAC — Support for adults affected by childhood abuse. Call 0808 801 0331, free, Monday–Thursday, 10am–9pm, and Friday, 10am–6pm.
Samaritans — If you’re struggling or having thoughts of suicide, call 116 123, free, any time, day or night. You don’t have to be suicidal to talk.
If you or someone else is in immediate danger, call 999.
Thank you for reading and for giving my story your time. Love should leave room for you to be yourself, to say no, and to feel safe.