So, depression figured largely in my life for quite a while but I was pulled out of my ever narrowing world by two factors. First and foremost my friends, both the ones in the UK, who are a constant source of support, and two women in Oman who consistently demonstrate their gentle integrity and strength. But more interestingly, I was also able to shed my anxiety by the increasing awareness it wasn't just me and my loved ones that were the focus for hateful behaviour, and therefore, the poor treatment we'd received wasn't my fault but infact down to those delivering it.
Chatting to a friend one day, who incidently has nothing to do with the military or the compounds we live on, I was told that one of the women who had been so unfriendly to me had asked my friend about the riding for the disabled group that my friend was involved with. 'Do they give free rides to the volunteers?' she had asked. My friend explained that the horses were there for the benefit of the disabled people, not the volunteers and this woman responded 'well, I won't bother with it then.' and sure enough she didn't get involved. A few weeks later, my friend expanded on this ever illuminating story about this woman. Walking her dogs on the beach one day, she had met someone else my friend knows. Unbeknown to this woman, the person she met was actually the chief riding instructor for the riding for the disabled group. In a surreal scenario, this woman who had been so patronising and offhand with me, delighted in telling her that infact she was the instructor.
This was hugely reassuring to me, if very strange behaviour. Each time I had tried to talk to this woman, I had either been brushed aside with the rather weird excuse that she was 'spaced out', or challenged in some way. Fortunately I'd always managed to meet her attempts to show me up or put me down. However, as this woman had made no effort at any interaction with me, I didn't continue to push for any friendliness for very long, and with the knowledge that she was actually not only incredibly selfish, but also a liar and very, very odd to boot, it made it far easier to stop being bothered by her disregard for me.
Despite realising that one of the wives who had been so nasty had problems, I was still very hurt about the woman who had reminded me that I 'was nothing special' treatment of myself and my husband. She had clearly taken a dislike to me right from the start for whatever reasons that I still have no idea about, but my husband is such a likeable, straight and kind man, she and her family had no reason to behave so badly towards him, and it was very distressing. Two of the other wives were also continuing to be unkind, gossiping about me and trying to cause bad feeling against us with our friends. However my distress didn't last as I found out that we were not the only family to be targeted with vindictive behaviour. It transpired that another wife on the same compound had been subject to utter nastiness and as a direct result had decided to leave the country with her husband still serving here, to return to the UK on her own; only seeing her husband when he went back to the UK on leave or she came out for short holidays. Although I was and still am disgusted that anyone could get away with causing this scale of misery, it did reassure me, at least, that I didn't need to take the bad behaviour personally, the problems lay firmly elsewhere. However, it didn't stop them resurfacing....
