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A special month
A long time ago I promised a very close friend I would write this column. I thought writing it would be a piece of cake. It’s not. My friend was a victim of spousal abuse. She called out for help many times. Sometimes her call sounded a lot like, “Hi, whatcha doing?” Or, “No, I’m okay, just a bit tired.” Or, “I’m not crying, I’m just worn out.” Sometimes she’d ask me if LOML and I ever disagreed or fought. Yet, for the most part, every bit of love, every piece advice, every offer to help her get out of her situation was taken with “a grain of salt”. I know she heard all of the words. I know she Googled endlessly for “the signs”. I’m sure she dialled “the number” many times and then “disconnected”. All of the words were the words she needed to hear. All of the love, was love she needed to have. All of the offers of refuge were seriously considered. I know she wanted to run and be embraced by the offers given from those who loved her and wanted her to be healthy, to be loved, to be safe, and to be sane.
I’ve never been in an abusive relationship. Yeah, yeah, LOML have had disagreements, but for some reason, we made it perfectly clear to each other at the very beginning, any kind of abuse was “off the table”. So, in my younger days, I found it so very difficult to believe a person wouldn’t just leave the first time the control, the physical abuse, the sexual abuse, the emotional abuse, the isolation, the verbal abuse or the economic abuse happened. Why wouldn’t a person just leave? What was wrong with them? I really thought, if it were me, I’d just pack my bags and walk out. I really thought I was that strong. But I didn’t know anything. I knew nothing of manipulation. I knew nothing of the “grooming” and of the calm before the storm. I had no experience. I had no background, no training, no deep understanding. I had nothing. My attitude was, plain and simply, victim blaming. “What’s wrong with the victim?” Yep, that’s where I was. I certainly wasn’t judgementfree. Listening was a good thing, but being judgemental was useless and harmful. How could my friend have trusted me, when I didn’t trust her?
When my friend opened up and told me what was actually happening in her life, I wanted to stop everything and put that man out of his black-hearted misery. And I told her how I felt. And I told her how I wouldn’t have stayed and how I would never go back, “if I were you”. I wanted to heap physical pain on husband’s sorry ass. I obsessed about how I was going to “bring him down”. And then? Well and then, many months later, my friend called to say she’d left him. I cried happy tears for her. She’d found a place to hunker down, a safe place to raise her child. She found a home close to her workplace and her family. She said she was getting her sh*t together. While I was still blaming her for not leaving sooner, she was telling me how hard it had been to leave. How physically difficult, how emotionally difficult and how financially difficult it had been to do what she was doing. But I couldn’t shake the anger out of my head. In this moment she was safe but still afraid—and I was still blaming her for taking so long. I could hear the fear in her voice whenever we spoke. She fretted about bringing up a child without a father. I said wise things like, “No kid needs a father like that.” Soon her conversations changed from “happy to be out of there” to “maybe I made a mistake leaving”. And then? And then she said, “I think he’s changed.” And then she went back to her abuser. For a long time I didn’t hear from her. I left messages. The silence was heartbreaking for me. And then? And then she called and said she was done for good with his B.S. and she’d call when she was ready. When she finally called, she told me about an organization that provided her the emotional and material support she needed, without questions. She reached out to me to say she was going to be “okay”. Our relationship changed a little bit. She was much stronger than I would ever know.
Many, many years ago, at a Teachers’ Federation conference someone said a victim of spousal abuse will leave a dangerous situation, or think of leaving, over 40 times before they finally get out for good. And getting out isn’t always a happy ending. My friend is in a good place now. I hardly know her.
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