"Oh, here we go again!" I thought. Like many people, I ended up discussing the Ray Rice/Janay Rice violent incident video. I wasn't careful enough and didn't control my eye roll. That irritated the guy I was talking to and he used my "rudeness" as a springboard to mansplaining abuse to me.
He was defending Ray Rice. I wasn't feeling it.
You know the tropes, "She started it", "She made him hit her", "It takes two to have a fight", "She slapped him first", "She was yelling at him and he had to end it". I was schooling my face into not giving away what I was thinking, then I stopped. This guy was giving me grief on a subject that (unfortunately) I know too well.
What I wanted to say, but didn't was something along these lines:
You don't know jack about what Janay Rice's life is like. I don't either. What I do know is my own experience with abuse. I had a father who was considered "enlightened" by most of his friends, but I lived in constant fear to ticking him off. Dad never "beat me". He would use one, single strike to put me back in line. I'm amazed that watching that video hasn't given me a flash back, because I can relate to what happened to Janay Rice. I don't think about my Dad, the brute; I think about the loving times I had with him and I'm lucky to be able to say there are far more good memories than bad ones. That's typical of a kid who grew up with a Dad like mine - an exploder. He didn't explode often, but when he did, you didn't duck, because that would only make him more angry.
Lucky for me, the physical bad times were few, but there was always the threat. I knew lots of kids who were knocked around by their parents all the time. It was normal to me. It was years before I realized that the "threat" was violent in itself and that my "normal" home life is considered abuse today. All Dad had to do was give me "the look" and I became the model, Stepford child. I could recite anecdote after anecdote of the describing the full range of abuses I took from my family as I grew up, but what happened back then doesn't define me today. The take away is that, unfortunately, I understand abuse.
I didn't know my childhood set me up for a failed marriage. I don't know if Janay Rice has a history of abuse as a child, but I do know what's it's like to have a husband brutalize me. I was conditioned from childhood to not see or heed the warning signs when I dated my first husband. He was taking charge, fulfilling his God given responsibilities. He was looking out for me, caring for me. My first husband was loving and charming up until we got home from our honeymoon. It was an act. Once I made my marriage vows, I was property. My first husband was paternalistic and he demeaned me and humiliated me often. He thought of me as an extension of himself and was very controlling and abusive in every way. Anything could set him off. The food I cooked was too hot. I didn't do his laundry correctly. I didn't get the right brand of beer. I took too long at the store. Everything had to be to his liking. The threat of violence was always there. The night I left was the worst. That night the man who pledged to love and honor me held a gun to my temple and terrorized me for hours. I survived that night, my marriage didn't.
I ended up at an all night diner. Two cops took a meal break at the same time. I looked like hell and they did their job and talked to me. They got the whole story and they gave me a dose of reality. The abuse would end when I died or left and leaving was going to be hell. I left that diner with a business card that had a list of names and numbers for women in distress and a working knowledge of how Florida law would help and hinder me leaving my husband.
In retrospect, I have no idea how I had the strength to leave. I was in a bad place emotionally and had some serious dissociative symptoms that were really caused by my unresolved child sexual abuse history that at that time, I wouldn't even acknowledge happened. I remember looking at my life in the third person, like I was living a movie. I think I got through the divorce by writing a new script in my head and moved on, it's a bit foggy. The details don't matter so much as the fact is I left my abuser. What is clear in my head are all the hurtful, ridiculous things a lot of people who didn't know jack about what happened between my ex-husband and me said. They are the same things we are hearing about Janay Rice.
It's been over 30 years since that horrible night where I made my personal #WhyILeft decision. I endured 6 months of stalking and threats after leaving him. He was furious that I had the ability to cash in an account he was unaware I had to fund my escape. He was even more furious that I qualified for a charitable hardship grant. He'd cajole me into meeting him only to be blamed again for the failed relationship. He'd come to my apartment and pound on the door at 2am. He'd come to my job and sit in the parking lot for hours creeping out my co-workers. I was vandalized. He got his friends to call me and follow me. My car had paint dumped on it. I moved twice and changed jobs twice. A friend painted my car a different color because I couldn't afford to trade for a different car and then I "paid" for that paint job by having to listen to him mansplain to me for hours how and why I fucked up my marriage. I had my mail forwarded through 2 mail drops. The most infuriating aspect of the stalking is why it stopped. My father told my ex-husband to stop (probably threatened him) and like a light switch the harassment stopped. Throughout that 6 month period I had to deal with my family, "friends" and my parent's "friends" who felt entitled to know why our marriage failed, interrogating me then telling me what to do to "fix" my life.
What most people don't understand about abusive relationships is that it's near impossible to break the chain of abuse. It takes awareness at first and perseverance to rid your life of abuse. It's not an easy choice. It's a conscious decision. My family paid lip service to being supportive, but that went sideways, too. After my marriage failed, I felt like a worthless piece of shit. I believed every lie everyone I knew told me. I was called a bad Christian, unnatural, wicked, stupid, willful, stubborn and much worse. I was told to beg God for forgiveness, pray for God to "fix" me. I was sent to retreats for divorced women that are best described as god awful. I wasn't a feminist. I went along with this bullshit. I didn't tell my family that I was seeing a therapist that I met through a contact provided by those two police officers in the diner. I spent five years working on my mental health. My family found out about the therapy when I confronted them in anger about the child sex abuse -that was a rocky time, but my family eventually came around to my new rules for our relationship. I went through about 3 or 4 over controlling boyfriends before I got the hang of both self-reliance and healthier romantic relationships.
I guess I'm talking about my history because I can't speak for Janay Rice. Her story is hers alone to share or keep to herself. You might think you understand her, but you don't know enough about her to make any assessment at all about who she is or her life choices. You may think you understand what motivates her, but unless you understand abusive relationships and how they affect your outlook; all you can do is gossip about her.
#WhyIStayed and #WhyILeft are trending on Twitter. You might want to take the time to check out what's happening over there. It's difficult to explain our abuse stories in 140 characters. You might learn something. The stories come down to the core of what finally pushed us over to change. #WhyIStayed until #WhyILeft is personal and unique to me, but at the same time, seeing so many stories is encouraging.
That is what I wanted to say.
but didn't.
What I said was
Janay Rice was the target of Aggravated Assault. No one asks to be targeted for Aggravated Assault. Victim blaming in this situation is absurd. You can't justify an attempt to kill someone by punching someone in the head with a closed fist causing them to ricochet off a wall into a hand railing rendering them unconscious in retaliation for an ineffective open hand slap to the face. (He attempted to interrupt, but I just mowed over his words.) A claim of self-defense wouldn't hold up in court with that video and you know it. Ray Rice abused his power, abused her and lied about it and tried to hide his abusive behavior. What's worse is that he got her to go along with that farce of a news conference last May. You have no idea why she's still with him. I don't know either. You assume it's the money, but can you conceive an idea that he could have threatened to kill her if she left him? Yeah, I see that's a new idea to you. Get a clue. Abuse sucks.
By then I was done listening to him. Maybe I was triggered and reacted poorly. That doesn't happen to me anymore. Maybe I should say, the last time I was triggered was over ten years ago and it was minor. He said something that justified (in his mind anyway) where he was coming from, but I can't tell you what he said.
Go check out #WhyIStayed and #WhyILeft at Twitter and maybe you'll learn something. Domestic arguments aren't about winning or losing. They're about power, abuse of power, fear, inappropriate expression of anger. It's about alcohol, drugs or a sense of inadequacy and bad coping skills. Pick one. Janay Rice is in a no win situation set up by the NFL, The Ravens organization and Ray Rice. Those power players are motivated not by what the right thing to do, but by PR and the optics. They're egged on by people like you who think you know more than you do about abuse. When she realizes how they've exploited her, I hope she cools down before she puts that out on Instagram.
I stopped, looked at him and gave myself a mental shake.
Look. I'm passionate about abuse and I get upset when people .... Sorry, I was more aggressive than you were looking for. I can't talk about this with you. I gotta go.
I have no idea if that guy is going to stay my friend. Know what? That's ok.
8:19 PM PT: Thank you for the rec list. This was very personal. I've come to realize that my personal history of abuse is nothing to be ashamed of. It's a fact. It's part of me, just like my blue eyes. I don't talk about it at every opportunity, but this week was too close for me. I'm done hiding from it. I take it on. No one asks to be abused.
Wed Sep 10, 2014 at 10:44 AM PT: Thank you all for your kind words. Somewhere along the line I came to realize that abuse defined my abuser more than it defined me. My experience was not shameful, but what was done to me was. That's how the secrecy in abuse continues. The perpetrators tell their victims that they don't want "this" to get out. Unfortunately, I still can't talk completely openly about what happened. Too many people don't agree with me on this. Thank you for reading. I hope some good comes from this. The Twitter feed on #WhyIStayed #WhyILeft is still active