I AM NO ONE’S PROPERTY

So easy to say. So hard to realize.

Do you know what this is? My husband found it two days ago gardening. It was buried … just below the surface.

Maybe it was a sign, a symbol, a signal for me to write this.

It’s a homemade bit fashioned of barbed wire.

How cruel, you say, and rightly so.

We still live in the culture that made this bit possible.

Horses are property. Children are property. Women are property.

There, I said it.

It’s all about control, that bit. It’s about mastery. Got an ornery horse? Inflict a little pain. Not enough? Apply more pain. Problem solved.

Things are getting better for horses, children and women. It’s no longer legal to beat us within an inch of our lives. That doesn’t mean that it doesn’t happen.

We live in the 21st century, but everything about our past, our culture, and our religions says men rule women, parents rule children, and humans rule animals. That rule can be benign, or it can be exercised with an iron fist.

We may know intellectually that this attitude is not right, but somewhere down in our unpurged cultural psyche, these ideas are still alive and governing our responses to the world around us. They govern the rulers and the ruled.

This is why domestic crimes, acts that would end in jail time if committed on the street, are not treated with equal severity. This is why people dismiss crimes committed against women saying, “She must have done something to deserve it.”

Child abuse, partner abuse, animal abuse, it all comes from the same place, a place where the abuser’s needs and wants are the center of the universe — the need to control, the desire to be the center of attention.

The abuser often believes they love the abused. In their own way they do. They love them as extensions of themselves, for their usefulness, for how they reflect on the abuser’s status. They are not loved for who they are.

They are property, every bit as much as a house or car, but with the annoying trait of having a mind of their own, a mind that needs to be brought to heel.

And the abused? What of them?

If they are like me, they were trained from birth to put the needs of others first, to subsume their needs to that of the family unit. They genuinely love their abuser. They can see the abuser’s good qualities as well as their faults. They have compassion for their tormentor.

They are often trapped, and not only by emotional ties. They are trapped by legal ties; financial dependence; religious strictures; family pressure; threats of harm to themselves, loved ones and pets; and/or threats of suicide.

They can also be trapped by shame: shame that they can’t solve this problem; shame that they have somehow let things come to this; shame that there must be something the matter with themselves if this is happening.

They may have no one to reach out to. They might not even know how to reach out. They may think that no one cares. They might stay silent for fear being gaslighted, belittled, dismissed and diminished.

They may have no one to intervene or offer shelter. They may doubt the ability or the will of others to protect.

They may have very good reasons to fear and think all of the above. This is what life has shown them.

It is what life continues to show them every time someone says: why didn’t you just leave; what did you do to make your abuser angry; surely you’re exaggerating; but your abuser is such a nice person; ….

I wrote a story about my childhood abuse, about how I took the bit between my teeth and finally protected myself. I wrote another about a relationship I naively entered into when I was 17.

I was a kid. I grew. I learned. I got away. Twice.

But I can tell you that no one helped me. If my own father wouldn’t protect me, what hope did I have for anyone else?

I know now that this is not true, that there are people who will help, that I could have reached out, maybe not as a child, but as a young adult.

So I hear you, Jennifer Killgore. You know I do. You have read my story. It is easy to be duped by a charmer only to wake up one day and find yourself in a cage.

Thank you for speaking out on the misconceptions people have about the realities of domestic abuse. Telling our stories helps people who have not been on the receiving end of abuse develop their understanding and empathy. Perhaps they can become better friends to loved ones who may be in dire need of a hand.

Jennifer, what you are about to do is one of the hardest things a person can do, face your abuser. Only you can decide what is the right course of action for you. I do hope you are in contact with or are being sheltered by a domestic violence protection group. If you are not, I urge you to find one in your area and take advantage of the support they offer.