Reaching Out When No One’s There
This morning, I opened up Facebook to pop in on my favorite groups. But instead of finding beautiful photos of crocheted crafts, I instead found a post from a woman wondering why her husband was constantly destroying her work. Reading it was like a knife in the heart. Memories of things being smashed, destroyed, stolen flashed through my mind.
I’ve always been passionate about natural medicine. In 2010 I was working and was able to start an herbalism course. I was so excited as my books and herbs arrived and I was able to start filling my cupboard with tinctures and lotions. I was so incredibly proud of myself and truly found joy in the craft. Which just meant it became G’s favorite way to torment me. One morning I woke up to find all of my books ripped to shreds on the living room floor. Hundreds of pages, from at least a dozen books, and he had literally ripped up each one. This was not an impulsive fit of rage, it was methodical. Another time, he hadn’t liked something I said, so hours later he opened my cupboard and started smashing jars of herbs in the sink. Hours later. He’d waited, plotting and planning how to get back at me in a way that would hurt me the most. He even made sure to smash the ones I used the most, plants I wouldn’t be able to harvest again for months. I was devastated.
A few weeks after the book disaster, he decided he felt bad, and wanted to replace my books. He spent an entire paycheck buying stacks of rare and out of print books all at once. He did not do this out of guilt, or kindness or anything like that. It was another control tactic. When I protested that we wouldn’t have money for rent, or groceries, he reminded me that if I hadn’t made him so angry, he wouldn’t have had to destroy my books, and then he wouldn’t have to replace them. So really, it was my fault that we were going to be flat broke for two weeks.
Which brings me to what I saw when I looked in one of my other groups today- a young lady had checked herself into rehab only to come home to a roomful of dead plants. Her family didn’t see why they should bother to tend to them, since it was her own fault that she was unavailable. Thank god she didn’t have a pet, or a child. She didn’t have to say that these people are abusive toward her for me to know. They were punishing her. They took something she loved, something she took pride in, and destroyed it so that she would feel that much worse about herself and her situation.
When you’re in an abusive situation, it can feel like you’re the only one going through such things. You end up isolated and alone. Your abuser will use anything and everything that gives you the tiniest bit of joy against you. I’ve been there, and if I pay attention, I see so many others who are there now. I see these people who reach out in random Facebook groups because they literally have nowhere else to turn. That woman who’s husband ruins her crochet? She knew he was abusive, but she couldn’t admit it. All she could do was ask if anyone else was experiencing having their craft destroyed. And thankfully she was met with compassionate and educated comments. The same way I was years ago when I reached out to my herbalist group. The other woman was met with a couple of “I’m sorry” and “You can get more” comments. The kind I got from people in real life.
Something needs to change. It needs to change right now. These women (and men!) should not feel like the only place that they can turn is to random strangers on the internet. And they definitely shouldn’t feel like they can’t even have a hobby, a passion, without it being disrespected and destroyed. It’s psychological torture and it is soul-crushing.
There has to be something more that we, as a society, can do. There has to be something better than “I’m sorry,” and “Go to a shelter.” I once called every shelter in a 50 mile radius only to find that all of them were full, and none of them had any resources to help me get there anyway.
There needs to be more legal protections for abuse survivors, including psychological abuse. To tell someone who has already had everything stripped away from them, their friends, their confidence, their joy, that they must now give up all of their possessions, is not right. To tell an abused person that they should leave everything behind is cruel. It’s like telling them, you got yourself into this, how dare you be so materialistic to want to keep your clothes and family photos? Going to a shelter, for me, meant leaving behind the last shreds of memories of my father, a man my children would never get to meet. It felt cruel. People would say those things were not worth my life. But at the time, it didn’t feel that way. It felt like, what was the point of living if everything that brought me any comfort was gone? It seemed- it still seems- so unfair. I hadn’t done anything wrong! Why shouldn’t it be G who had to give up his things and run away in the dead of night? Isn’t that how it should be? He was the abuser, he was in the wrong, he was the bad guy, why was I the one being told to run?
Now before this gets misconstrued as some kind of feminist rant about women’s rights, let me clarify- I have known men who avoided leaving the abusive women in their lives because they feared the court system would force them to give up their children, their homes, their businesses. Something is not working as it should here. We should not be treated as if we should be ashamed. As if we should hide in the shadows. As if we have no worth when we leave. We’ve already been treated that way, and it should end when we gather the courage to leave. But it doesn’t.
I don’t know how to fix it. I wish I did. I wish I knew of some piece of legislation that we could all rally behind, but in all my searching I haven’t heard of any. (If you know of something, drop me a comment, and I will raise my voice in praise of it.) All I know is, it hurts my heart to see these people desperately reaching out to strangers. To find them in every group, in every corner of the internet. To know that there is so little practical advice that can be given beyond “run and hide.”
But I do know one thing that will help. Compassion. Unconditional love. Allowing these people who have been so hurt to drop the stigma and end the shame. To work on their behalf to ensure that they aren’t treated as badly when they leave as they are if they stay. We have to remember how to empathize. To stop and think, would I want to do that? Would I want to leave everything behind? Not in theory. In theory, everyone would save their own life. I mean really feel it in your heart, could you walk away from your home and everything in it right now? Now think about this, what would you be willing to do to help someone in this situation? I have invited people into my home who had nowhere else to turn, and I’d do it again in a heartbeat. I’ve had 3 friends in my life who offered to do the same for me. I married one of them. I’m not saying to open your home to strangers, but maybe, maybe you could learn to love like those who do. Learn to help without expectations. Learn to love without judgement. It’s not a solution, but it’s a start. It’s a way for people to find support in their own neighborhoods instead of in the vastness of the Internet. It’s something we can do, all of us, right now today. It’s worth a try.
