Domestic Violence: The Elephant In The Room

Ruby Vee, BSN

October is Domestic Violence Awareness month. It's a topic that has been addressed online and in print, but one that is excruciatingly difficult to bring up in a face-to-face conversation. I know this as a nurse, because it is awkward and uncomfortable to initiate the conversation with my patients, but I also know this as a survivor.

Recently, when I visited my oncologist, she brought up the topic in a perfunctory sort of way. "Do you feel safe at home?" she asked me, in exactly the same sort of manner she had asked me if my penicillin allergy is still current and if I'm taking my meds daily. She didn't make eye contact and it was clear she desperately wanted my answer to be in the affirmative because she wasn't comfortable discussing a negative. I don't blame her. It wouldn't have been comfortable for me either - on either side of that conversation. The thing is, I haven't always felt safe at home. My parents were violent and, like many survivors of childhood violence, I grew up to be a survivor of the more commonly thought-of domestic violence. Thirty years ago, I lived with a man who hurt me.

In the 1980s, no health care practitioner asked me if I was safe at home. And I wouldn't have known what to answer if one had. Domestic violence occurs at all socio-economic levels, in all strata of society. But it's one of those dirty little secrets that no one wants to admit to. I doubt you will ever encounter a man (at least not in our culture) who admits to beating his wife. (Or to being beaten by her, for that matter, because such things, while more rare, do happen.) And no one wants to be the woman who admits to being beaten. It's stigmatizing.

Thirty years ago, just before I married my abuser, I had a colleague whose live-in boyfriend commonly blackened her eyes when dinner wasn't ready on time. We all saw the black eyes. We all discussed her situation in hushed whispers so Donna wouldn't know we were talking about her. Then there was the day she showed up in our ER, left hand hanging by a thin shred of skin. Her partner had attacked her with an axe. It wasn't until then than Donna was willing to admit to being in an unsafe situation. She was scared to death he would kill her - and rightfully so. I remember discussing the situation with my friends and my soon-to-be husband. "No one would get away with that with ME," I proclaimed arrogantly. "If a man lifted his hand to me, I'd leave him." And I meant it. I thought I knew better. And I DID know better - until I didn't.

It started off slowly enough. He was transferred two thousand miles away from my friends and family. I made new friends, slowly, but that isn't the thing you discuss with a new friend. He became increasingly verbally abusive. He started throwing things. He started throwing things in my direction, which advanced to throwing things at me and then to throwing ME. There was a perfect impression of me in the drywall of our hallway, left when he slammed me against a wall. During one memorable fight, he threw me down a flight of stairs - the concrete stairs of our stoop. That could have killed me. It didn't, but it scared me. I went back into the house, packed a bag and flew to California to stay with my best friend for two weeks. I was too stupid or too ignorant to know how dangerous it was to go back into that house and pack a bag. I didn't understand that leaving is the most dangerous time for a woman. And I was too stupid not to go back when he agreed to get counseling.

Even in the counselor's office, it was excruciatingly embarrassing to admit that *I* was "an abused wife." Imagine how difficult it would be to tell your oncologist or your gynecologist or your PCP such a thing. I felt stigmatized, I felt "less than." It was now my dirty little secret, one that I didn't want anyone to know. And when it did come out, reactions were pretty much what I had envisioned. There was a lot of chest beating and proclamations that "I'd never let a man beat ME." Or "Why didn't you just leave him?"

I didn't leave him for myriad reasons, some valid and others not so much. I didn't want to admit defeat, that my marriage had failed. I had the first divorce in my extended family. I'm pretty sure I wasn't the first wife who endured physical violence. Our lives, finances and possessions were entwined. If you think that's a trivial reason, try to imagine yourself, right this moment getting up from your computer and leaving your home. Don't change your clothes, don't pack a bag. Just get up and walk out of your home with what you're wearing (flannel pajamas and comfy slippers? Ragged jeans and a T shirt) and what you can grab on your way out without slowing. Imagine that you might never be allowed to return to your home. What treasures are in that home that you'll never see again? Your grandmother's engagement ring that she gave you as she lay dying? The family Bible? Your photo albums, your purse, your dog? Your child maybe? Think about that for just a moment.

It's easy enough to SAY that things aren't worth your life. Your children, maybe but not Grandma's ring. But if you haven't lived it, you have no idea what it FEELS like. And until he actually tries to kill you, you may not get it that he might literally do so. Even if you know it in your head, it may not penetrate to that visceral level that demands action.

I left after my then-husband tried to strangle me to death. And because I met him through a blind date arranged by friends, I told those friends exactly why I left him. Then I had to endure dozens of rounds of "He's such a kind, gentle man. He would NEVER do such a thing. You must be making it up." "He's such a friendly, HUMBLE man. He'd never do that." We have all heard the rounds of praise heaped upon the head of a domestic abuser, the disbelief that "someone I know would do such a thing." Anyone who has read this board for more than a month knows that to be true. The knee-jerk expression of those beliefs is just one more type of abuse that the survivor of domestic violence has to face. I lost all of OUR friends, most of mine and even some family members because I finally found my backbone and wouldn't tolerate those kinds of comments, that kind of abuse.

It's not fair that a survivor of domestic violence has to lose her family, her friends, her reputation and her most treasured belongings. It's not fair that she has to listen to people who know HER postulate on how she must be making it up because they KNOW he "isn't that kind of man." None of it is fair.

October is Domestic Violence month. If you are in a relationship where you don't feel safe, make a plan. You don't have to leave right now if you're not ready. But have a copy of your insurance card, your social security card, your birth certificate, your passport somewhere safe where you can get to it but he can't. Keep extra keys. Have your own credit card and bank account, keep some cash. Park your car where it cannot be parked in. Keep your gas tank full. Know a safe place to go and at least three different routes to get there. Know who you would call to pick up your kids at school or daycare if you can't get to them. Have a plan. Please have a plan. Domestic violence doesn't just happen to other people. It can happen to you. It can happen in the wee hours of a holiday morning, on a Monday evening when he's had a bad day at work or his football team is losing or just before you're supposed to show up at your sister's wedding. Don't become a statistic.

For other articles in this series about domestic violence please read:

Domestic Violence: What Leaving Feels Like

Domestic Violence: Rebuilding

References

Bruised All Over - Nurses play role recognizing and stopping domestic violence.