In 2012, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. From the moment I was diagnosed, I was never in doubt about the next step. The first step was to call a surgeon, and here are some recommendations. At the surgeon's office, I was presented with a plan (and two back-up plans in case the first one was too awful to contemplate) and a Nurse Coordinator to help me follow the steps and negotiate the health care system. I'm a nurse; I can negotiate a health care system -- but when you're blindsided with a potentially terminal diagnosis, your critical thinking and organizational skills go right down the rabbit hole.
There were steps -- breast cancer these days has distinct treatment plans for this type of tumor and one for that type of tumor and another for this stage or that stage. Once you enter the system in the Breast Center, you follow the "recipe" -- one step after another. There's rarely any doubt about what to do next, and if there is, the Nurse Coordinator steps up to help you out.
Domestic Violence isn't like that. There's no "cookbook" approach: if he does this, then you do that. There's no coordinator to help you navigate the system unless you are fortunate enough to have either a good domestic violence program or shelter near you, or unless you have wealth enough to hire an attorney. And the attorney won't help you deal with the emotional fallout.
In 1985, I married after two years of dating "Tom". We had fun together, were able to problem-solve and to negotiate and compromise when the rare problem surfaced. We had (or so I believed) similar values, hopes and dreams for the future and styles of dealing with finances. I could not have been more wrong. The day after our marriage, he announced "Now that we're married, I don't have to be on my best behavior any more." And he wasn't. Turns out the similar values, financial style and dreams for the future were all an act, a mask if you will. The mask dropped the day after we married, and things were never the same again.
It took me nine or ten months to recognize a pattern. First he started getting angry more often, and over things that wouldn't have bothered him in the past. Then he started shouting at me, swearing at me and calling me names. He started throwing things when he got angry -- an empty or nearly empty Kleenex box, the oven mitts, a dish towel. Then he started throwing things in my direction and by the summer after our autumn wedding, he was throwing things AT me. The things got bigger -- a full Kleenex box, a coffee cup, the calendar. And, by autumn, he threw ME. At that point, I could no longer dismiss his behavior as "a bad temper" or "not knowing how to argue constructively," but I hesitated to label it abuse. After all, our relationship had been so wonderful at first -- he was charming and funny and seemed so evolved. We talked about everything, and he seemed to understand my point of view. He LOVED me, he thought I was wonderful. When a colleague of ours came to the emergency room after a beating from her boyfriend, Tom spoke out against domestic violence and men who would do such a thing. This man couldn't be an abuser!
But he was. He threw me down the cement stairs of our front stoop, he slammed me up against a wall so hard I went through it. He locked me in a bedroom to prevent me from leaving the house and, while we were on vacation to celebrate the fact that there hadn't been an "incidents" for a year and that the marriage counselors believed our marriage had been saved, he nearly strangled me to death.
There is no recipe for dealing with domestic violence.
There is no ambiguity in whether or not you have cancer. Either the biopsy is malignant or it is benign. You have cancer or you don't. There are so many shades of domestic violence, so many levels as it ramps up, that it can be ambiguous. If we have an argument and he curses at me and calls me names, is that abusive? Or is it only abusive if he does it more than once, or if I'm CERTAIN that I haven't provoked him in any way? If he's screaming at me every evening because I haven't cleaned the kitchen "properly" is that abusive, or is it that I need to take more care in cleaning the kitchen? If he throws the calendar at me because we've created a scheduling conflict between two equally important events, is that mere frustration with the situation, or is that abusive? When he punches you, slams you through a wall or even locks you in a room, that's pretty unambiguous, but most of the time, it has taken so many steps, so many little escalations, that you're well practiced in discounting or making excuses for the behavior. "He's just frustrated," or "He's just had an awful week at work," or "He's just got a bad temper."
A good friend recently told me that any time I have to say "he's just . . . " or "she's just . . ." the behavior is a problem. Or maybe the person is.
When you have cancer, and you're putting one foot in front of the other, following the prescribed steps to get the cancer OUT of you, people are constantly calling you "brave." Following the treatment plan isn't all that brave, comparatively. It's just what you do when you have cancer. There really aren't many decisions to be made. You do what the doctors tell you.
When you leave your abusive partner, or when you're staying long enough in the situation to get your ducks lined up in a row and your safety plan ready to be implemented, that's brave. Stepping off into the unknown without a safety net -- that's incredibly courageous. But no one tells you you're brave. They tell you you're stupid to have gotten involved with him in the first place, or you're just "creating a lot of drama" over something that is "really no big deal." People tell you that you should have left sooner, or if you're staying to ensure that you can get your children or pets safely out of the situation, they tell you that you should "just leave." And no one who hasn't been through it seems to understand how very difficult it is to "just leave." That is truly the look of bravery.
Fighting cancer isn't the bravest thing I've ever done. Leaving my abusive partner was -- it was both the most difficult and the most courageous thing I've ever done. It's been over thirty years now, and it was the bravest thing I've ever done until last year, when I had to do it again. But that is a different story for another time.
