I’m tired of the excuses. For a year and a half I lifted my sleeves and joked about the bruises on my forearms to my best friend, my “locker buddy” and the girl I trusted the most. “I must be fighting ghosts in my sleep again,” I would say. I joked about it, I smiled, I laughed on the outside, but inside I was screaming “PLEASE HELP!”
How blind are we to these signs, these symptoms, these blatant displays? How many eyes have I peered into and not seen the same fear and hear the same cry?
Ignorance is bliss, right? What we don’t know can’t hurt us, but also what we don’t know can’t call us to action.
I had a friend, a battle buddy, tell me once that I take care of other people in order to mask my own hurt, my own struggles. Oh how true. And there are those who blatantly take advantage of my “gifts” of time, advice, and support. For years I have kept my phone on 24/7 just in case someone needed me at 3 a.m. and didn’t have anyone else to call. It’s happened a few times. I’ve been told that I’ve saved a couple of lives. That makes me feel good, but I’m still hurting.
At what point do I scream “Give me more than 5 minutes…give me 20, just 20 to tell you what happened!”? At what point do I stop blaming that girl for never alerting anyone. Or the school secretary for never intervening or taking me aside. I was guarded. I was mean. I was scared. And I was humiliated for what I had done in order to compensate for him and deter the inevitable consequences of my actions or in-actions with him.
“What could anyone have done for you?,” he asked almost accusatory. “You wouldn’t have listened.” He’s right. But looking back I just wanted one person to ask, to say something, to not let me play the games and seal my own devastating fate. I wasn’t strong enough, brave enough, whatever. I feel guilty for it every single day. I stared out the window as I wanted to scream “Someone should have helped me…stop making excuses for them. There were people who knew, or say they suspected it and no one had the courage to help me when I wasn’t brave enough to help myself.”
The thing is, we can treat diseases. We can put cancer in remission. But we can’t heal broken hearts. We can’t go back in time and change what happened. We can’t even offer explanations. I guess we just move on hoping the other person will too. But take heed, they won’t. They will forever carry the scars of hurt because someone wasn’t brave or kind or compassionate enough to stop making excuses and ask the hard questions.
***4 women a day are killed by relationship violence. Countless hearts are broken. Don’t let you, your best friend, the stranger on the corner, or any girl you know be one of them. Ask the hard questions.”
