I don't know why this story has been on my mind so much lately, but it has, so it needs to get out of my head.
So there was this guy (we'll call him "Wes") that my mom met while I was in high school, and eventually married (after, of course, he threatened to kill all of her children...but that is another story for another day) while I was college. She in Wes lived in a small town near the college town that I lived in. I didn't really care to be around drunken Wes who regularly beat my mother, but she never left his sight really, for fear of getting in trouble, so I had to go out to visit them if I wanted to see my mother.
One day when I was out for a visit, we were all sitting around the kitchen table, and glassy-eyed-drunk/drugged-up Wes was playing with his newest pistol. The farm house they rented was hot, and stuffy so my mother asked me to turn the fan on. As soon as I hat cleared my chair, "BOOM!" We all started in shock, registering what had just happened as our ears rang. My first, instantaneous thought was that he has shot my mother, and I would turn around to find her dead, a day that I had worried about almost every day since she had moved in with him.
Before I could wonder if I would be next, I turned around to survey the situation, and saw with my dilated eyes locked in tunnel vision that she, although stunned, was bullet-less. We both looked at the smoking gun in the slack jawed Wes's hand, then visually tracked the path of the gun barrel to the hole in the wall...right behind my chair.
It turns out that had I not gotten up the instance I did, that bullet would have gone through the left side of my chest, either hitting me in the heart or the aorta. Either way it would have been a kill shot.The funny thing is; I really don't know if it was purely an accident, or if he intentionally pulled the trigger either to a) miss, but send a message to my mother about his power over her and me, or b) to simply shoot me because he was a psychotic, insecure, addict, toxic human being. Based on his behavior over the years, it every easily could have been any of the above reasons.
I share this story because it it very easy to think of violence as happening to "other" people. When I say "other", I don't just mean other than us as individuals, but as a whole "other" set of people. Like it only happens to "those" people who live in inner cities, or drug addicts, or uneducated-toothless-white trash living in the trailer park. And that sense of "other-ness" makes it easier to ignore violence against others. Whether it's domestic violence, a hate crime, sexual assault, etc it can happen to any of us. You, me, your child/mother/sibling. And when we ignore violence (whether verbal or physical), dismiss it, minimize it, or deny it we make it easier for the violence to continue. Do not tolerate intolerable behavior or actions, my friends. It is time for us all to speak up, and to act up; whether it is us, or our best friend, our neighbor who needs support...whoever needs our voice, whoever needs us to stand beside them in solidarity, let us be there. Let us be the change we wish to see in the world.
So there was this guy (we'll call him "Wes") that my mom met while I was in high school, and eventually married (after, of course, he threatened to kill all of her children...but that is another story for another day) while I was college. She in Wes lived in a small town near the college town that I lived in. I didn't really care to be around drunken Wes who regularly beat my mother, but she never left his sight really, for fear of getting in trouble, so I had to go out to visit them if I wanted to see my mother.
One day when I was out for a visit, we were all sitting around the kitchen table, and glassy-eyed-drunk/drugged-up Wes was playing with his newest pistol. The farm house they rented was hot, and stuffy so my mother asked me to turn the fan on. As soon as I hat cleared my chair, "BOOM!" We all started in shock, registering what had just happened as our ears rang. My first, instantaneous thought was that he has shot my mother, and I would turn around to find her dead, a day that I had worried about almost every day since she had moved in with him.
Before I could wonder if I would be next, I turned around to survey the situation, and saw with my dilated eyes locked in tunnel vision that she, although stunned, was bullet-less. We both looked at the smoking gun in the slack jawed Wes's hand, then visually tracked the path of the gun barrel to the hole in the wall...right behind my chair.
It turns out that had I not gotten up the instance I did, that bullet would have gone through the left side of my chest, either hitting me in the heart or the aorta. Either way it would have been a kill shot.The funny thing is; I really don't know if it was purely an accident, or if he intentionally pulled the trigger either to a) miss, but send a message to my mother about his power over her and me, or b) to simply shoot me because he was a psychotic, insecure, addict, toxic human being. Based on his behavior over the years, it every easily could have been any of the above reasons.
I share this story because it it very easy to think of violence as happening to "other" people. When I say "other", I don't just mean other than us as individuals, but as a whole "other" set of people. Like it only happens to "those" people who live in inner cities, or drug addicts, or uneducated-toothless-white trash living in the trailer park. And that sense of "other-ness" makes it easier to ignore violence against others. Whether it's domestic violence, a hate crime, sexual assault, etc it can happen to any of us. You, me, your child/mother/sibling. And when we ignore violence (whether verbal or physical), dismiss it, minimize it, or deny it we make it easier for the violence to continue. Do not tolerate intolerable behavior or actions, my friends. It is time for us all to speak up, and to act up; whether it is us, or our best friend, our neighbor who needs support...whoever needs our voice, whoever needs us to stand beside them in solidarity, let us be there. Let us be the change we wish to see in the world.
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