Thanks to
Anna Quindlen's Black and Blue, a book that I couldn't and wouldn't put down till I reached the very end. It was so horribly hypnotizing that my heart shivered with fright and iciness. It was scary.
I wonder if any of you are aware of
Domestic Abuse? I hope you do, at least I'm not dat cognisant of it before, and I'm glad I know more about it now.
So here's the truth:
"On average, a woman is assaulted 35 times before her first call to the police".
' The first time my husband hit me I was nineteen years old. One sentence and I'm lost. One sentence and I can hear his voice in my head, that butterscotch-syrup voice that made goose bumps rise on my arms when I was young, that turned all of my skin warm and alive with a sibilant S, the drawling vowels, its shocking fricatives. It always sounded like a whisper, the way he talked, the intimacy of it, the way the words seemed to go into your guts, your head, your heart.'
'Frannie, Frannie, Fran, he'd croon, whisper, sing. Sometimes Bobby even made me believe that I was guilty of something, that I was sleeping with every doctor at the hospital, that I made him slip and bang his bad knee. That I made him beat me up, that it was me who made the fist, angled the foot, brought down a hand hard. Hard.'
'I can hear his voice now, so persuasive, so low and yet somehow so strong, making me understand once again that I'm all wrong. Frannie, Frannie, Fran, he says. That's how he begins. Frannie, Frannie, Fran. The first time I wasn't your husband yet. You were already twenty, because it was the weekend after we went to the City Island for your birthday. And I didn't hit you. You know I didn't hit you. You see, Fran, this is what you do. You twist things. You always twist things."
Some women put up with the violence for their children. They want
a family, a father for their sons or daughters, that they continue being hit like ragdolls, and say nothing about it.
Every time when there's a question,
"Owh, I had a car accident." They'll say.
However, what they don't know about is,
the late night screaming and yelling, the bruises on mummy's face has slowly eaten up the children's life. Until one day, when the son can actually look up into your
swollen face, the
broken nose,
the blacks and the blues, and said,
"Owh, mum. So you have another accident again." with a bored tone. As if he has long suffered from colour blindness, and he can no longer see the blacks and the blues.
Some women may say,
"I don't think my children know anything about it. Whenever their father hit me, they're always sleeping."The thing is, children
never sleep when things happened, they just
PRETEND to sleep.
I do want to write more about it, since I am pretty overwhelmed right now, but I know how boring a post with so many words might seem, and my chief intention of writing this post is to let you guys know about Domestic Abuses that is happening all around the world.
So speak up if you're a victim. Remember
"If you love someone, you'll not hit her." :)
