How Would You Handle It?

I’ve recently participated in a couple of conversations that sparked around the news or a television episode about domestic violence. Domestic violence, what is it? It can be a series of physical altercations. It can be a one-time physical assault. It can be a growing string of abusive words that lead you to believe, over time, that you are worthless. Domestic violence comes in so many shapes and forms.

 

 

As I mentioned briefly above, I have participated in a couple of conversations about domestic violence recently. Each of these, with different people, all started in the same way and ended with me shaking my head. How did they start? They started with the person I was having the conversation with describing how they would handle the situation. Insert eye roll and headshake here. How can you assume you will be able to handle something a certain way until you are faced with that particular situation? This is one of my biggest pet peeves now for the reasons I will explain below.

 

 

 

I was a victim of domestic violence. For those of you who know, and those of you who don’t, once upon a time I was married to a man named John. I loved him, and I thought he loved me. However, one evening after a few shots of tequila with a friend and our roommate at our house, he walked outside to have a cigarette. He didn’t come back for quite some time, so I walked out to check on him. He was squatting in the grass and had a knife on his wrist. A few quick words were exchanged and I realized he intended to, at the least, attempt suicide. I quickly tried to talk him out of it. I loved him. We had only been married for a couple months. No matter what the issue was, I was sure we could work through it together. I was there for him. As I explained my love for him and the thought process I just explained above to him, he, instead of being grateful for having a loving wife, turned angry and lashed out at me. He rolled his eyes back in his head and told me he wasn’t John anymore, he was the devil, and that I had to die. He took the knife away from his wrist and pointed it at me. I immediately ran inside where my friend and roommate were.

 

 

I was so shaken by the whole incident I don’t think I even processed what had happened when I ran inside. I, a person who is rarely without words, was speechless. Seeing the obvious horror on my face, my friend, Alan, and roommate, Chris, asked what was wrong. I couldn’t explain. All I could utter was something about John having a knife as I became hysterical. Alan ran outside, and tried to get the knife from John. John began screaming about how I needed to die and kept trying to get inside the house to stab me or even worse, kill me. Chris got the phone, called 911 and locked me inside while Alan restrained John on the front lawn until the police could arrive.

 

 

John was taken to the 5^th floor (mental ward) of Darnall Army Community Hospital where they held him for the maximum of 72 hours. There, we talked briefly, and he told me that our relationship was built on lies (basically everything he had told me was a lie) and after I tried to stop him from committing suicide that he felt his only way out was to kill me. He begged for my forgiveness, but I knew from the moment this incident occurred that I could never look at him the same. I could never have children with this man, something I knew I one day wanted. He kept trying to beg me for my forgiveness after he was released from the hospital. He stalked me about town and base. I requested to PCS (move or be reassigned to a different military base) and I was granted a PCS to Alaska. He found out where I was headed and threatened to find me there and said he would never give-up on me. I was scared, scared for my life. I made a series of bad decisions, or maybe just hard ones that ultimately saved my life in the following months. In the end, I divorced John and lost my military career. 

I never expected to be the victim of domestic violence. I don’t think anyone ever does. I always thought I was smarter than to choose a man that would ever harm me in any way. I had seen movies and television episodes about stalkers and various domestic violence incidents. I would always watch, think and even comment that I would handle things a certain way if I were ever faced with that situation.

 

I didn’t handle things in any way I thought I would, and I learned my lesson. I will never say I will handle things a certain way if I were faced with a similar predicament. I will never pass judgment on the way a person has acted. After all, if John’s rage had caused him to just hit me instead of try and kill me, I might have given into his incessant begging and tried to salvage the relationship. I doubt it, but we, thankfully, will never know.

So, next time, think twice before you say you would act a certain way or pass judgment on someone for the way they’ve acted. Until you’ve been through the same or a similar situation, you really shouldn’t even discuss how you would act, and most importantly, you should never pass judgment on the way someone has acted.