Sometime in January, a close friend of a close friend of a friend died as a result of domestic violence. You know sometimes I fail to understand how male emotions operate. Some people can be so sweet yet so heartless. My friend and I went to the hospital to check on her and the first thing she says is, “Lizzy, I’m sorry. You were right. I should have left when you asked me to. I should have left on the second day of our marriage when he got home looking haggard and smelling of other women, lipstick blotched on his shirt. I should have left that very first time he whacked me. I really should have…”Her voice kept trailing off and it broke my heart.
I slid in beside her and slipped my fingers into hers. She avoided my gaze like a dog who has gone potty on the good rug. We weren’t that much of close friends so I wasn’t sure whether she preferred sympathy or just one of my good lectures. Like me, she wore no makeup, but while bare skin happens to be my preferred state, she’d been carefully camouflaging the blows her husband had been systematically administering. She started weeping and I sat wondering why crying is sometimes referred to as boo-hooing. Seriously, I’ve never heard weepers use syllables even remotely related. Her husband had pushed her down the stairs in her sixth month of pregnancy and by no means was she going to survive the heavy internal bleeding.
“Are you married?” I asked my friend’s close friend later that day as we left the hospital.
“I was. Twice,” she said, holding up two fingers.
“You were married twice?” my jaws didn’t exactly drop, but that is what it felt like. Seriously she was barely thirty five.
“Once to a dude with a ‘substance abuse’ problem,” she answered.
“Heroin?”
“That and cocaine. Speed, grass, stuff like that. The other was a mama’s boy. He was so insecure! Plus he needed all this reassurance. Like what do I know? I’m hardly in a position to make somebody else feel good.”
“Anything good about him?”I asked.
“Ok. At first he was great. He could be so sweet! Problem was, he didn’t know how to trust and open up. Sometimes when he drank, he bust out crying like a baby. Broke my heart.”
“Along with your nose,” I added.
Too many women mistake a man’s hostility for wit and his silence for depth. I think some of us women tolerate damn too much. At times it hurts and pisses me off when I see a woman cater to a man’s every whim. Married as you two maybe, you are never tied on the hip. It always gets to a point where bringing an end to a relationship becomes more rewarding than effortlessly trying to restore it. Question is, when do we know when enough is enough really? You can only take in so much. Never get to that point of saying “I should have left” when you could leave and prevent the worse from happening.
