What It's Like To Win The Lottery As A Woman

[joreth]

www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/what-its-like-to-win-the-lottery-as-a-woman/2017/11/24/c90f67ea-cd69-11e7-9d3a-bcbe2af58c3a_story.html

When I was in junior high and high school, my teachers and administration were all very good about telling us what domestic violence looked like. I vowed at an early age that if anyone ever so much as raised a hand to me, whether he followed through or not, whether he expressed remorse afterwards or not, there would be no second chances. I was vocal about this vow. I told everyone how I felt about anger and violence. I didn't even allow anyone to touch me in any manner if they were angry. And I have never been in a physically violent relationship.

But what my schools were not good about was explaining the more subtle forms of violence - emotional and sexual abuse. Sure, we knew that "no means no", but nobody ever mentioned what it meant to have him keep you up all night, every night, begging for sex, so that you suffered chronic sleep deprivation over a series of weeks, and what that sleep deprivation does to you emotionally and physically, so that eventually you say yes just to get a full 6 hours of uninterrupted sleep. Nobody explained when yes means no.

So by the time I reached my mid 30s, I believed I had only been in one abusive relationship, and that it didn't "stick" because I got myself out relatively quickly and easily. And even that relationship I didn't recognize as abusive until years afterwards. I just thought he was a dick.

The thing with emotional abuse is that it tears down your sense of self, of who you are, right to your core, so that you end up hollow and empty, not a real person anymore. And that's something that, for some reason, I have never had taken away from me. So, in a sense, I was correct that abuse aimed at me doesn't "stick". In that sense, I am a lottery winner.

But the author of this piece talks of being stalked, but never touched. That's what makes her a lottery winner. I, however, was "touched", many times by many abusers. I just didn't recognize it, so I could turn my back and walk away.

I dated someone whose victim tried to tell me in that incomprehensible way that victims call out for help but that nobody can understand. He didn't touch me, so I didn't see it. Until he did try to touch me. And even then, I still averted my eyes. I tried to reassure him, certain that his unreasonable behaviour was merely insecurity that, if I could just reassure him enough, he'd learn to move past.

But he didn't want reassurance, he wanted control. So when I reassured but didn't bend to his control (it didn't stick), *he* dumped *me*, to the shock of everyone closest to us. To everyone who was close enough to know, I was his healthiest and most stable relationship at that time. Literally every other relationship in his life was falling apart at the seams. Nobody anticipated our break, or that he would be the one to initiate.

I won the lottery. I saw what happened to those for whom his abuse did "stick".

Abusive tactics are taught as a matter of course in this culture. They are celebrated in pop culture, they are modeled in our parents, they are accepted by all as The Way Things Should Be. Everyone has picked up some of these tactics somewhere along the line and everyone has used them or excused them in their own behaviour and on behalf of others.

But the vast majority of that time, they are not in "abusive relationships". They are not performed as a foundational part of an overarching goal to dominate and control another. They are often used as ... time savers. Someone wants a certain outcome, manipulating the flow of information just a little is easier. A child won't eat her brussel sprouts, says she doesn't like them. Mom gaslight her "yes you do" because it's just too much effort to have a reasonable conversation with a finicky 3 year old and because her mom told her the same thing so it obviously can't be all that bad of a tactic.

In my relationships, however, it has taken me until nearly middle age to recognize that a harried mom trying to get her kid to eat healthy is not the same kind of disempowering, entitled sense of possession the gaslighting, coercion, manipulation, and controlling that most of my exes have done to me - that what my exes did to me isn't as dismissable as what that exhausted mom does to her child even though it's the same *tactic*. I just didn't recognize what my exes did to me as abuse at the time because nobody told me what it looked like and it didn't "stick".

I won the lottery. I've bedded down with wolves and didn't get eaten, although I got nicked a bit here and there. I won the lottery. So far.