2019-03-04
by
Eleanor Goldfield
If you were to ask the average someone point blank: are you pro abusive relationships?
I bet you they’d say no.
They’d say no – I don’t think a woman should accept that love and abuse are a romantic pair – that’s really not fair.
But then I wanna know – why is that the only abusive relationship we think of?
Why don’t we expand our understanding of what abusive relationships are?
Abusive: causing physical injury to another; characterized by improper or wrongful use
Relationship: connection or association; A particular type of connection existing between people related to or having dealings with each other
So what about the abusive relationship between America and 40% of the world’s countries where we’ve shoved our military through their lands – a most brutal assault that only gives birth to terror.
What about the abusive relationship between the ruling elite and the 99%? Remember them, I mean us? Remember us? What about our relationship – what about the abusive relationship between those of us we – who say we’re on the same side – when we sit in circles to organize, and stay in formation – to ready, aim, fire.
What about the abusive relationship between the system and the most marginalized – native Americans, black and brown folks, immigrants, LGBTQ – what about that abusive relationship – that so often manifests in the outright murder of kids in the streets – do the cops also do it because they love us? And we just don’t understand?
What about the abusive relationship between humans and the land – the air, the water – the living beings we depend on – indeed, the only relationship we can not live without – is the one in which we are perhaps the most cruel.
So when he pushed me up against a wall, that fall, that fail of humanity – that crash land of empathy – that rot in the soul – wasn’t his own. It was a pixel in this nightmarish frame – one drop in a torrential rain – thousands of years of this pain – different faces but always the same: abusive relationships.
Are you still with me? Are you still against abusive relationships?
Or are you explaining away how that’s not the same – and contorting your mind to make up for that truth that you FEEL in your soul – that you’re either for all the oppressed, or none.
So if you saw my face with a black eye and thought, damn, that’s not OK.
What makes you so comfortable with all the other abusive relationships?