TMPDKAM*: I Was Hit By Love

Tags

crush, Dating, Domestic violence, love taps, Relationship

–Queue the Cece Peniston song (if you don’t know what I’m talking about, shame on you! Ahem, back to the post

I was in an abusive relationship. Well, not really. I don’t suppose you could call it a relationship, and I am not trying to make light of people who are being abused, but I did experience physical violence at the hands of a crush. Granted, I was ten, eleven years old, but being hit is being hit, right?

Remember back in the day when little kids would give each other “love taps”? Parents would always dismiss a slight open palmed hit a girl gave a boy, or when a boy pushed a little girl down. “That ain’t nothin’ but a love tap,” or “you must like him/her” were the only words of comfort or punishment meted out for such things. This was not that.

Neither was this the more adult “wrestling with my boyfriend” either. I insist I was physically abused, and I possibly have the scars and definitely have the memories to prove it.

There was this boy. Everyone who knew me as a ten year old on knows his name, but for the purposes of the blogoverse his name is Kamar. When I was in the fifth grade, on of my friends told Kamar that I had told a table full of girls he liked me (totally backwards, but how reliable are vindictive preteens?). He hit me with a mud filled tire (yes, a car tire, like the ones on my PT Cruiser right now, except this tire had white sidewalls). I had to walk home soaking wet from the waist down in skin tight jeans, sore from being hit in the thighs with a tire.

Over the course of a year, I was pelted with rocks, hit with a plastic baseball bat, a piece of a screen (the metal part), punched, “love tapped,” and tripped. Now, make no mistake. I was a rough tomboy and retaliated in kind. I packed a hard punch for a girl. I kicked hard, and if you ran or rode away on a bike, I would catch you.

I wasn’t the only one subjected to this ill treatment either. Kamar mercilessly picked on many of the girls who cheerleaded with me for the citywide football team he played  on. I distinctly remember one girl being “back sufflexed” ( a wrestling move) onto the parking lot pavement after practice. At that same practice, I was riding my babysitter’s daughter’s bike around in circles when Kamar clipped my bike tire. I went flying to the pavement. That one really hurt. 

Looking back, it’s hard to imagine that this seemed normal. I didn’t think of it as anything but an annoying neighbor who just so happened to be fine, a bad little boy with gorgeous eyes and a penchant for tormenting little girls. But then, you grow up.

In today’s world, there is  no such things as love taps. There is punishment for hitting another child. If a little boy kisses a little girl it’s called sexual harrassment, just like it is when an adult does it. The fact that children may not know how to appropriately express their feelings is not sufficient grounds for giving them the benefit of the doubt.    

Do I really believe I was in an abusive non-relationship? No. I don’t think either of us thought of it that way. We both seemed to look forward to chasing each other and one upping each other. We got along from time to time. I saw many adolescent relationships play out along the same lines, before prepubescent boys and girls began to discover sex (and young–sixth grade!).

Did you ever give/receive love taps? Looking back, would you consider that abuse? What are your thoughts on this issue?

I don’t know that I would call it abuse or love taps, but I do know one thing: I was hit by love–literally.

*In relationships, we sometimes get to the point that we feel we know everything there is to know about someone, or that they know everything there is to know about us. It gets more and more difficult to remember some of those little things that make us who we are. Things Mr. P. Doesn’t Know About Me is a recurring feature in which I share some of the little (and not so little) things that have simply never come up in conversation or seemed important enough to tell. They can be few and far between, as I am by nature a “talker” and share quite a bit, but when I do have one, rest assured, it’s a good one.

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Love Isn’t Supposed to Hurt Like This

Tags

Abuse, awareness, Domestic violence, economic abuse, Psychological abuse, sexual abuse, spiritual abuse

Image via Wikipedia

Before this month is over, I want to turn my attention to a serious topic in the realm of love and relationships: abuse. Did you know that October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month? Yeah, me either, until I heard Brenda L. Thomas on 3 Chicks on Lit promoting her memoir Laying Down My Burdens, about the domestic abuse she suffered at the hands of her ex-husband. I had known about breast cancer awareness, but I still haven’t heard any other reference to Domestic Violence in the month of October.

As I was watching the Real Housewives of Atlanta reunion, I was reminded of my need to cover abuse in this blog (yes, that show has been very fruitful for me this season). Cynthia’s mother told her she feared that Cynthia’s fiancée, Peter, was economically abusive. This is a form of abuse that I’ve heard next to nothing about, and I would venture to guess that most people either don’t know or don’t consider this abuse.

Therefore, I felt it was important to share with my readers the many different forms abuse can take. Abuse is about control and power, and can include any tactics or methods used to control or overpower another person with whom you are in a relationship with. Recognized forms of abusive include physical abuse, sexual abuse, psychological abuse, economic abuse, and spiritual abuse.

Physical abuse occurs when one person uses physical pain or threat of physical force to intimidate another person (definition via mentalhelp.net).

Sexual Abuse is any sexual behavior that is unwanted or interferes with your right to say “no” to sexual advances (definition via thesafespace.org)

Psychological abuse (also known as mental abuse or emotional abuse) occurs when one person controls information available to another person so as to manipulate that person’s sense of reality; what is acceptable and what is not acceptable (definition via mentalhelp.net). Verbal/Emotional Abuse is anything that the abuser says or does that causes you to be afraid, lowers your self-esteem, or manipulates or controls your feelings or behavior (via thesafespace.org).

Economic abuse occurs when someone uses monetary means to control an individual. This can include not allowing someone work outside of the home or go to school, controlling all the money, or forcing someone to work to support the family (via mocadsv.org Missouri Coalition Against Domestic & Sexual Violence.

Spiritual abuse is the maltreatment of a person in the name of God, faith, religion, or church, whether habitual or not. It when a person in religious authority or a person with a unique spiritual practice misleads and maltreats another person in the name of God or church or in the mystery of any spiritual concept. Spiritual abuse often refers to an abuser using spiritual or religious rank in taking advantage of the victim’s spirituality (mentality and passion on spiritual matters) by putting the victim in a state of unquestioning obedience to an abusive authority (definition via wikipedia.org)

Some things that I’ve learned are abusive behaviors that I’d never thought about before: not letting someone use birth control or protection against STDs; withholding sex as a punishment; cheating when in a mutually agreed upon monogamous relationship; breaking promises or refusing to take their share of responsibility; keeping someone from practicing their religion of choice.  

Abuse is occurring in relationships of younger and younger couples. Teenagers and middle schoolers are victims of violence in romantic relationships the same as adults. Children are being abused by children. Cycles of abuse are being created and perpetuated in relationships involving people of all nationalities. Abuse is not confined by race, nationality, culture, religion, sex, age, or location.

I’m not equipped to give you any advice on what to do if you are in an abusive relationship. Most people who are killed as a result of domestic abuse are usually killed when they try to leave or have managed to leave. It’s hard to get out of abusive situations, as you are often isolated and/or alienated from friends and family. You may feel ashamed or think no one will believe you. You may think you deserve it. No one deserves abuse. There are many organizations more qualified than I am to help you come up with ways to remove yourself from abusive situations.

Here are a few national websites:

The National Domestic Violence Hotline

Abuse Victim Hotline

National Dating Abuse Helpline

RAINN-Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network

Related Articles

• Domestic Abuse – Does It Ever Stop? (ssofdv.wordpress.com)
• Recognizing the Signs of Domestic Violence (spreadinformation.wordpress.com)
• Valentine’s Day crusade to stop domestic abuse (menmedia.co.uk)
• Spotting the Signs of Emotional Abuse (everydayhealth.com)
• Teen Dating Violence Awareness and Prevention Month (carololson.wordpress.com)
• “Why doesn’t she just leave him?” (basiesboots.wordpress.com)
• February is Teen Dating Violence Awareness and Prevention Month…is your teen aware?.. (daancaanetwork.org)

For Colored Girls Who Have Other Things to Worry About

Tags

African American, Black people, Domestic violence, Film, issues, portrayal, struggles, Tyler Perry

What on Earth in the world is a Domestic Violence-Free Zone? Can I hit her over there? I'm just saying. Image via Wikipedia

This is not my For Colored Girls review; that can be found here on my review blog. But this movie was about so much more than a review of how well it worked to me. There were other things that I felt needed to be said, things I couldn’t just let fall by the wayside in favor of staying true to reviewing it as just a movie.

It’s taken me a while to decide how I really feel about the movie as art, but not how I feel about it on a visceral level, how I feel about the intent and messages, and how people will take this film. The first thing that stood out to me was the shortening of the name. There is a reason the play has that long drawn out name: this piece is speaking to a specific demographic of women. This is a piece about “colored girls” (Black women) who have considered suicide; in other words, this really isn’t my story just because I’m a Black woman. By shortening the title to For Colored Girls, it makes it seem as if this movie is for all of us, is about all of us. So I could reasonably expect to see something of myself in it, from a literal standpoint.

Mr. P. joked around a lot about “all y’all” in the aftermath of the movie, and even though he was joking, I’m sure someone else watching this movie thought the same things seriously. This is how all of us are. This is all that ever happens to us. This is why we’re bitter and angry. There’s a good reason for it, the film suggests, but we are still bitter, angry, oversexualized, naive, taken advantage of, and don’t know when to leave.

I realize that Mr. Perry was dealing with a source material, one that dated back quite a few years and was close to a lot of women’s hearts. I realize issues of date rape, contracting  HIV, domestic abuse, abortion, and no good men still exist. But I kept longing for something more. I kept longing to see my struggles on the screen. I wanted a movie that claimed to be for me about me to be…for me and about me.

It irked me that all of these women’s struggles came back to men. Abuse men, rapist men, cheating men, scheming men, men who were good but didn’t have the power to make the hurt of the previous man’s misdeeds go away (and only one of those). My issues are much more pedestrian than all of that. I’m dealing with the economy, the glass ceilings, racism, familial relationships, relationships with other women in my friendship circle. I’m dealing with debt and deferred dreams. I’m dealing with hormones and weight struggles, self-esteem and my hair. Yes, I deal with the struggles of relationships with the male species, but if that were all I had to deal with, it would be a good day.

So that’s what I want to speak on today. What are you still waiting to see acknowledged and portrayed about you and your journey in film and in print? What would you like to get off of your chest that you are struggling with? Where is your movie?

Related Articles

• Why Must ‘For Colored Girls’ Be More Than Just a Movie? (politicsdaily.com)
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• Why Good Black Men Lack in Tyler Perry’s Movies (urbanbellemag.com)
• Tyler Perry Finger Paints Over “For Colored Girls” (Spoilers and Video) (blogher.com)
• For Colored Girls and Real Colored Girls: Last Night in Seattle (slog.thestranger.com)