Put Up Your Dukes

Over the course of my life I have known a few different ladies that feel it is OK for their significant others to throw them around or beat on them (and/or their children).

When I was growing up we lived on the bottom floor of an apartment building with paper thin walls. I was friends with the girl whose family lived in the apartment above us. I could hear the (physical) fights between her mom and step dad when her mom didn't vacuum the floor like he wanted or when the kids didn't act like perfect angels getting up for school in the morning. The mom finally left with the kids in the middle of the day one day while he was at work. About a month later, we learned that he put their three year old daughter in the hospital. We learned this because he was a police officer and when police officers put their babies in the hospital by beating on them, they put it in the newspaper. I always felt bad, but never thought it was really my business to say something.

I bring this up because there is a girl at work that is being abused by her boyfriend. Just as if she were on a Lifetime Movie of the Week, she tells us about all the things he does to her so that we all hate him, they break up and she says it is over for good and then they get back together again. Surprise! This guy has left her in the middle of nowhere to walk for six hours to make it back home. He has hit her son, and now she is in the hospital.

I have listened to these stories for over a year. Everyone has told her what she already knows and she still insists on being with this guy. Because I know that people have offered for her and her children to stay with them and offered to help her in so many ways, I can not bring myself to feel bad for this girl.

I feel bad that she is so stupid and that she is putting her kids in the line of fire with this guy. They don't have a choice. She is very open about telling everybody at work every time he lays a hand on her or verbally abuses her so I have to believe that she is either asking for attention or asking for help. Since there have been several avenues of help offered to her, I can't help but thinking she needs the attention. I guess after getting beat up, it makes you feel better for someone to dote on you. I can understand that you would feel loved like that. But there has to be an end to this. Does she not understand that if she leaves this guy then someone will love her and dote on her without having to beat her up first?

I can't understand this mentality. I know some people are scared, but of what? If he beats her up how is that different than any regular Tuesday afternoon? Some say they fear that he will kill her. It seems as though a high percentage of these guys escalate to murder or they accidentally hit too hard one day and she never gets back up. Don't you at least have to try? If the outcome is the same at least you did what you could for you and your kids. Isn't there a point when you have to get fed up and just try something different?

Obviously, I have never been in this situation so it is easy for me to write these things. I get that. But, I don't get not doing whatever you can, if not for yourself then for your kids. It makes my skin crawl and my heart cry. God be with her and those kids. I hope one day, when she gets out of the hospital, the lights will come on for her.