5013 Life advice from a six-year-old

Monday, September 21, 2015

"Those who can laugh without cause have either

found the true meaning of happiness

or have gone stark raving mad."

-- Norm Papernick --

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This child is six.  Her parents are divorcing.  She's giving advice to her mother.  It's wonderful.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=174&v=vm0UNn7tJ5o]

Transcript, courtesy of a commenter on the video:

Mum, are you ready to be his friend?
Try not to be that high up, to be friends.
I want everything to be low, okay? Just try your best, alright?.
I don't want you and my dad to be replaced, and... mean again.
I want you and my dad to be placed, and settled and be friends.
I'm not trying to be mean, I just want everyone to be friends.
And if I can be nice, I think all of us can be nice too.
I'm not trying to be mean but... I'm trying to do my best in my heart – nothing else than that.
I want you; mum, my dad – everyone – to be friends, I want everyone to be smiling, not like being mad.
I want everything... Smile.
When I see someone, I want them to smile, especially nana. Everyone. I want everyone to smile.
 And if that's for my dad, and you, mum, I think you can do it.
I think you can settle your mean heights, down a little - to short heights, then it's both, okay?
I'm not trying to be mean, I'm not trying to be a bully.
I'm trying to be steady, on the floor.
Not way down - on the straight, on the middle where my heart is.
My heart is something - everyone else's heart is something too.
And if we live in a world where everyone's being mean, there will be (nothing but) monsters in the future.
What if there's just a little bit of a person (left) And they're eat(ing away) at them. Then no one will ever be here, only the monsters in our place.
We need everyone to be a person. Everyone – including me. And my mum. Everyone.
I just want everything to be settled down.
Nothing else.
 I just want everything to be good as possible.
 Nothing else.

3684 Why stay?

Sunday, December 16, 2012

Technically, alcohol is a solution.

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There's a discussion going on in a Mensa forum.  A woman posted something about supporting a shelter for abused women and children.  A male Mensan (a member whom no one seems to have met in person) got all het up because there are no shelters for abused men.  He's angry that whenever you hear about spousal abuse, it's all about the women.  Nobody has sympathy for abused men.  He posted links to reports and statistics showing that it's not a minor problem, that men are fully a third of abused spouses and so on.  There have been a lot of heated words back and forth.

The problem I have with the whole topic is that the numbers published by the government are distorted.  I do not believe they are a true picture of the problem.  A lot of the numbers are drawn from bitter divorce filings.  I know for a fact'*' that accusations of abuse/violence in divorce filings can be completely and utterly false, and those claims inflate the numbers.  On the other hand, I do believe that spousal abuse, like rape, is grossly under reported. 

Anyway, this guy is extremely angry and defensive about the topic of abused men, and so very angry at women in general that I came right out and asked, "Were you abused?"  Turns out his wife in her divorce filings had accused HIM of violence, as a result of which he lost contact with his children and was not allowed anywhere near his house.  The charges were proven false (How?  How do you disprove something like that?  It's the old 'he says she says' thing.), but he still has no contact with the children and he's still suffering social ostracism from the accusations.

I backed out of the discussion because he started to get irrational and scary.  I had pointed out that inflation/deflation aside, the federal tables on spousal abuse listed the number of battered women in one column and battered men in another, but did not specify the gender of the batterers, like women on women or men on men, which is meaningful information.  He spat back that gay men are only 8% of the general population, therefore they are only 8% of the battered men and therefore insignificant.  That's so irrational a conclusion that I realized there was no point in pointing it out to him.  In fact, it might be dangerous to do so.

He got scary enough that I begin to believe his ex-wife's accusations.  He was losing it.  In writing.  You could practically see the foam spattering his keyboard.  I wouldn't want to be on the other side of a table from him.  I can believe that whether there was physical abuse or not, there was probably a LOT of emotional abuse.

(Now that I think about it, I think he's the same guy who heaped abuse on me a few months ago when I dared to suggest that people who snort at the idea of global warming because they had a bad winter might be more receptive if we called it climate change.  He was vicious.  Yeah, I'm 99.9% sure that was him.)

And I don't understand why he is so upset about there being no shelters for abused men.  Frankly, I think he just hates women.

Anyhooooo, that got me thinking about all those unreported spousal abuse cases.

Why do women stay with an abuser?  Many reasons, I guess, among which are

• Lack of self-esteem.  It's all my fault.  I always screw things up.  If I were a better/smarter/prettier person he wouldn't get so angry/frustrated with me.  I don't deserve anything else.
• Love.  I fell in love with a wonderful guy, and when he's not being so awful, when things are going well, I still see that guy in there.  I have to help him, take care of him, maybe my love will fix him somehow. If I leave he will get worse and fall into despair and hurt himself and I can't do that to him.
• Lack of options.  I can't leave the children with him, but I have no education, no skills, I can't get a job that pays enough for daycare and to support us. I am trapped.
• Fear.  If I leave he will track me down and kill me.  It's better to stay here and ice my bruises than to spend the rest of my life as a hunted animal, always afraid that one day he'll be at the door with a gun or around the corner with a jar of acid.  Asking for official protection will just make him madder, and no one can protect me anyway.  At least here I know what to expect.

These are the unreported ones, and they are legion.  I wonder if men who stay with an abuser stay for the same reasons.

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'*' I know for a fact because a) I worked in a family law office for a while, and b) because it happened to me.  Maybe I'll write about that some time.
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