Random Acts of Cruelty

July 24, 2005

By Diane Sprague

 

It is hard to tell exactly when it was that the abuse began. For the longest time I never gave it a name. It was just an evergrowing ugliness and I desparately tried to smudge and smear it away so it would become unrecognizable or better yet invisible to everyone, including me, especially me. One of the earliest messages in my life is that we hide things. We were never to speak of my father's seething furious anger which spread over the house like poisonous cloud everytime he was home. We learned to tiptoe instead, to hide what we saw, to disappear. After all our family were good Christians, saints, possessors of the truth. Nothing ugly was to show. Except for me.

Even after leaving home the memories of the anger left me feeling shattered and isolated. I carried remnants of it in my thoughts which echoed the stern message of a world where we walk on eggshells trying to appease some distant diety who insisted upon being appalled by his creation. I was full of fears and sadness. The only escape I found was in books, ideas, new ways of looking things. It was a world of freedom, but I hid it deep inside. I was taught to be silent, to watch but never mention what I was seeing, and to let people pretend. The thoughts inside were my silent haven, but the outside world was still ruled by that sternness

We repeat our patterns. The anger I so desired to escape came back in my marriage. It did not start that way. It came slowly with shocking moments of seeing this inexplicable random cruelty. I told myself that they were flukes, nothing to concern myself about. They went away quickly and I could easily pretend that I could forget it and leave it behind. Only it kept coming back.

It came back in words that reminded me about how worthless and insignificant I was, in constant threats, in a bullying religious mindset that insisted that my ideas were heretical, stupid, and mistaken, and, once in awhile in physical violence. Sometimes the police would come. I hated that. I would look at them with a sad desparation and wish it would just go away. "No arrests, no courts, no lawyers," I would silently plead with them, "please just make it disappear."

There would be good times. Wonderful breaks allowed peace to return. I could always tell, though, when the anger was going to come again. Slowly the signs would come back: the look on his face, the seething emptiness in his eyes, the threats, the name calling, and the disdain. I would find myself following the same old pattern of appeasing. If I was nice enough maybe I could keep it away. It never worked. That nice matters is only a dream of an idiot.

Each time it would come back it would become harder to hide. Isolation crept in. I realized the neighbors could hear the shouting and see the police come, so I learned to avoid the neighbors. My family's reaction started with some concern that faded into a cold, sterile indifference. I guess I broke the rule of living the pure, clean Christian life without the problems that plagued the rest of the world and they did not want anything to do with me. I was okay most of the time at work. I was competent there except I would wonder what my students would think if they knew my stomach was twisting in knots when I started thinking about heading home, the place where I was a stupid worthless bumbler.

After years of this, it finally wore me down. I was not able to sleep at night. I could not eat. I watched my psyche crumble and one day found myself on the floor, curled up like a small child and wailing uncontrollable. When my husband found me like this, I hoped for some help. I was out of control and terrified at what was happening to me. How could anyone stand back and watch another person reach that state and not try to help? They can. His words were vicious and cruel weapons. He enjoyed watching me be destroyed. I knew I had to leave the house. He told me I could not. I would embarass him. I waited until 3:00 in the morning and he was snoring contentedly and snuck out without any shoes on my feet and walked to hospital.

Once I was in the hospital, they shuttled me off to another hospital. As I rode in the back of the ambulance, I watched everything that I pretended to define me dissolve until nothing was left. I liked to pretend I was strong and able rise above my situation. I wasn't strong; I was a hopeless loser. I wanted to be a good mom, but my children saw me regress to a state of a little child. How could I be there for them when I was like this? My favorite game was to pretend I was smart. I was tutoring college students in algebra, statistics, chemistry, physics, biology, English, history, sociology, computer applications, and accounting. I believed if I could add only add more subjects to my list I could finally not be the big nothing I knew I was inside. Now my thoughts were cloudy. I was not even smart enough to leave the first minute I sensed that same seething anger in my supposively sanctified Christian husband, to leave behind the same bullying patterns of my childhood, and to face the promise of new ideas, new thoughts, and new patterns.

I spent the nights in the hospital sitting in the darkness and realizing there was no way out. I tried to live my life right, but everything was so wrong. It was just big game and I lost it. I never figured out how to play it right. It was over. I stopped believing in God during that time. I had always believed there was some reason for things, something better hidden behind it all. I felt like life had stripped its curtains away and I could only see the black dark void. Nothing was there giving us the hope, meaning, and a promise of Something More.

This despair was broken by a knock on the door. A fellow patient named Bob asked me if I wanted to go outside for a smoke. I told him I didn't have any cigarettes and he offered to share his. I don't smoke, but I figured what the hell. A group of patients had already gathered outside. We huddled together in the darkness. It was fun. The cigarettes smoke had a deliciously wicked taste and we laughed as we watched the smoke float into the black sky. Something happened to me in that moment. I let everything go and enjoyed the simple act of smoking. Nothing else mattered. Who were we? Patients? Who were the people inside? Healers? Like heck they were. They were just sterile robots popping pills into us hoping to make us go away. Except that we can choose not to go away. We can choose to be anything we want. Life is not a game. One does not have to get it right. No mistakes are made.

He could not hurt me anymore.

I died in the back of that ambulance. The pretense was finished, the rules had ended, the game was broken. All that was left was me, just the person standing there smoking, laughing, and seeing clearly what an big illusion everything was. Everything. Everything except for this cigarrette and my own choice to do whatever the hell I wanted with whatever is left of this strange experience of life.

I like the story about Buddah when he is facing enlightenment and a large army comes at him with their arrows. They fiercely toss their weapons and the sharp arrows turn into flower petals. A more modern story is when Neo faces the agents in the Matrix and they dissolve into computer code drifting down the screen. That is all bullies are too. Just noise. They sometimes mix their noise with an ugly religion that projects their anger into the sky and they have some control for awhile. But not forever.

And those of us who have been instructed to be quiet, to not do embarassing things, to not reveal the white washed tombs behind their weekly church going sanctity might just decide to break the silence. Why not? What's left? All we have is our choice to go outside and watch the smoke disappear in to the night and laugh.