How Men Hit
Posted by Boo , Wednesday, September 22, 2010 6:12 PM
There is something about being hit by a man who hits hard, as hard as he can, like you are a man. It is a singular experience. Jarring. Like being in a prizefight but you've wandered into the wrong weight class. You exit your body and see yourself. You're Rocky Balboa. Head snapping. Spit and blood blend and soar in a slow motion frame. There is something in it that makes you want to stand with a jutting chin a dare them to hit you again. Defiant.
That's all you've got?
Being hit like a car wreck is unlike being hit by a man whose intention is to humiliate. I've now experienced both. The terrorist isn't in it to cut or bruise, but to demoralize and confuse. It is a skittish existance, living with this kind of violence, never knowing when the lights will go off and the knives will come out. This man may slam your head on the hardwood, but he won't often hit you in the face. Not hard, anyway. Not like you're a man.
Still, whether you're facing a closed fist or fighting against someone's fist full of your own hair, your chances of dying are the same, I think. They almost never mean to kill, these men, but you're always pretty sure death is coming. It's not something you fight. It just is. But this hitting hard. This hitting to hurt. I don't know how to understand it. Who hits to break skin and bone? To injure your love? She whose every part you have touched with a reverence like awe. This I don't get. Don't men hit to control? To regain equilibrium? To keep you lost? Ashamed and uncertain? But this hitting to damage, what is it? To leave eggplant stains spreading here and there, bruises that can be measured in multiple inches? Who hits to split a lip into neatly severed segments, so perfect you could easily stitch them yourself if only he had a needle and thread? Blood on the sheets. Blood on the wall. Who hits to leave indigo easter eggs on high, proud cheeckbones? Matching dyed eggs on matching fair shins. Who does that? What drives them? I have to understand.
I don't know this man whose unforgiving foot turned my whole hip heliotrope, one warm night in another year, but I have loved him. He split my lip. He split my heart.
He said it was my fault. I know that's not true. He said he's not sorry. That may, actually, be true. I hit him once. Open hand. Twice. Three times I did it. I am not sorry. He choked me to kill, he said. I scratched his face. I am not sorry.
How could I have loved him? What is that feeling in my heart still? It is the place where my father lived, and the beautiful brother I once adored. One hits to humiliate. One hits to hurt. I moved them from that warm home behind my breastbone and moved these undeserving others in.
Yet still I don't understand. Why would anyone want to make another bleed? A lover bleed? A friend?
But I can tell you something true. Being hit...hit hard. It doesn't hurt. There are no tears. They can't hurt me. Not one of them. I can't feel them. They can't find me. No matter how hard they look. I'm free.
My mother was only ever hit one time by my dad. It was before I was born. She got his rifle and aimed it and pulled the trigger. The gun wasn't loaded. Neither of them knew that until after she had pulled the trigger. He never hit her again.
I grew up with the fear of my dad getting mad enough to hit my mother or us kids and my mother shoting him if he did. I lived in constant fear and with emotional and verbal abuse from my dad when I was a child. He was a dictator who might one day carry out his threats of physical violence.
Thank you for sharing your story here.