If this isn't for you, it's for someone you know

I enter easily into another's pain, a trait I can only attribute not to some outstanding moral fiber, but rather to my adult life, which has trained my mind and soul to inhabit the skin of another in a way that little else can. In the Poughkeepsie Journal News this morning, there is an article of a 35 -  year -  old woman found dead in Fishkill, NY. Killed by brunt force trauma at the hands of her  apparent  live - in boyfriend.

"East Fishkill homicide occurred in quiet neighborhood: Neighbors say the dead end road where an East Fishkill man allegedly murdered his live-in girlfriend, is a quiet, family oriented neighborhood."


                  If this isn't for you, it's for someone you know.............

I remember the scene now, as if it were yesterday, as he brandished the coffee mug, hurling it across the room into the sink, leaving cup smashed and coffee dripping down the kitchen wall. The vision still sears in my head, as heavy fists hurled against the grey door frame of the bathroom. I'm sure I cried. I remember shaking my head and asking no - one in particular, why? As I write this I turn around and see on my shelf the faded scrapbook that contains the tattered "I'm sorry, it won't happen again," notes, tucked into a nearby shabby box are the ones that didn't fit into the scrapbook. And, together, they make me wonder, would he ever have stopped at all, if I had not been the one to stop it, by finally leaving. To finally end the trail of "I'm sorry, and this will be the last time, I promise "....... a trail of notes that seemed to continue connecting like the cars of a locomotive that went on forever. Like every other bit of my life, it has effected me for the rest of my life. It is only now that I have begun to stand still with my own memories, re - visiting a time in my life that is on a constant loop in some recess of my brain. Not that I obsess. It is just that the past is a big part of the present...sometimes memories brightly flare up, sometimes they quietly recede to the background. I feel myself fading, being pulled into a dark tunnel that was easier to stay in than consciousness. Here's another memory. He asks why I am mocking his favorite sports team. Before my confusion fully set into an organized thought he punched the wall next to my head. Domestic Violence weren't concepts I knew of yet. Because this was the most normal thing that happened everyday all the time. Each crisis was distinct and discreet behind closed doors. Obviously there were distinctions, but I never readily identified them. As we once upon a time knew, Domestic Violence creeps in silence. It is about power and control, and it often reaches death, for those that don't get out. I have my faults, some are known fully to me, and many, I am sure, are felt more expansively by others. But, Domestic Violence is not about faults, it is a a surge of physical power to control, a bullying that goes on often behind closed doors.