on 01/29/2010 by the editor in Editorial, Comments (1)
the last thing i saw in dayton:
was a man striking a woman in the face sunday afternoon, twice. and then he dragged her back into the house. i at least bothered to call the cops. they showed up maybe 25 minutes later, stopped, and drove away laughing as if they were sharing a joke. The other person who was laughing was the guy who hit the woman; was smiling as he looked out the window at me when he realized i had stopped in the middle of traffic on South Smithville Road to dial 911.
people were honking at me and guys were driving by in their pickups screaming at me and flipping me off as i got my phone out of my pocket. this dude looked way crazier and more evil than the joker, and more trashy but with that same crazy smile. i blame the meth. or maybe the crack or the alcohol or the pills, or all of them.
the thing is, the woman had a couple of chances to run before he dragged her back into the house. she could have fought harder. i could have tried to intervene and probably got shot in the chest with a blaster for my troubles. but i’m no hero, just another coward like everybody else in that little ghetto purgatory that’s too scared to change things or at least try to get out. that’s when i made up my mind, and 2 hours later I was already on I-70, pushing to Indiana. 10 miles west of Dayton I started hitting heavy fog. Like Ohio was trying to keep me in, maybe for good, forever. it’s not heroin, or crack, or pills, or meth, or booze that’s destroying dayton. it’s apathy, the ultimate gateway drug.
it was fog the whole way, but my head is finally clear.
note:
if you have a female friend in dayton suffering domestic abuse, please act – start by telling someone. if they don’t have a safe place to stay, i suggest The Artemis Center on 310 West Monument, Dayton. They are a long-time local shelter with a very good reputation. You can call them at (937) 461-7910 or visit them on the web at artemiscenter.org.
Tags: abuse, apathy, domestic violence
Vivian
02/04/2010 @ 11:59 am
I’ve thought a lot about these issues too, and here’s what I’ve concluded so far:
Some people learn, as children, that “love” is a dance of dominance and submission. This may manifest subtly in neglect or sarcasm, or more conspicuously in the kind of deranged, violent relationship you describe here. For too many, being mistreated feels normal. In their experience, that’s how people who “love” each other behave. A painful connection is less terrifying than the alternative – the abandonment of being not-loved.
It’s crazy.
It’s also staggeringly difficult to un-learn this pattern of relating, and it never happens quickly. An outsider can offer insights, direct to resources, provide encouragement for better choices. In an situation where danger is imminent, an outsider can offer temporary safe harbor, or call 911. But ultimately, Americans almost always have the right, as adults, to continue to make really bad choices for themselves.
So you did what you COULD do, and the police did what they COLD do, which wasn’t much, and you felt it wasn’t nearly enough. Evil won the day and and your righteous outrage helped propel you out of the orbit of that particular nexus of despair in Dayton, Ohio.
Apathy prevails when individuals are conditioned to believe that nothing they do will make a difference. The dominant news outlets in Dayton perpetuate this belief, along with the notions that a) the world is infinitely dangerous in both evident and insidiously unpredictable ways, so BE AFRAID, and b) heroism is defined by single, conspicuous, dramatic actions that immediately and drastically change the course of events.
I, however, suspect that most everything an individual does makes a difference, but usually only a very tiny, incremental difference. Still, we shouldn’t be so cowed that we daily squander what power we have by discounting its potential contribution to a cumulative effect, for good or ill. I also imagine that there’s a deeper, truer kind of heroism – low on spectacle or dramatic effect. It consists of continually performing small acts of virtue, despite their apparent futility.
The night you fled, you cared enough to do what you could reasonably do. That’s not cowardice. You could have done nothing, but you said “this is bad and needs to be stopped.” If that woman hears that message over and over again, she may eventually believe it enough to let people help her change. Maybe not. But because you were there, she heard it one more time.
So here’s to those plucky realists who choose to speak the truth, light the single candle, throw that one starfish back into the sea. Heros enough.
Enjoy the sunshine!
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