Guesswork (TRIGGER WARNING: DOMESTIC VIOLENCE)

I don't know if I'll post this, but I want to write it.

I hate it -- I HATE it -- when we as a society look at a victim of abuse and question her. When we make it her fault that she has been or is being abused because she doesn't leave. When we heap additional abuse upon her by making her the reason for the abuse -- after all, if she'd leave, she wouldn't be getting hurt, so it's her fault.

If you've never been in an abusive relationship, then I guess that it might be easy to judge. If you've never had someone who claims to love you tell you, again and again, that you're worthless and useless and that no one else will ever love you, so you need to make sure that you do what they say because otherwise you'll be alone and a failure, if you've never had someone who has promised to cherish you punishing you for real slights and imagined ones, if you've never had someone who claimed to adore you cutting you off from your friends and family until you have nowhere to turn and no one to go to? I guess that then, it's easy to look at a video of a woman who is having the shit kicked out of her and blame her.

I guess.

I guess it might also be easy to ignore the amount of shame that you would feel if you were being abused; you're a modern woman, and finding yourself in a relationship that is literally painful and frightening would be completely embarrassing if you even had anyone left to talk to -- which you might not, since you're not allowed to see the people who actually do love and support you. But I guess it would be easy not to think about that if you haven't been there.

And I guess that it would be simple to ignore the fact that the person who is hurting you might be stronger or, in some cases, trained to hurt people far bigger and stronger than you are and who might keep weapons around to remind you that, if you fight back? You could end up much worse off.

I guess it's easy to forget that leaving can be more dangerous than staying. 

I guess it's easy to forget that no one wants to be abused.

I guess it's easy to forget that the victim of abuse is ABUSED and so deserves for society to ask why abusers hurt their partners and not why victims of abuse deserve to be abused -- because no one deserves to be abused, ever. Period.

But I guess it's easy to forget that.