I recently had a poem published, and the poem details the weeks during and after the period where I had taken the man that raped me through the court process. The poem focuses on my violence in the aftermath of the violence that was forced on me. It’s been making me think of what makes harm justified. I had so many fantasies about maiming, hurting, killing things and one person in particular. If I had retaliated using violence, would it have been justified?
I read a friend’s poem recently and so I’m thinking about sin. Killing is a sin. If I had killed in the name of my hurt I would be tried to the fullest extent of the law. Some people believe that after my death I would be met by God’s judgement and damned to a life in hell. The press would have made a meal of me. So many women go to prison for killing their abusers, and I would be one of them. Knowing this, I outsourced my harm. I directed it to things that wouldn’t get me in trouble. In the poem I wrote, I remember really fantasizing about the death of the mouse, its bones crushed by steel, blood everywhere.
Mostly, I did unspeakable things to myself. Things that would have resulted in my death, and that was the point. I really wanted to die. I felt that my abuser had gotten off easy, and had told myself before the trial that if that happened I would kill myself. I took the slow route, drinking and drugging my way to a lonely death. I entered relationships with people who were not good for me. I rode my bike around the city in the dark, daring someone to hit me. I felt unkillable but also welcomed death. I dared it to find me and come take me.
I think everyone has violent fantasies. Everyone has one person they would kill if they could get away with it, at least in my opinion. We all sin in our own little private ways. We cheat, we covet, we lie. There is a void in all of us that can be temporarily filled with sin. Let’s face it, it feels good to do bad things. I used to relish being “the other woman” in relationships. It titillated me to be a little evil, to not care about someone else’s feelings and the hurt I was likely causing them. I’ve grown out of this phase now, and mostly look back on it with a twinge of shame. But where did that impulse come from in me?
My evils feel small in the face of real violence that occurs in the world. I think of what happened in Buffalo, what happens in Palestine, everything spurred on by the evils of white supremacist violence. These evils are not the same. Cheating on your spouse is not comparable to killing an unarmed journalist, or people grocery shopping. But there is something to be said for the potential in all of us to make our sins much bigger, almost insurmountable and incalculable in their scope and damage.
Most of us know not to act on our violent impulses. In the poem, my friend takes the mouse to a nearby park where it will find food and others of its kind. I felt at ease after learning this. Someone who was not me had the sense to reach toward kindness and not the “quickness of violence.”
I wish I had come to some grand sweeping generalization at the end of this, but I’m mostly just thinking out loud. I’m saddened and scared by the fact that Black people have to live in fear of leaving our houses to do everyday errands. I think the shooter goes beyond being a mere sinner and moves toward something much greater and more evil than I can fathom. There is no likeness in he and I, and yet, I still wonder what I am capable of when fueled by a force that feels much greater than me.
If you want to read the poem I will link it here and also it is now under the Writing section of this website. Wishing you lots of love and pleasure
DJ