We’re All Victims of Domestic Abuse
What much of the nation is feeling right now is what many of we domestic abuse survivors have felt after being assaulted.
Pain, shame, anger, confusion, fear, wondering what’s going to happen next.
Think of the recent insurrectionist attack in smaller terms, if it helps to wrap your head around it. Domestic terrorism brought down to the household level. For more than five years, we have been in an abusive relationship with Donald Trump and his supporters. A relationship rife with mental, emotional, sexual and physical abuse; the physical abuse always worse if you were black, often deadly.
And now, as the victims of this attack, we are feeling so many different emotions and while still reeling from the assault, we have the trauma of our abuser(s) trying to make us feel as if we played a role, as if we were the reason we were attacked in the first place. That gaslighting is always part of the cycle of domestic violence, and is of course part of this domestic terrorist assault on our democracy. The backpedaling, the lies, the deceit, it’s all part of an abuser’s bag of tricks to try and lull their victims into a false sense of security.
Add to all of that, we also have our mutual “friends” swooping in to make excuses for the abuser’s bad behavior, continuing the gaslighting campaign. Or some of them refuse to see the abuser for who they are, instead closing their eyes to the truth because it’s just easier to believe the lies they’ve been told for so many years. Even as we show them our black eyes and gaping wounds, they still say, “it was fake, it was staged, fake news.”
But this is where is gets hard for you — STAND FIRM. You must set your boundaries and keep them.
People who are friends with your abuser are not your friends.
This is the same for those people who stay on the side of the insurrectionists and make excuses, or try to blame “Antifa”, or any of the various ways they have been trying to stay on the Trump train while also being part of your friend circle. Know that these people are not going away any time soon, and they will continue to work against our democracy from within their communities after our new President is sworn in. They are not your friends. They can’t be trusted.
And everyone else who watched and stood aside? Yes. There is a side — the side of the abused, and the side of the abuser. Pick one. (Hint: You don’t pick the abuser, you NEVER pick the abuser.)
