If you accept the reality that the vast majority of the people you know will let you down, you will probably live a much easier life. Vast majority is probably a conservative estimate: most of the people you know are cowards. The problem with our society is that, in many ways, we have become too civilised — we hide behind paperwork and legalities, while we save our barbarism for things we are afraid of, which is why there are so many hate crimes and legalised injustices, from the marginalisation of the LGBT community to housing discrimination against people of colour. But when it comes to defending a woman from the constant and consistent psychological abuse of a past partner, or barring a belligerently racist person from entering your establishment, things like that — we pull up all kinds of laws and decrees that protect those people.
“There isn’t anything I can do.”
“My hands are tied.”
“I would say something but it would hurt my reputation.”
“People will think the wrong thing if I stand up and speak out now.”
We have the president we deserve. We voted with our cowardice. We abstained from voting for the other side by pretending to hide behind our lofty idealism, or we voted for the guy we have with our ignorance and fear and hatred.
2016 was the year that I watched every single person I reached out to walk away from me. And it’s true that no one owes me a goddamn thing — I’m not Mother Teresa, I don’t deserve a medal or undying loyalty or brave acts, do I? — but it would have been nice to watch someone, anyone, stand up for me and say, “You are in pain because someone destroyed you. You didn’t deserve that. It’s okay to feel the way that you feel. You are justified.”
I spent the last half of 2016 waiting for vindication that never came. The law didn’t help me, my friends didn’t help me, I isolated myself in my big house and the smallest handful of people attempted to give a shit, but not really. The only person who would actually do something huge and monumental to ensure that I never have to be afraid again is my dad. And the irony there is that no law would stop him. So, to protect him from being punished later for his valiance, I shut up and kept my fears and my rage to myself. Told him the courts took care of it, that he wouldn’t dare come near me again.
And now he’s winning again. And everyone in the only community I ever felt I belonged to, well, they stepped aside and let him pass. Welcomed him with open arms, essentially. My former friends, people I learned with and partied with and confided in and worked alongside. He’s a fairly intelligent sociopath who can put on a button-down and look really polite and respectful and play the role of the sane one in the argument. And somehow I have to hold it together, because if I choose to fall apart and drink all day and skip work and injure myself, I will look like the insane one. I will be Ophelia, and everyone will look at me with scorn or pity or both, and no one will ever talk about how he held the weapon and how a monster lives inside of him.
I pray for his destruction every day. I know it’s not my place to injure another person, much less take a life, but the sound of his name, his presence in a room, causes me to fall to pieces. And I wonder how many days until I’m completely undone. It’s an arms race to the death.
Clockwork’s Alex never learned to be good. He only learned to be un-bad. The court uses the feeblest conditioning to deter criminals, but were the laws dropped for even a second, every criminal would return to his ways. No one teaches them how to be human. They only lock away the monster so they don’t have to address the looming darkness. Stop gaps. Ineffectual systems. They are creatures of habit and of hatred, opportunism. Vultures.
In the fairy tales, the monster is destroyed, and good prevails. Then you grow up and find that the world is full of monsters, and the cowards they’ve enslaved. The brave are ostracised and reviled.
He has taken so much. But he will never take my voice again. I’m here. I’ll keep writing. I’ll keep using my voice. I swear it. I was quiet for too long.
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