A Conversation About Hitting

when she talks about the past, she does so with a numbness that has been developed over years of trying to push it behind her---these are the mechanisms of endurance that had been taught during years of therapy & she is suspicious about them having done a bit of good, because when she is alone & closes her eyes, she can still remember the events that have torn apart her psyche & in the most unfortunate moments, she can still make out the face. how many men have been sitting with a new acquaintance & the talking, be it flirtatious or otherwise, seems to take a serious turn quickly & suddenly, so unexpected, she lets him in on what has happened to her in the past, no matter how recent that past is? & she confides, she tells the stories like she was reading them from a book, showing almost nothing left, until the man reacts & then she might very well try & blame herself for where, when & how the abuse came to be--- but there are the statistics & even if one is so misogynistic as to believe that all the women polled are in fact lying, such colors are shown quickly & quite often they are exhibited on the side of the molester, the rapist or the abuser, be him of the physical or the psychological. a savage truth exists, for when she confides, she can never be sure, even if all her senses tell her that this one is ok, she has the torture of the past to remind her & so there are always walls, always barbed wire fences bunched up & a lack of trust that could outweigh anyone’s. to think that there are still men living, who have never had a conversation about hitting with a woman who has been tormented & violated, to think that there are men alive who ignore the statistics, think they are all lies or just don’t give a ****, makes one wonder if this really is the 21st century.