I’ve borrowed “Fight Like a Girl… and Win” by Lori Hartman Gervasi from the library. As you’ve probably assumed, it’s about self-defense for women.
I openly make fun of my step dad, glossing over the ugliness that used to be commonplace in my family, and choosing instead to focus on the hilariously aggravating parts. My mom married him when I was 7 years old, and things immediately began to go… wrong. He wasn’t physically abusive, although he did strike me once, it was more emotional and mental. He slowly chiseled away at the light within my mom, and he alternated between being nice, buying us things, and being cruel. Violence was a concept that silently hung in the air like stale cigarette smoke. He was the man, he made the money (which wasn’t true, both of them worked), and that’s just the way the world worked. I was raised not to talk back to adults, so I didn’t. Neither of us spoke up. It was easier to live that way. I don’t want you to think we were constantly in fear, though. This only applied when he got really angry. The only problem was, we never knew what would set him off. Like Russian roulette.
After I graduated from high school, I wanted a dog. I found Basil, who instantly became, and remains, the love of my life. One day he relieved himself on some newspaper that we’d laid out for him in the living room (the joys of housebreaking), but a little of it dribbled off onto the carpet. I was cleaning it up, but my step dad had unfortunately witnessed the offense and began ranting and raving about it. I made the mistake of muttering, “Jesus Christ,” under my breath, which sent him over the edge. He yelled that he was going to take Basil to the pound and I would never see him again. This was the last straw. I shot to my feet and started screaming from the top of my lungs at him, telling him exactly what I thought of him. I didn’t have any control over the situation, I had just become pure rage. I grabbed the dog, hopped in the car, and left, returning a couple of hours later when my mom had finally calmed me down over the phone. Fury still seethed from every one of my pores, and I adopted a sinister silence toward him. For the next 3 nights my step dad locked the bedroom door at night because he was completely convinced that I would murder him in his sleep.
To this day, almost 10 years later, that man still cannot look me in the eye. He uses a submissive tone when he speaks to me. If he wants something from me, he has my mom ask me at a later time when he isn’t around. He knows that if he pushes me I'll erupt again. That’s not to say things got better, though. You might wonder where the “And Worse” title originated from. Well, I’ll finally tell you.
The angry outbursts worsened over the years. He frequently threatened to harm our pets, and was sometimes too harsh with them, the cats in particular. He said horrible things about my grandmother to my mom, truly awful things I don’t even want to repeat. Shit really hit the fan in 2008. I was in the living room, they were in the kitchen at the table. I don’t even know what they were fighting about, I just remember the volume rising as he detailed all the horrible things he wanted to see happen to my mom and to me. My personal favorite was when he said he was going to mutilate us both in our beds. When he eventually ran out of steam, my mom, amazingly calm, simply asked, “Do you really think I deserve any of that?” “Yes!” he replied, “And worse!”
We, being the sickos we are, adopted “and worse” and began tacking it onto the ends of random sentences. For fun. Sometimes you have to make a joke of something horrible in order to hang on to your sanity.
I began adding kickboxing into my workouts. I studied hand to hand combat videos. I sometimes slept with a knife next to my bed. We told our neighbors what was going on so that someone would know what happened if we ended up dead. The best news I’d ever heard was when my mom said she was leaving him, eclipsed only by my joy when she later told me she'd decided that she wanted to move to Portland.
Due to financial reasons, we all still live together. We’re separate people, though. We aren’t a family. I’ve gotten soft and lazy. He’s been diagnosed as a transgender male-to-female. He’s on hormones, which helps a lot. Supposedly his outbursts were caused by the internal struggle he dealt with because of his gender confusion, or whatever. I don’t care, that doesn’t make it okay. But we coexist, for the most part. It’s only temporary anyway.
Last week he yelled at my mom when I wasn’t around. This kind of thing never happens in my presence, and she was concerned that he was going to flip out again. Nothing has happened since then, but I still felt it wise to learn more about self-defense. Just in case.
My biggest fear in life is being raped. I hate being vulnerable, and to me intimacy is the ultimate in vulnerability. I can't fathom sharing that much of myself with someone whom I don't trust completely. To have it stolen from me? I'd rather die. I’ve never been in a dangerous situation like that with a man, but the number of violent crimes against women (not just rape) is staggering. We're easy targets. No one ever taught us how to defend ourselves. It’s not like I think we should all go out and started walloping on random dudes, but we don’t want to be victims.
There’s a consistency in the book I’m reading and the teachings of Dr. Ruthless…
It’s that instant when you just go crazy. You become the monster. That happened the day I exploded, so I know that I’m capable of it. Looking back now, I’m amazed that I didn’t physically attack my step dad. Now I’m working out again. I’m making more of an effort to be aware of my surroundings. I’m willing to be all scary psycho woman if the need arises, though I truly hope it never comes to that. I want to learn Krav Maga, too.
I totally have a crush on this guy now.
But it changes you. I’m an angry person. Not all the time, but it simmers deep within me. I feel like a dormant volcano. I sometimes wonder what kind of person I would be if I hadn’t had that one particular person in my life. Maybe it’s just as well. The world is a violent place.
If someone takes me down, though, I’m bringing him with me.
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