True, Wrong Love
She arrived on my doorstep looking like she had been run over by a truck: clothes twisted and torn, burst lip looking like she had been in a six-round knock-up with a heavy-weight champ. My dear friend put on a brave face while I rushed her indoors and tended to her wounds. I could guess what had happened but needed to hear it from her.
‘He loves me’ she started ‘It’s just… I keep making him jealous’. Now I wanted to smack her myself. The ‘He’ in question is her boyfriend of 15 months and live-in lover, who was about four times her size: he, a vain body-building celebrity and she, a fragile little afro-asian woman and lawyer. Turns out he had unleashed hell on her because she came home up in the car of a male colleague who was going her way after the entire team had been working late in the office to meet a deadline. As soon as she walked in, he asked her where she was coming from and before she could answer, he picked her up by the shoulders and flung her across the room. When she landed in a heap on the floor, he ran over, pummeled and stomped on her until she passed out. He left her there and went off to a bar, from where he would probably have returned to continue the battering. She came to and ran out of the apartment, heading for the one place she knew he would not dare follow her: my apartment.
This was not the first time he had beaten her. I had long guessed it before she finally told me. ‘Maybe you should have your sight checked out because I don’t understand how you keep tripping on the stairs’ I said to her after the third broken arm or leg in a row. ‘It’s… dark on the stair case’ she mumbled. Eventually, it came tumbling out: the jealous rages, the pummeling, being flung across the room…. And she blamed herself for every single one of those incidents.
Leaving her resting, I decided to risk our friendship for the sake of her safety. As I drove over to their home, I recalled how she had endured years of abuse from her mother (a small bi-racial woman) who would beat her and drag her by the hair across the house. She once told me her mother was right to hate her because she was dark while her other siblings were light. ‘Well, so is your Dad’ I countered. ‘If she hates dark people, why did she marry him?’. I stood by helplessly unable to do anything about that particular abuse but this one I could stop and I intended to. She had once threatened to never speak to me again if I ever came between them but I decided I’d rather endure her wrath than live with her death on my conscience because he would surely kill her one day.
As soon as he saw me, he straightened up and tried to look more like a man than the cowardly dog I could see in front of me and I think he knew what I saw when I looked at him. ‘I will only say this once. You have hurt her for the very last time. If you make me come back here again, you will be sorry and if you so much as darken my street corner, I will have you ARRANGED’. Not sure I knew what I meant but I think he could see from my eyes that I was not in the mood to be toyed with. God knows I was ready to hire thugs or buy a gun if it meant my friend would be safe. Turns out big bungling cowards are afraid of anyone who stands up to them. If he came at me, he would have probably wrung my neck in a snap but it seems the only one with whom he could muster such masculine strength was his five-foot-tall woman. As I left he asked: ‘Is she okay? I – I didn’t mean to…’. I slammed the car door shut and turned the music up so I would not hear him or be forced to look at his pathetic face. What goes on in his head when he does this? I kept wondering. Looking back at him in the rear-view mirror, I caught the glimpse of a sad and miserable man. Is this what she mistakes for love, then?
Needless to say, she went back to him as soon as I recounted his pitiful excuse. ‘I told you he didn’t mean to‘, she said beaming from one ear to the other. ??!! I should have kept my mouth shut. I was unable to stop her. A few weeks later, there she was at my door again. ‘I can’t bear to keep seeing him hurt you like this. He will kill you one of these days. I just know it. Why can’t you see it? I am not going to argue about whether he loves you or not but there is something wrong with him if he feels you and he are a match. I said all this while she stood at the door. I had to be strong for both our sakes because I was on the verge of murder at that point. It had to stop, so I refused to let her in except she agreed to move out. ‘If he loves you, he will let you have your space and see if your love can survive the separation’. This time she listened and within weeks, she was out from under his spell. She left town and never looked back. It probably helped that he was soon seen in all the gossip rags with another woman. Some kind of love, that. I thought: Maybe his new woman is the abuser in their relationship. Good luck to them. Either way, it’s good riddance and although my friend never thanked me for it, I have all the thanks I need seeing her in a new thriving, nurturing relationship and watching her newly found self-confidence.
Editor’s Note
The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that globally, one in three women experience physical and/or sexual violence by an intimate partner at least once in their life. Violence has a range of adverse physical, including sexual and reproductive health, and mental health outcomes for women and girls.
