“The ordinary response to atrocities is to banish them from consciousness. Certain violations of the social compact are too terrible to utter aloud.”

-Judith Herman, Trauma and Recovery

I wanted to talk about something no one wants to talk about: violence. I fear we don’t know all the ways we can be violent, just as we don’t know all the ways we can be gentle. It is uncomfortable to recognize brutality that doesn’t result in death, that doesn’t result in blood and guts splattered across our screens. If the spectacle doesn’t exist or the image doesn’t move you, the thing has not truly occurred.

But honestly, how often does pain rely on only a cut? This is, thus, the dimension in which abuse grows and how it consumes. It turns us into all sorts of things. A past friend said, “Being assaulted is like losing your virginity. If you haven’t been assaulted, you’re practically a virgin.” How often do we deny the existence of abuse just to avoid feeling like victims?

This is another gradient of the world that can do nothing but consume those who have been violated and dared to open their eyes to the thing in all its secrecy and all its nuance. We see murderers, rapists, and other abusers as spectacles—we consume them along with their survivors. It’s easier. But the terrifying thing is that those abusive people can be your friends, your homie down the block, or that big bro or sister who can do no wrong, often because they’ve decided this one thing: If it happened to me, why should I spare you?

What do you do with all the good faith you’ve placed in big homie?

As a spectator or survivor, the question reverberates like crossing the threshold into a new dimension of the world—a new worldview with disequilibrium. It can cause us to reduce, label, and diminish.

They often are nice. I've known three abusive people in my life, and it's not uncommon for them to be likable, popular, or charismatic. The person who was abusive to me is now making tea for his friends and neighbors. Most abusive people know exactly who to target and how to do so with enough precision to make others feel unreliable, crazy, or delusional. They nurture everyone, including their victims, while inflicting pain like a composer building up to a crescendo. So there is where you must discern, and it is difficult because who wants to see the world like this, But what does that person get from being nice to you that they've already gotten from the ones they've hurt?

And when will your luck run out?