Dedication: In honor of Margaret K. Nice (My grandmother/my hero)
I’m a twenty y/o survivor of domestic violence. Someone close to me told me to share my story, so here I am. I could tell you of my tragic past and the extremely unfortunate circumstances that I survived, but I’m not going to.
If I have do indeed have a voice, I pray that it tell my truth with sincere clarity. I could tell you a story of bruises, manipulation, black and eyes, and I could even tell you about that time he threw me so hard towards a wall that my body broke through the drywall. I could tell you a story of sadness and despair, unlike anything you’ve ever heard.
But that’s not my story: that’s not my truth.
My truth consists of all of the words that I never got to say:
No one—no woman, no man, no child, no animal— deserves to be physically harmed, for any reason, ever, end of story. There has NEVER been a single living being in the history of the planet earth that was not created with the intent to undefinably loved, as well as to give that same love, in return. The world is not a terrible place, and I am saying this as a young woman who has been beaten, shattered, broken, and even torn. If I can honest to God state that this world is not a cruel place, then I believe that anyone can understand my truth.
My truth is that loving others when they least deserve it is when I have seen the most change occur. Love is not easy; love is the most difficult, heart-breaking, and altogether worthy task I have ever encountered in all of my days. It’s this fact alone—that love is not always easy-that defines the four letter word.
Instead of prosecuting the man who beat me, I chose, and still choose on a daily basis, to forgive him. He will never change if I consistently hate on him in countless attempts to make his life as terrible as he once made mine. My story is not about getting even. My story is about encouragement. My story is about compassion. If you meet someone like the man who beat me, show him love. Why do I say this? I say this because I know that if someone is that cruel, they don’t know, or they don’t remember, what it feels like to be loved. When you don’t know love, it’s hard to show love. We must teach each other what unconditional means by showing kindness where there is none.
In the end, we are all chronically human. The only cure to our disease is love. It’s what we are made of, what we were created for. Human beings are the essence of love. Let’s remind the world of that.
1 Cor. 13:13