To Help The Helpless

About a week ago, my friend and I were assaulted in a restaurant in Northampton, by a man neither of us knew. He saw us sitting close together, talking intimately, and sexualized our relationship, and then asserted that we had an obligation to satisfy the ideas this gave him. When we protested, he attacked us, verbally and physically. I cannot remember a more frightening encounter with a man. Though my most immediate fear (that he would beat my friend as I watched, powerless to stop him) was averted, the terror he inflicted upon us has hurt me, hurt us both, deeply. And while the overwhelming sense of crisis has quieted, the fright evoked by the experience has lodged in my body and lies so close to the surface that sudden movement, unexpected sound, a raised voice trigger in me an immediate panic response, unfamiliar and unwelcome. I am unusually vigilant in public, hyper-aware of people, quick to swerve off of the path of any man who nears me. I am poised for flight at every moment. I have not slept deeply since the night of the attack and I am tired. I lost a week of work, my body too badly bruised and misaligned to labor physically.

All of this has been terribly hard for me to believe, for me to bear, but the hardest reality of all is that no one attempted to help us. Not one person called the police when I shouted throughout the space, "Call 911! Someone call the police!!" over and over. Their eyes met mine and they walked away. Right here in our little Happy Valley, a very large, raging man attacked two women in a restaurant and no one helped.

There is something seriously wrong with that, people.

Now, I know I'm preaching to the choir here as I am amongst friends, but pass this story far and wide, please friends, to remind one and all that we are in this life together. Have we become so utterly desensitized to violence that we don't know what it means to do the right thing? I am your sister, your daughter, your girlfriend, your lover, your friend, your co-worker, your grandmother, your wife, your neighbor; I am every woman you love or ever will love, every woman you cherish, every woman with whom you have a meaningful connection. When someone hurts me, they hurt us all.

I am not suggesting that anyone ought to have put themselves in grave danger to stop this man. I am reminding that the police are a phone call away, so tell everyone you know: the next time you see two men arguing on the street, tempers rising, or a couple fighting in a car, or a parent slapping a child in the parking lot of the grocery store, make that call. Get help for the momentarily helpless. Don't avert your eyes, or walk on by thinking someone else will help, it's none of your business, not your problem.

Because, it is.