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.
The image of not one person helping on the moment kills part of my heart. You are an amazing Warrioress - in action, in love, in thought and in words. Your voice is heard. <3
ReplyDeleteThank you for this. I'm sorry you and your friend had this experience, I can see how it would have been terrifying and also damaging one's sense that other people care or are connected to you or feel any connection to you...my thoughts go out to you both.
ReplyDeleteIf it helps to hear, people do help sometimes...I have had an experience in the last two weeks when I was out with friends late night in Northampton and a man was being very angry and threatening to a woman he had come in with...In this case, police were there within a minute, one of two male friends physically interposed to talk him down and walk him away from her while she was crying, and, after they had left the shop and were sitting outside in a car (the woman had left crying up the street), one guy, a stranger, called him an asshole. When the police came and questioned them in their car, they lied and said they had never been in the shop...and when the police came into the shop to find out what was going on, someone in the shop told them that "they were lying, it's the guys in the car."
So...very disturbing incident but people, and strangers, did step up, which is heartening. I'm so upset that you guys experienced both the assault and the indifference or lack of involvement of the other people around you.
I know that it takes a while to recover from the psychological shock of being attacked--but you WILL regain your sense of safety and trust/ability to reach out in stages. Best wishes to you both!