Run for Your Life

Abstract

Run for Your Life Kim McLarin (bio) In the years after my divorce I underwent a prolonged emotional crisis, one which involved bouts of depression, great batches of French fries, and a stubborn habit of falling in love with men who did not love me in return. For the most part these men were not bad people, were not, as they hacked their way through the swamp of midlife dating, deliberately destructive, or at least no more so than I. There was, however, one person whose bad behavior was intentional, who was—in his dealings with women in general and me in particular—selfishly, gleefully, actively unkind. This person reveled in the notion of having an upper hand in relationships, of power as aphrodisiac. Alternately attentive and dismissive, lying and truthful, nastily disparaging and lavish with praise, he kept me off-center and I allowed it, drawn to the treatment like a cat towards catnip. Catnip sprinkled on coals. It was a messy, painful, damaging connection, not good for anyone. My friends, watching from the sidelines, frequently registered their concern and disapproval, but I remained unhearing and unmoved. Eventually one said, “You know, this is an abusive relationship.” I bristled. An abusive relationship? The summation rankled. The man in question had never hit me, never become physical, never so much as threatened violence. Yes, he was a jerk, a selfish user without remorse. But an abuser? Wouldn’t that make me a victim? Wouldn’t that make me weak? The definition of abuse is this: to use wrongly or improperly, use to bad effect or for a bad purpose, to misuse; to hurt or injure by maltreatment; to treat a person or animal with cruelty or violence. Not all of these things were true about the relationship, but a few of them were. Enough to fail to ease my discomfort. Enough to make me think. If the situation was not precisely abusive, it was certainly dys-functional, and the primary distinction, I came to realize, was the issue of power. In my case, the only power this guy had over me was power I handed to him. In summer 2020, after police officers in Wisconsin shot Jacob Blake in the back seven times as he leaned into the car where his children sat, I came across a video clip on the internet. It wasn’t the shooting; I have not watched a video of police shooting or ramming or kneeling on the necks of Black people since Rodney King. The clip I stumbled across was an interview with Doc Rivers, coach [End Page 146] of the Los Angeles Clippers. He sat on a bench after some game, discussing not fouls and shots but the police shooting of Mr. Blake and other Black people, the cynical fear-mongering of then-President Donald Trump and other Republicans, the way peaceful Black protest is met with force while violent white protest is met with shrugs. Forcing back tears, Coach Rivers said: “It’s amazing why we keep loving this country and this country doesn’t love us back.” Well, there you go, I thought. That is an abusive relationship. _______ According to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, a person experiencing abuse may be embarrassed or fear judgment and stigmatization; love the person who is abusing them and believe that they will change; deny that anything is wrong; and/or excuse the other person. The person may also behave in ways that can be difficult for people outside the relationship to understand. These behaviors include refusing to leave the relationship; believing that the other person is powerful or knows everything; idealizing the person who carried out the abuse during periods of calm; and believing the abuse is deserved. _______ When I was a child the Fourth of July passed with little fuss. Maybe my mother burned some hotdogs on our small charcoal grill, maybe my uncle brought over some sparklers and we ran around fizzling in the dark. Even the Bicentennial, which swept up the nation in a fervor of nostalgia and self-love, meant to us mostly televised fireworks and tall ships (both disappointing) and everything in the supermarket suddenly packaged...