Walking A Fine Line ......

I’ve been thinking a lot about justice today, partly because I’ve been watching the Netflix original series “Orange Is The New Black” of late, a story told from the point-of-view of a young Connecticut woman who grew up privileged, learning the ways of blue bloods while attending Smith. During her youth, in an act of rebellion she got involved in a Lesbian affair with another privileged girl from the upper East Side, which led her to running drug money unbeknownst to her at the time. In the meantime she grew up, rehabilitated her ways, became a successful business woman and got engaged to a writer, when her past managed to catch up with her once her former lover was arrested and decided to name names. Therefore, she was subsequently sentenced to thirteen months in federal prison.

The series is graphic in its depiction of life on the inside when women from all walks of life and a mix of cultures are forced to live within a flawed prison system where corruption runs rampant and any chance of finding redemption, much less rehabilitation is remote. The writing is crisp and intelligent and the characters draw you closer and closer to them as each installment chronicles their lives inside prison, mingled with flashbacks to the series of unlikely events that landed them there in the first place.

At some point you begin to realize there’s very little that can separate a woman who lives an orthodox life on the outside from one who’s landed herself on an unplanned stint in prison for failing to obey to the laws of the land. One woman’s daughter gets raped and she starts a support group, while another daughter’s mom takes a knife and ends the life of the bastard who committed the crime. One young woman takes care of her younger siblings by taking on three jobs, while another decides to cook meth in her kitchen to do the same. One woman experiences neglect and abuse and internalizes it to the point she’s ready to take her own life while another who experiences the same kind of treatment decides to fight back by taking the life of the abuser. In any given situation we have choices. Sometimes good sense prevails and we do the right thing even though there’s little reward in having done so. Other times we choose immediate gratification tipping the balance in the direction of the wrong side of the law, and if you get caught you’re forced to pay.

I think the lesson here is ‘don’t judge’. Any one of us could find ourselves there given the right set of circumstances, and once there you succumb to the pressures of conformity – even within a broken system – all in the name of survival. The funny thing is power rules on the inside same as it does on the outside, and the one holding all the cards at the end of the game wins.

On another note, this morning while I was getting dressed I had the news on the in background when I stopped dead in my tracks upon hearing Ernesto Anaya, accused of shooting his wife in the chest on May 13th leaving her paralyzed from the neck down, was released on $50,000 bond. At that time he had violated an ‘order of protection’ on the day of the shooting. His defense attorney successfully argued that Anaya was not a flight risk and that he needed to be released in order to run his business, despite his former wife’s family’s pleas to the contrary. Hmmmmm……

I don’t know what shocked me the most …. the fact he was released or the fact he had only been charged with ‘battery’. I’m not an attorney, but it seems to me when you point a gun at a woman’s chest and fire the trigger you mean to ‘kill’ her. Why can’t we get these laws on domestic violence right? How many women – or men – have to die at the hands of an abusive spouse before we develop an understanding that so-called ‘orders of protection’ are basically worthless pieces of paper, which is why I chose not to issue one during my own grizzly divorce, even though at one time my Ex threw me in a car and proceeded to drive me out of town without an explanation as to why while our son was lying in a hospital bed. It was only when I continued to threaten to open the car door and jump out of the speeding car that he consented to turn back.

Some people who are otherwise thoughtful, intelligent individuals but are incapable of dealing with the separation imposed by divorce have a propensity to turn into monsters when their backs are up against a wall. When this happens, those on the unfortunate receiving end must depend upon law enforcement to intervene and protect, but the protection can only be effective when there are laws in place to support it.

I know the defense attorney was only doing his job, but to me when you shoot a woman in the chest causing permanent paralysis, you give up your right to freedom and whatever business you’re in no longer matters, because you made a choice to take matters into your own hands in a manner designed to take another’s existence. Life in general is about choices, and whenever you’re faced with a bad situation, you can deliberate long enough to make a good choice or act impulsively and face the potential consequences, remembering at one time or another we all must walk the fine line between good and evil.