Stop Going Into the Basement!
I was a big fan of��Choose Your Own Adventure��books as a kid. They allowed me to control some of the action, and rather than watching the protagonist slip into some stupid drama that could have easily been solved through better communication or��not going into the basement, I got to choose where the story went. I��think��the intention was to empower kids, but it also could have been to sell a lot of books. The problem, though, was that sometimes��this happened:
You find a gold statue on the ground and pick it up [Me: No, I don’t want to pick it up. It’s clearly cursed because this is called The Curse of the Golden Statue]. It’s warm to the touch, but isn’t gold supposed to be cold? It’s been sitting in this old pyramid for thousands of years [Me: I don’t even want to be in this stupid pyramid! I wanted to obey the “No Entrance” sign!], so the sun couldn’t have warmed it. Suddenly you hear footsteps behind you, so you shove the statue in your knapsack [Me: But I don’t want to shove it in my knapsack. I want to leave it here. Like I said, I’m fairly certain it’s cursed, and stealing is wrong] and look around the cavern for somewhere to hide.
If you want to hide from whoever is coming, turn to page 45.
If you want to stand your ground and open fire with the AK-47 you have, turn to page 72.��
I want neither of those, CYOA!��I never wanted to pick up the stupid statue!
Why can’t I choose to drop it like it’s hot?!
The good news is that you grow up and you realize (hopefully) that��you don’t just have a choice about what you do sometimes, you have a choice about what you do��constantly. That’s a lot of responsibility, but like paying taxes or wearing clothes, you gotta do it anyway. If you don’t make the right choices along the way, you tend to end up either cowering behind some dusty��sarcophagus like the thief you are, or you have to open fire with an AK-47 on what turns out to be one tour-bus worth of retirees (I mean,��COME ON, Choose You’re Own Adventure books. Throw me a freaking��bone here!).
Two��and a half weeks ago, my now-husband��graduated from the Austin Police Department’s academy, we got married, we nursed our first hangover as a married couple, and then he began his shifts.
What I’ve already come to realize is that most of being a cop is just putting people to bed.
HUSBAND: Sir, you can’t be walking down the frontage road in just your underwear.
UNDERWEAR BANDIT: Okay.
HUSBAND: I’m going to need you to go back to your hotel room and stay there until the smorgasbord��of drugs��you ingested��work their way through your system.
While some of his clientele actually do suffer from mental illness, the rest have basically been living their life like a CYOA book.��One bad decision after another, maybe not even aware that there were decisions��to be made, then BLAM! They find themselves stuck in a haunted mansion where the only options they can see are to trust the floating spirit of what may or may not be a little girl, or go in the goddamn basement.
A lot of people don’t want to talk about how many decisions there are in life. But trust me when I say that every time someone says they didn’t have a choice in the matter, a dead freedom fighter rolls over in his or her grave.
So, to those people who have used, “You can’t help who you love,” as an excuse for wasting time and energy on a worthless, mean person, I have a confession: When I said, “Sure, but you can choose who you spend your time with,” that was a terrible concession to make. You can absolutely choose who you fall in love with. In fact, as an adult, it’s your responsibility/civic duty to make sure you’re being smart��about who you fall in love with, because abusive relationships tear apart��more lives than just your own.
I have two friends in an abusive relationship at the moment. One, let’s call her Echo, is dating an abusive man (I hate even calling him that), and the other, let’s call him Hamlet,��is dating an abusive woman (yay gender equality?). While everyone’s quicker to tell Echo��that she’s in an abusive relationship than people are to label��Hamlet’s situation as abusive (boo gender inequality?), both share similar symptoms:
Dating a psychopath
Loss of will to decide things
Loss of time with other friends
Loss of other friends
Decreasing self-esteem
Increasing tolerance for abuser’s criticism
Neither Echo nor Hamlet suffers from any mental illness that I’m aware of, and neither has ever put up with this kind of abuse before. Nor has either had a harsh upbringing that got their life off to a rocky start.
The continuation of this��abuse is entirely a result of their choices.
Now, I know that might seem like I’m blaming the victim, and if you believe that, you’re an idiot who doesn’t understand subtlety. It’s not Echo’s or Hamlet’s fault that their abusers��are awful, arguably soulless people who treat them poorly, but it is Echo’s and Hamlet’s responsibility to say enough is enough. Admittedly, after a certain point, that gets more and more difficult, but that doesn’t mean that every insult they accept isn’t still a choice.
Very few people above the age of 14 believe in love at first sight. Love develops slowly (just like opinions should) as one gains more knowledge about the subject��and continues to make this��decision about every three seconds: “Yes, I still like this person, and I should continue on with this.” Then you continue hanging��around that person, and maybe they buy you your favorite flower or cancel a work meeting to spend time with you, and you think, “Wow, that was unnecessary, but I’m in to it.” And then maybe you spend some time considering a way to make that person happy and then you go and do that thing and they become happy, so you check back in, and you decide, “Yes! I like making this person happy. There are no terrible caveats to it that I can see, either, so I’m going to continue with this!”
Congratulations! You’ve already made a tremendous amount of decisions about that person at this point, whether you realize it or not! Then one day you have to cancel plans with that special person because a good friend of yours is having a difficult day and just wants to talk, and you expect your special someone to say, “No problem. I know how it goes,” but instead that someone says, “You’re so selfish. I spent $100 on your dinner last night, and you ditch me for a friend?”
Part of being a teacher in Texas is teaching kids how to pass the STAAR test. One test technique I would show the students��is to cross out all the information that��is not actually relevant to the question and only there to distract or confuse you (because the state of Texas loves distracting and confusing kids). So if the above��hypothetical situation��were on a STAAR test and the question was Should you continue spending time with this special someone?��Here’s how I would suggest the student start in answering the question:
“You’re so selfish. I spent $100 on your dinner last night, and you ditch me for a friend?”
There. Much easier to approach the question of��Should you continue spending time��with this special someone?�� Once you cross out the irrelevant information of how much dinner cost, you’re left with someone accusing you of being selfish for helping out a friend. So the correct answer is C)��Tell that special someone to go choke on an artichoke.
And that’s not even one of the most advanced questions. That one was fairly easy, but you’d be surprised how often people get it wrong. Here’s another:
Q:��The last time you saw your special someone was on your birthday. He got mad that you were spending so much time with your friends, and he left you downtown at 3am to walk back to his house. Today he called and said he was sorry and had changed. What do you do? Select the best answer from the choices below.
A)��Make plans immediately to see him so he can make it up to you.
B)��Tell him you think he’s a damaged person and that he should seek help for his��anger issues, and��you don’t ever want to hear from him again.
C)��Post a not-so-cryptic Facebook status about how much you love him because you’re too scared to actually just tell your friends that you’re back with your abuser.
D) Tell him to��rub his apology in cacti then stick it where the sun don’t shine.
Okay, so let’s do some underlining of important information and cross out the unimportant information:
Q:��The last time you saw your special someone was on your birthday. He got mad that you were spending so much time with your friends, and he��left you downtown at 3am to walk back to his house. Today he called and said he was sorry and had changed. What do you do? Select the best answer from the choices below.��
See, this would be one of those tricky and confusing questions because really both B and D seem to be correct, so which do you choose?��That’s why I underlined “best,” because since��that’s the case, it’s probably B, but an argument could be made for D. A strong argument.
And then there’s choice E, which is also acceptable.
In life, though, there’s no such thing as cheating on these decision tests; you can ask your friends what they think the answer is, you can even ask your teachers. And most of the time, victims of abusive relationships do this, and the people who love them say, “Leave her! You’re worth more than that!” or “This either ends with you leaving or him killing you,” and they’re not just saying that. Unfortunately, victims of abuse rarely listen to that advice.
What’s the solution for helping your friends remain��cognizant of the decisions they’re making? How do you help your friends avoid an abusive relationship, or, if you can’t prevent that, get out of an abusive relationship?
Uh, that wasn’t hypothetical, I’m really asking. Because I still don’t know. All I can do anymore is sit around and frustratedly shout, “For the love of God, stop going in the basement!“
