Before It's Too Late

She was attractive - tall, a redhead, and slender.

Like a flower in a greenhouse, peeking down the road, she had flagged down the passing motorist.

That’s when the nightmare began.

Now she stood in a long line of mostly women in a hallway running past courtrooms. At the very end of that tunnel comprised of concrete blocks was a sign that read, “Domestic Violence.”

This is the purgatory where women came to file restraining orders.

Then the young woman turned around.

Blunt force trauma had turned the left side of her face into a black and blue bruise, that surrounded a puddle of purple swelling around her barely opened eye.

She did not smile - perhaps could not smile – as it likely hurt too much. As much from the memory as from the injury.

I glanced at her huddled shape – her shoulders drawn close, head bowed, her head bowed to hide her face. I wondered if I should say something – anything - to express my sympathy.

A moment later her name was called, and she was gone.

In early 2019, Lauren Justice had written an opinion piece in The New York Times entitled “What Would I Have Done if I Would Have Killed Her That Night?”

Her article related her coverage of a group of abusive men who were in counseling.

After spending “ten months in a [batterer intervention] class for men who hit women,” her writing related the sad and horrific admissions of men whose anger and rage had exploded on and around the women they claimed to love – and the children who had witnessed it.

“Domestic abuse is a choice. Every time these men call their partners names, hit them, or used intimidation, they were making a choice to do so,” she wrote.

Like the light in a lighthouse on a stormy night, one of the messages from these abusive men about whom Justice wrote was to inform other abusive men to seek help in order to break the chain of domestic violence before it becomes too late.

Too late to be other than a tragic disappointment to the children who look to their dads as an example of goodness and comfort and love.

Too late to treat their wives or partners with love, honor and devotion.

Too late to avoid the disastrous – and sometimes fatal - consequences of their actions.

Too late to keep from utterly destroying a relationship, a family, a child’s life.

If you are the victim of domestic violence, or if you are an abuser, seek help now.

Before it’s too late.