Guest Blogger: Surviving Abuse: A Family Tradition by Untypically Jia

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“Jessi call 911! Jessi call 911!”

I heard the words flow up through the vent to my bedroom. Walls were paper thin and it seemed so were the floors. My aunt who’s bedroom was directly beneath mine had always complained that I stomped around like an elephant and she could hear everything I was doing. It proved helpful at times like this, when silence would not be golden. I knew what the screams meant of course and I immediately picked up the phone that was next to my bed and dialed the numbers. I was the only eight year old I knew that had their own telephone. When it was first  plugged in I felt so very special, and now as an adult I have to wonder if it had been given to me for such a purpose as what I used it for at night.

“911, what is your emergency?” I heard on the other end of the phone.

“My aunts boyfriend is beating her up, someone come help . . .”

Then of course, another receiver picked up and I heard his voice.

“I’m sorry miss, my daughter has been having a problem with making prank phone calls. There’s no trouble here. I’ll make sure to teach her that calling 911 is serious.”

“I’m not his daughter!” She didn’t hear me.

“Not a problem sir, you have a good night.”

I’ve been told 911 takes calls like this seriously nowadays.

It wasn’t the first time I’d experienced abuse second hand in my young life. Years before her death, when my mother was pregnant with me, my father beat her and threw her out into the snow.

Grandmother went through the same thing when her husband drank too much. Aunts, cousins . . . they all went through it. A man’s hand was the final word. They were taught that at a young age. The times were different. That seemed to be a good excuse. The times when prejudice was still common, when women seemed inferior – at least according to the men writing the history books.

I was five when they sat me down for a very serious talk. I would never actually get a proper sex talk when I was a teenager. I never even got a “wedding night” talk. But when I was five years old, I did get the talk that taught me what rape was. They wanted to prevent the family tradition from carrying on. They wanted to protect me. Who wouldn’t?

It seemed to happen to a great percentage of women in our family. Sometimes more than once. Sometimes the same man would attack different women. It was always someone close. A boyfriend, a father, an uncle, a friend of the family. So many generations and I thought, “Why wouldn’t they learn something to avoid this!?” How had all these women who shared my blood – my feisty blood – let something like that happen to them. Let a man hit them, hurt them, and hold them down.

They were weak. I would be strong.

So when it finally happened to me, I realized I hadn’t been prepared. I also realized that sometimes, you can’t be prepared to stop abuse from happening. There is evil in the world. There is sickness in the world and sometimes, bad things happen to good people. And while I was powerless to stop the abuse from happening directly to me as I grew up . . . I had been taught one very powerful fact:

I could survive it.

I knew by watching them that I could heal, I could find happiness, I could use my experiences to even help others – warn the next generation of the family tradition that no one wanted to keep. I knew from them that it was possible to find a good man to share your life with. I also learned from them that a man wasn’t necessary to have a good life.

They may have strong hands.

But we have strong spirits.

Untypically Jia blogs at Color Me Untypical, can be found Twitting @untypicallyjia and on Facebook.