Behind the Veil

I’m so fucking mad.  If you can’t handle the word fuck, then you need to stop reading right now because there are bound to be a few in this post. 

I love myself.  I’m trying really hard to be fit and healthy, not for any vain purpose, though I do like how great my body looks, but to be strong and vibrant.  There’s so many things in this world I want to do and I have to be healthy to do them.  For several years all I heard and said was “I can’t”… but not anymore.  I look for ways to do those things I was once told I couldn’t.  Call it my rebellious side, I don’t care.  Call it stubbornness, I still don’t care. 

Anyway…. In my attempt to be healthy and fit, I run.  Because of the fucking horrible humidity of a Georgia summer, I’ve been doing most of my running on my treadmill, but I hate it.  It’s mindless, mind-numbing and I fight for every fucking second I’m on that hamster wheel.  I love being outdoors, feeling the wind on my face, struggling and pushing through all the hills and curves that nature provides.  This morning, I decided to run outdoors.  After all, I live next to a recreation field with a track – there’s no reason not to take advantage of it.  So, I got up early, did my yoga and core exercises, got limbered up and headed outside. 

Well, it’s early… well before sunrise because I don’t have the luxury to wait until the sun comes up because I have to get ready and be at work.  It’s dark, but there’s lots of lights all along the track.  No problem, I can see fine.  I know by now you’re probably wondering when the rant filled with profanities will start.  That’ll be now.

I’m so fucking tired of being scared.  Not three minutes into my run did my heart start pounding rapidly and it had nothing to do with the run and everything to do with a sense of panic filling me up.  The dark woods on my left sent shadows across my trail, and with each one a sharp panic would seize me and memories of past abuses would surface in my mind.  The faith of my youth and the past 20 years also surfaced and the familiar scriptures of calling on God for safety and security flipped through my thoughts. 

Back and forth the images and voices battled.  Abuse, faith, pain, prayer, laughter, tears… all the while in my right hand I gripped my pepper spray and in my left my knife.  About the ¾ mile mark, when my legs burned and my lungs felt like they were about to burst from my chest, the floodgates opened - and I’m so fucking mad. 

I’m so mad I live in a world where a woman can’t go for a fucking simple run without feeling afraid.  Don’t give me this bullshit either about prayer and God’s protection.  I believed with that perfect child-like faith, with every fucking ounce of my heart, every time I’d been attacked or abused.  My faith and belief didn’t stop the violence then, and I have no faith that it would stop it now.  I know the violence won’t stop as long as evil men have a free will.  So, no matter how much faith I have or don’t have the reality of the matter is that it exists and I live among it. 

During the last 1/8^th of my mile I wept for all the other women who have it much worse than me.  I weep for the women in Iraq who have no voice at all, who don’t even have dominion over their own minds, who are victim to a society of savage men who take what they want and leave behind a path of destruction.  My life, even filled with the fear I have running a simple running trail is an oasis compared to what they have to deal with every day.  And those women who have faith and belief watch their husbands and children being murdered for that very faith, while they are raped and abused.  Most people think the violent act of being beat and raped is the hardest part to deal with.  The body heals. But it’s the battle of the mind, the heart, and the soul afterward that is the most violent and it what truly destroys.   

I’m so angry.  I want to shout, “I don’t need a fucking passive god that will hold my hand as I have to stand by and watch this evil run rampant.  I don’t want peace.  I want to fight.”  If someone tried to harm my children, I don’t care what my abilities are, I wouldn’t just stand by and allow it to happen.  I would fight, I would do what I could, even if it meant dying in the process to protect them.  Where are the warriors?

I know I don’t understand the greater scheme of things, but what I do understand is that I’m so fucking tired of being afraid.  For a moment this morning the veil of reality has been pulled back and I see the ugly face of evil in this beautiful world.  I’m not naïve.  I do what I can to be as much prepared as possible.  I have my gun, my pepper spray, my knife, my Ju-Jitsu, and even my weak faith.  But I know that all that preparedness won’t stop evil or protect me from it.  I could have the most badass soldier at my side, and even that can’t fully protect me. 

I’m having a moment this morning and raise my tear-stained cheeks toward heaven and cry out for myself and the other women who are constantly afraid.  But I know this moment will pass and I’ll allow the veil to drop back in place, and once again I’ll focus on the beauty of this world.  I’ll fill my heart and mind with the positive, with the valiant, with the hope for a better day today and even brighter tomorrow.  THAT is my strength and my true weapon against the evil violence in this world. But in this moment… my heart is broke, my faith is weak, and I can’t breathe, and I say, 

“Fuck You!”

Till next time,

~T.L. Gray 

Turning a Blind Eye

This morning I engaged in a heavy discussion with a dear friend of mine who currently lives and works in a third world country for the Peace Corps.  There is a practice there where the young men of this village go through a 6-month initiation school to learn how to be a man and herd animals.  They are then sent out into the hills to put what they’ve been taught into practice.  As they go, they often ‘abduct’ a young girl from the village, take her to the mountains, gang rape her,  and then one of the boys (whichever the one has enough money/cows) will marry her.  They give the family an agreed upon price of cow/livestock/money in exchange for their daughter.  

My friend told me the story of a young girl who had been washing clothes by the river with the other women from the village when a group of herd boys on horses snatched up the young girl and took her into the mountains.  No one did anything because it’s the accepted practice in that remote and uneducated area.  My heart breaks for that young girl, not only for what she had to endure in those mountains, but for the life she will now have to live, married to one of her rapist, never given the choice or freedom to fall in love, be respected as a woman.  I understand the purpose of the practice – to exert dominion in order to control. It’s what all animals do. Men have been doing it since the beginning.

There’s something inside me that weeps and gets angry every time I hear stories like this.  Perhaps it’s because of my western upbringing, having been raised in a free society and know the taste of freedom.  It’s not that I don’t understand these people are just following their ingrained and long traditions.  But, do they have no soul?  Regardless of their ignorance of western civilization, our laws, and culture, there is an inner consciousness that knows when you hurt another human being that what you’re doing is wrong.

It would be easy for me to place the blame squarely on the ignorance of these young men or the culture in which they live, but it wouldn’t be fair or accurate to lay it only at their feet.  The only time that there has been a societal or cultural change in the treatment of women has occurred is when the women of that culture decided to make a change.  We contend with what we allow.  While the girl being raped has no choice in that activity, what she does from that point forward is her choice.  She either accepts it, or she fights back.  I’m not naïve and know that fighting back may cost her life.  I also know that change doesn’t happen with one battle over night, but several battles over generations.

While for some of us – the days of Hagar, Leah, Abigale and Tamar are over, for others that’s the reality of the day.  What an odd world we live, where paradise and purgatory occupy the same place.  I weep for the young girls who’ve ever experienced this type of brutality.  I also weep for the young men who were pressured or taught to engage in such activities in order to prove their manhood.  I weep for the society that accepts such practices, and I weep for a world who turns a blind eye.

Till next time,
~T.L. Gray

The Evil Among Us

8-year-old Yemeni child dies at hands of 40-year-old husband on wedding night

Al Nahar, Lebanon, has reported that an eight year old child bride died in Yemen on her wedding night after suffering internal injuries due to sexual trauma. Human rights organizations are calling for the arrest of her husband who was five times her age.

The death occurred in the tribal area of Hardh in northwestern Yemen, which borders Saudi Arabia. This brings even more attention to the already existing issue of forced child marriages in the Middle Eastern region.

My heart aches so much for this child and others like her.  I didn’t sleep well last night because I kept thinking about this story and found myself growing more and more angry, and more and more hurt.  Who am I angry with: Islam, Muslims, the Middle East, pedophiles, this girl’s parents, or the bastard husband, God, the devil? 

I understand men make their own laws.  I don’t blame Islam or even Muslims for this travesty, because I have seen first-hand how men twist and pervert the words of their religion and their laws to justify or excuse their behaviors.  What this bastard did to an 8-year old child had NOTHING to do with his faith, his religion, his country, his politics or his laws.  Anyone who tries to blames these things alone serves an injustice to this child.  When this bastard looked down on the face of that child and then committed the despicable and deplorable acts of evil, he did so by his own evil choice.  I don’t give a damn his religion, his politics or his culture… he is a human being capable of making a rational decision, and he CHOSE to violate, mutilate and murder this precious child because he’s a selfish evil bastard.  NO ONE in their right mind could do such a thing and EVER think ANY part of it was okay, justified, or their God-given right. 

When that child screamed in pain, while that infidel satisfied his perverted sexual desires, it identified him as an evil monster.  I’m so angry that such evil exists in this world.  Yes, I know of other travesties such as starvation, cruelty, imprisonment, human trafficking, slavery, disease and neglect.  I’m not blind to the other acts of evil in this world.  I just sometimes don’t understand how we humans can treat each other.  We are the cruelest race, yet also the most loving and kind and understanding. 

I hope that bastard gets raped, mutilated and tortured.  Will he?  I doubt it.  I hope the parents who thought it okay to sell their child to such a man are tormented with nightmares for the rest of their lives.  I hope the lawmakers who turn their backs and refuse to protect their own children suffer unimaginable pain and disappointment.  It is my faith and belief that all of those who have this girl’s blood on their hands will face the God they hid behind, and will find no manner of twisting will save them from the justice that waits for them. 

As long as evil men have free will, stories like this will continue to be conducted in this world.  We, humans (regardless of race, color or creed), are not who we claim to be with our mouths, our proclamations, our clothes, our appearance, our governments, or politics, or our confessions – we are who we truly are in every decision we make, in every response to every situation and circumstance in our lives.  How we respond and act is the true testament to our character.  Some of us are just plain evil. 

Till next time,

~T.L. Gray