Take him back?? Rianna's CRAZY!!!

I've been resisting writing about this Rianna/Chris Brown situation for many reasons, mainly because of where I am in my recovery from food addiction. I don't need a reason to eat; my food-addicted brain seizes upon every single nanosecond that I don't connect to God and use the tools of recovery to pound me with cravings. I'm not exaggerating; this is what life is like for me right now.

Food numbs me. I don't feel emotions very much when I'm stuffed with my favorite comfort foods, like fresh baked bread smothered with butter. What I get from food is a warm, soothing, euphoric sensation like being safely bundled up in a soft, thick quilt. Absolutely nothing bothers me. Unfortunately, that feeling is only temporary. And I usually find myself having to eat more in order to get that level of comfort going again. This desperate need for comfort has led me to eat so much that I have binged to the point of extreme physical pain, and/or passed on my couch. There's not much difference between what I do with food, and what an alcoholic or drug addict does with their substances of choice. Same behavior, different drugs.

What does this have to do with the Rianna/Chris Brown situation? For me, a lot. At one point in my life, I was just like Rianna, sans the fame. I was an abused woman. Food kept the film clips of that period of my life running on a screen in the back room of my mind.

I don't like to re-visit those memories. I won't say that I've buried them, but I don't live in them everyday. Ideally, I would very much like to forget that it ever happened. But it did. And as uncomfortable as it makes me feel right now, the Rianna/Chris Brown situation keeps reminding me that I have literally escaped with my life.

However, I am also a writer, and one who has always felt the need to pass along information that might be of some importance to the reader. I don't just write solely for "artistic expression" or an ego-centric need to see myself in print, although I won't deny that my massive ego gets involved a lot more than I care to admit. But I am (at least) aware that a writer has a responsibility to the reading public by providing needed information and thereby being of service to others. This is not altruism; it is recognizing what should be done (kind of like smelling a baby's dirty diaper and changing it, regardless of the voluminous amount of stinkiness) and fulfilling it to the best of one's ability. Despite my personal discomfort and unwillingness to explore feelings that have lay dormant for almost three decades, I strongly feel that I should live up to that responsibility. And remain abstinent while doing it, even though every thought in my brain is screaming, you pompous, self-gratifying bitch! What do you think you're doing? You can't tell people about that dark hellhole you used to live in! You just want sympathy, you big wuss! (sigh) I can do this. I can do this.


So, with your permission, I want you to take a journey back in time with me. The year is 1981, and the date is Independence Day, aka the Fourth of July. You, the reader, have become me, circa 1981. You are a twenty three year old African American woman, married to an unemployed artist/musician who is also bi-polar(untreated)and addicted to marijuana, cocaine, and serial relationships with women. You feel he is brilliant, talented, uniquely thoughtful and articulate, and you want the rest of the world to know about his prodigious artistic talents. But he doesn't necessarily want the same for himself, and sabotages every effort you make to bring out vast store of artistry within him. You don't understand this, and you keep trying.

There are many problems with this relationship. One, you have given birth to a gorgeous baby girl almost three months earlier, and your husband seems completely unaware of the responsibility involved in raising a child. He still behaves as if he were single--partying, doing drugs and sleeping with LOTS of other women. This causes an enormous amount of friction in the relationship. Your communication is fraught with accusations, anger and resentment. Your nerves are in state of constant upheaval, and you anxious about the future for you and your newborn girl. Should you leave him permanently? You are already back at home with your parents because your husband refuses to exert much effort toward finding a job and supporting you and the baby.

"I'm no punk for the white man," he tells you. "I can't have no punk-ass ordering me around like a slave. I'll go back to jail before I do that."

He often makes that threat because he knows it bothers you. You don't want him to be :just another black man incarcerated" statistic. He can do so MUCH BETTER than that, if he would only TRY!

The anger and resentment toward has been escalating prodigiously since your daughter's birth on May 15th. You keep trying to come up with solutions to the problem, which you earnestly pitch to your husband on a daily basis. He adamantly refuses your help with a vehemence that you cannot understand. Doesn't he know that you are only trying to get your little family back together by offering a plan to jump start his career in art and music so that he would be happy with his work AND provide a living for you, him and the baby? Why doesn't he understand this and cooperate? It's so maddeningly frustrating!

After two months of increasingly furious arguments, you declare a cease-fire for the Fourth of July. He says he wants you and the baby to accompany him to a barbecue with his family, which consists of his mother (who has been emotionally estranged from him since his birth), and his two sisters. You sense the volatility of the situation, but you consent to go anyway. They pick you up from your parents' house, which fills you with guilt because it also their 24th wedding anniversary. You choose your husband over your parents, who have been supporting you during this tumultuous period. On top of that, you can practically take a bite out of the cake-like animosity between your husband and his mother, which has been thinly frosted over with civility. This is not going to be a very good holiday. But you are going to make the best of it.

He asks to hold the baby because as he says, "doesn't get to see his little girl very much", implying that you and your parents prevent him from seeing his daughter. This sets your teeth on edge. You don't exert much effort to come see her, you say to yourself. You're too busy getting high and f***ing around with other women. But you say nothing, and pass your daughter to her father, who is sitting in the front seat next to his mother. She is driving, and taking everyone to her friend's house for food and fireworks. Other than the initial courteous greeting, she doesn't say much to you.

Soon, your husband begins the usual litany of complaints about your "Southern, country-ass, think-they-better-than-everyone-else parents" who make it difficult for him to "come see his baby". That's it. You've had enough of this nonsense.

"Maybe if you took care of business and got a decent job, you wouldn't have to deal with my parents' attitudes," you inform him.

(continued below)

Take him back?? Rianna's CRAZY!!! (pt. 2)

He whirls around, his caramel-colored face turning red and his nostrils flaring like a rabid mustang.

"What? A job ain't gonna change your siditty (slang for conceited) assed parents, especially your mama! Your mama ain't nothin' but a stuck-up, country-fried, siddity BITCH!"

He punctuates the last statement by roughly shoving his index finger into your sternum. You see nothing but red, and the entire world falls away, still and quiet, waiting to see what you will do. You snatch his finger away from your chest and bend it backwards. Then you take the can of soda you have been drinking, and smash it violently against the side of his face. There, you say to yourself as you watch the fizzling drops "Tahiti Punch" drip off his cheek, and his natal-spawned, mother-love-deprived primal rage building into a mushroom cloud. Take that, you piss-colored, low-life bastard! No one talks about my mama like that!

He roars in pain and indignity, and orders his mother to pull the car over. She mutely obeys. He hands your daughter to his mother, then turns around. Suddenly, you realize that you are no longer looking at your husband. You are staring in horror at grotesquely twisted face of a monster.

Time becomes meaningless as you watch in complete disbelief as his fist pounds into your face. You hear the smack of each blow, and it sounds like a thick steak being slapped against a kitchen counter top. This isn't happening. It can't be happening. You are a good person, a good woman. Why is doing this? Desperately, you try to return the punches, but he has leaned way over the car seat, and he has the higher ground, the advantage. You can do nothing but land a glancing hit, which doesn't seem to do anything but enrage the animal who has replaced your husband. The barrage of punches land steadily, methodically, and you become dully aware of blood flooding down your nose and out of your mouth. Your arms no longer longer have the strength to raise your hands anymore, and there is no response to the mental command, fight back. FIGHT BACK! But the pounding continues relentlessly.

The world drains away slowly. Your eyes have become tiny slits which offer nothing but hazy, out of focus vision. Somehow you are aware of screams and cries, presumably from your husbands' sisters and your daughter. But you're not sure. All you know is the fists have suddenly stopped tenderizing your face, and you are marinating in your own blood. You can't move. Time has stopped.

You cry out for your daughter, but the animal sound coming from your throat is unrecognizable. You are trying to say, give me my daughter! Give her to me! You want to take her and run away, get away from these primordial ooze-like creatures. They can't be human. Real human beings wouldn't allow such an atrocity to happen to another person. You have to get your daughter and run away from these mutated life forms.

You don't know where you are, and how you got there. All you know is that you are in an unfamiliar place, someone's bedroom. You have no idea what happened to the mutants who brought you to this place, and you don't know the people who have bandaged you and placed cold wash clothes on your face. All you want is to get your daughter and to go home.

During the weeks that follow, you attempt to make sense of what seems to be a totally illogical situation. Somehow, your parents found out where you were, and they came. They saw what was done to your face, and dissolved into tears. You've never seen your father cry before. It was terrible. They immediately called the police, and suddenly, the dozen people or more who apparently lived in the place where you were disappeared. After the police report was made, your parents took you to the emergency room. X-rays of your face were made. The technician called in the doctor of radiology to examine the pictures. The doctor was enraged.

"Who did this to you?" Righteous indignation caused him to sputter out his words as he pointed to breaks in your face that showed up on the x-rays. "Whoever did this to you needs to be put UNDER the jail!"

You are ashamed. How could you admit that you were dumb enough to marry a man who would punch you so hard that he came within centimeters close to shattering the right temporal bone, which would have killed you? He did manage, however, to break your zygomatic, or cheek bone. The entire right side of your face looked like a deflated balloon.

"You're lucky to be alive. We have to do surgery to repair your cheek. Someone will schedule the appointment."

He stormed out in disgust, leaving you alone in the exam with your below-dirt sense of self. One-celled organisms probably felt better about themselves than you did.

Little did you know right then that your self esteem would plunge even lower. Everyone seemed to know what you should do, yet you had no grasp of which path led to your way out of this mess.

"LEAVE HIM!"

Your family and friends made the decision seem so easy. But then what? Stay with your parents? That just didn't feel right. The aching despair that overwhelmed you every night was already unbearable. Stay with him? Well...he cried so much as he told you how horrible he felt about himself. He thought about suicide because everyone would be so much better off if he were dead. That was alarming. You couldn't have that on your conscience. After all...he was your baby's daddy! With a lot of marriage counseling, you could make it work! He would feel better about himself, get a job, and everything would work out JUST FINE! You just needed to be alone with him to talk it over, make the counseling appointments and get your little family back together.

So that's what you did. And you stayed for six more years, even though the promised counseling appointments never happened. He didn't beat you up anymore. Your father and brother went after him with loaded deer-hunting shotguns after the cheek bone incident, so he didn't try that again. But he stole all the household money for drugs and his extra-marital affairs. And he lied, lied, lied. Constant upset in your home, continuous drama. And it didn't end until the day he pulled out a huge Bowie knife and tried to stab you. You fought back with a closet pole. The police called it a draw, although they gave you a slight lead in the cards. He was the one who went away in the squad car. And you were the one who finally filed the papers.

I wrote this in response to all the questions that people seem to be talking about concerning Rianna's decision to get back together with Chris Brown. I am not condoning her choice, in fact, I suspect that nothing good will come from it. I have personal experience with this. But what I wanted to do is give the reader an inside view of what goes on in the mind of an abused woman. Of course she needs extensive help through counseling. And so did I. That is my point--the solution (LEAVE HIM!) always looks easy when viewed from the outside, but it's not so clear when you are right in the middle of it. All we can do is pray that Rianna finds her way to some form of recovery from this issue. I wouldn't want to read that her boyfriend has roughed up (or worse) that beautiful young lady again.