I really am a live and let live type of person.  I admit that there are things that people do to and with one another that escapes my ability to understand but as long as those people are over the age of 18 I tend to just watch.

While I am outspoken and readily share my opinion interference is not my cup of tea.  I take that seriously, especially when it comes to intimate relationships.  It is this method of operation that brings people to me.  I don’t seek them out, but still they come.  I think a part of it is despite my failures in my own life, it is understood that I can look at your situation, and listen.  I can be a sounding board, and if you get to the point where you are asking for advice, well I can share that as well.

____’s story is not the first nor the last I will ever hear.  The difference is that her story needed to be told.  There are times in life when something lands on your doorstep that you cannot ignore, this was one of those times.

This was one of those moments when for better or worse this information was delivered to me and I had to decide if I would squirrel it away with the rest of what life has given me or if I would take the opportunity to do something about it.

As I’ve shared, that video ____ recorded bothered me.  It hit my soul and I felt compelled to act. Some might question if it was my place to act.  In response to that I say the universe does not make mistakes.  Perhaps others would make a different choice, take a different path, and I can’t judge that.  I can only be who I am, and do what I do.

A part of who I am is a person who abhors bullies.  I am a person who sees injustice and it pains me to witness.  Even though by now I’d expressed my anger and disgust at him for that video it was that petition he posted that was the proverbial straw that broke the back of this camel.

____ is an intelligent woman and while her online writing is not going to win a Pulitzer she conveys her messages coherently. The name that Hafez / AMP gave her in her slave training was sacred one.  For short she could use s1 as her signature, but it was clear that her name was SACRED.

Her “petition” that he says she wrote… was signed scared one. SCARED as in frightened.

Now it could have been a typo… lord knows you can go to any post here on Vizionz and find examples of me transposing letters.  If she was typing this herself she may have just been in a rush and wanted to get it over with … it very well could have been a mistake. Yet I kept looking at it, hearing her voice in the video in my own head and looking at that petition

SCARED

Battered women learn not to overtly ask for help.  It makes their situation worse when they are back ‘home’ and alone with their abuser.  They learn very quickly how to put on a happy face and not give anyone outside the impression that things are wrong.  They also learn how to silently ask for a reprieve and pray someone notices. At times people do, and that help comes.

While I was powerless to go to DC and extract her from that situation, and who knows if she would have accepted the help of this stranger back then anyhow… I was not powerless to speak. So I did.

It got to the point that every time I saw AMP / Hafez online I was condemning him for how he was treating ____.  Every time I got tired of the back and forth with him… it popped back into my head

SCARED ONE

So I soldiered on.

It felt like something I had to do, even if no one was watching.  ____ was though.  She watched in silence but she watched.

The online discourse between AMP and I was venomous.  I make no apologies for anything that I’ve said to him over the years.  I’ve called him pretty much everything but a child of god, and that has not stopped to this day.  Through it all his defense was that I did not know them, I did not interact with them, he had no idea why this crazy woman up in Philadelphia was making up these lies about him but all was well in hell [his nickname for Washington DC where he lives].

Each time he called me dysfunctional, delusional, bitter, lonely, fat, and any of the other barbs he tossed in my direction to try to shut me down, it fed my anger at him and my resolve to continue.  I do not hide that I have anger at him, and disgust at his treatment of ____.  I never will.

I keep seeing those words in my head

 

SCARED ONE

and understand that at this point in time this is what I am supposed to do.

In the weeks that followed the video, the petition, AMP and I did verbal battle online while ____ lived in her own private hell.  He tried to tighten his grip on her, and subjugate her in a relentless fashion.  Her internal conflict was painful for her.  As I said earlier though the universe does not make mistakes.

An elderly family member of ____’s fell ill.  She took the opportunity to ask his permission to leave to care for that family member.  The details of those discussions rest with the two of them, but at the end of those talks she was enroute to her  family and delivered from his presence…..physically.

I silently cheered that departure. I was happy that she was away.  That one taste of freedom sometimes is all a person needs to find the strength to break the dysfunctional ties that bind.  I thought her to be free and I wished for her peace and happiness.

What I did not know at the time, was how deep his claws were into her.

Before she left to care for her family, before she left Fetlife, before she embarked on her new path ____ sent me a friend request, and she had a message for me.  The verbatim I no longer have because it was attached to an account that was deleted.  The spirit of it remains with me though:

Thank you for understanding.  I’ve served and loved for years in this place with this man and while the journey was not all bad…it was far from good.  Thank you for speaking out for me.  It is sad that a stranger can see the obvious when those who I’ve cared for did not.

That message to me brought me to tears.  I knew that she understood that someone noticed and she was not alone. I wanted her to carry that with her always, the understanding that she was not alone.

She kept in contact with Hafez even while she was caring for her family.  I was disappointed to hear that but not surprised.  The conditioning she’d been subjected to for 6+ years is difficult to leave, in your head.  Those who abuse know this, they count on it, they rely on it, and that use it to their advantage.

Hafez did, and their story continues in the next chapter.

 

Aphrodite Brown