Source: thegrio.com
Anybody watch the Rihanna’s interview with Oprah?
I caught part of it. They talked about a number of things; her career and how she deals with the pressure, her ability to drive and of course, her relationship with Chris Brown. I know folks are tired of hearing about Rihanna and Chris Brown. That was so five years ago; both having moved on to even bigger careers and Karrueche. I’m kind of there too – only because it is such a polarizing issue when the reality is he beat her up and we should accept that and not make excuses for him. With that said, there is one part of the interview worth noting.
It’s the part when Rihanna speaks candidly about the time when Brown beat her up in the car, particularly having to go through that publicly. In the clip a teary-eye Rihanna talked about how she still has love for Brown, which sounds both shocking and truly awful considering how messed up the two were together. However she said, “I lost my best friend. Like everything I knew, switched. Switched in a night. And I couldn’t control that. So I had to deal with that and that’s not easy for me to understand or interpret. And it is not easy to interpret on camera. Not with the world watching. So it was hard for me to even pay attention my mind and figure things out because now it became a circus and I felt protective. I felt like the only person they hate right now is him. It was a weird confusing space to be in because I was angry, hurt and betrayed. I just felt like he made that mistake because he needed help and whose gonna help him. Nobody’s gonna say he needs help. Everybody does gonna say he’s a monster without looking at the source. I was more concerned about him.”
Listening to her, I can understand where she is coming from. Mainly how the media circus around the entire incident dictated what she had to do -not necessarily because it was in her heart at the moment to leave him alone but rather to protect her image, her career and the money both were generating for their handlers. Rihanna needed time to process what was happening for her and to come to her own conclusions first. And unfortunately, we as the adorning public didn’t give her a chance to do so. But that’s the thing about domestic violence: the fallout tends to impact more people than just the direct victim of abuse.
Listening to Rihanna, I am reminded of how I lost one of my best friends to a domestic violence situation. My friend, for the sake of anonymity we’ll call her Sue, and I had been best girlfriends since high school. In late teens, she began “dating” this guy, whom she met in college and eventually they had a son together. The guy was a major league douche bag, so for the purpose of this story, let’s call him D-bag. Not only did D-bag cheat on my friend constantly, but he was emotionally and we suspected physically although it was never confirmed, abusive as well.
He was also very controlling over her, regulating what she could wear, what places, and with whom, she was allowed to go and even what she ate for dinner. She used to tell me about his “quirks” but I didn’t get the full experience of it until one night, when we were out celebrating a friend’s birthday at one of the neighborhood bar/clubs. I had scooped by to pick her up. Once in the car, Sue, looking frazzled, asked if we could make a quick detour to his house. I asked her what was wrong. She told me that her baby’s father, who didn’t live with her, was refusing to let her go out with us until he saw what she had on. Huh? Fawk no. I’m not driving over there for that. Tell him to kiss your A$$ and pay his child support. But she was insistent to the point of tears. Oh Hell. I relented and drove her over to his grand momma’s house. He was waiting impatiently outside of the house. She got out the car, told me to wait here and assured me that everything was going to be okay. I rolled down the window to get a good listen.
Standing about two feet away from Sue, D-bag walked around her, surveying her outfit tugging at her clothing. It was the sort of inspection you expect from someone purchasing a new vehicle, not a person, for whom you claim you have love for. But while Sue remained quiet, I certainly could no bite my tongue. I started honking the horn and yelling expletives out the window. He called me a man-hater; I called him a woman beater. He pulled her to the side, whispered something in her ear and then went in the house, watching us from the screen door. Once safely inside the vehicle, I notice that her lips were trembling and red in the face, I figured from embarrassment. I asked her what he said to her just now. “He told me that I looked a mess and that I need to get my hair done.” I was livid. I spent the rest of the ride to the club pleading, trying to reason with my friend that in no way shape or form was this a healthy relationship. She spent most of the ride, ignoring me.
After we left the club, we walked back to the car and noticed something on my windshield. It was a note from D-bag, reminding Sue how much trouble she was in for staying out past her given curfew. I felt a chill run down my spine. This mofo followed us to the club. I immediately popped the truck, pulled out the heaviest weaponry I could find. It was “the Club,” an anti-car theft device. That night, it was going to be an anti-stalker boyfriend device. I waved it in the air, screaming that I would bash his head in. Up the street, I saw car lights come on. The same car made a U-turn and then peeled off down the street. It was him. We drove home nervously and mostly quietly. We arrived at her house; D-bag was sitting calmly on her front steps. I pleaded with her to call the police. She pleaded with me not too. That everything was okay. After five minutes of going back and forth, I reluctantly obliged. That night, I went home angry – at him and at Sue.
Two years after that incident, I, along with another one of our close girlfriends, were besieged almost weekly with phone calls of D-bags similar style crazy antics. And as good girlfriends we listen but also tried to convince her to leave him alone. Sometimes we were in tears. She said she would. Sometimes she did but was right back in the frays a day or two later. After a while, our feelings of sympathy towards our friend turned into anger. We figured that if she was not going to leave him, we would make him leave. We confront the D-bag; threaten him, called the cops on him and even almost coming to blows with him outside of her mom’s house. Nothing worked. She would tell us that despite it all, he was a good guy. He just had troubles and that he was trying to change. That she knew we were right but she had to stick it out for the kid. All the while, Sue continued to submit to his abusive and controlling behavior. And then the second child came, born right before D-bag was set to marry another woman, whom he had been seeing for only six months. Sue was devastated but she still continued to let him in every time he came calling.
After fifteen years of playing witness to this situation, we girlfriends decided we had enough. Our love for her, and in turn her love for him, was turning into resentment. Sue became the topic of regular whispers and became a regular topic of conversation every time we went out. We openly ridiculed and mocked her for being stupid and foolish. In retrospect, we probably weren’t helping But it was truly out of frustration. I mean, at this point, what else could we do? This was well beyond our scope of understanding. As far as we were concerned, he was dangerous and she needed serious help. But all of our pushing made her want to stick with him even more, which hurt us and thus made us even more resentful. Eventually she stopped taking our calls and we stopped calling.
Through that situation, I learned that it’s not our role as concerned family members and friends to rescue a victim who doesn’t want to be rescued. As hard as it was to watch her suffer, we should have trusted Sue that she knew this situation best and that she would leave, when the time was right for her. Even the Domestic Violence Hotline advises that friends and relatives of abuse victims fall back and only offer support, not judgment.
After almost five years of not talking, I would see my friend at a work-related event I was hosting. Everything about her looked the same, except for her round belly. She was expecting again. I was curious but not wanting to rehash old wounds, I didn’t ask. Instead, we hugged and started talking about everything else, except the elephant in the room. We then said our goodbyes and went on with on respective paths. Too much time had passed. Too many hurt words and feelings. To this day, I have idea what became of their relationship, if she had left him or not. But I can’t get over the guilt of the loneliness she must have felt that at a time when she needed friends, we failed her. And because of it, I lost a very good friend.
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