Week 10: Violence & Harassment

            This week in class was heartbreaking.  It really makes you realize what could be going on behind closed doors, and how there are some people that don’t even feel safe in their own home.  This week’s topic of violence and harassment brought me back to approximately one year ago at one of our date parties at school.  When you are in a sorority or a fraternity, there are a couple of times a year when you have events at third-vendor places where you are able to bring a date and they are called date parties.  This one specific one went horribly wrong for one of my best friends Hanna.  She had brought her boyfriend to the party and he had a history of being short-tempered when he had been drinking alcohol, and in this night’s case, he had been drinking a lot.  Approximately half way through the party him and Hanna got into a fight and he slapped her across the face in front of everybody.  She was hysterical, which she definitely should have been, so my friends and I took her home.  When we got home, she told us that that was not the first time he had hit her, and that she wanted to be done with him for good.  We all agreed with this and tried to be there for her, but none of us really knew what to say because we had never been in a situation like that before. 

The next morning when we woke up, Hanna was gone.  We tried calling her a million times until finally she walked into our apartment and said she has been at her boyfriend’s house all morning and they had worked everything out and he promised he would never do anything like that to her again.  We could not believe what we were hearing and we did not agree with her decision, but we tried to talk to her and find out why she wanted to be in a relationship where she didn’t feel safe.  Was it because she was nervous what would happen if she broke up with him?  Was she blinded by love?  None of us really got the full story, and although we now really didn’t like him we tried to be as supportive as possible.  Luckily a couple months later they broke up for good, and we never had to worry about him laying a hand on our precious Hanna again.

Although Hanna was able to get out of the toxic relationship, not everyone is that lucky.  People should never not feel safe in their relationships and their own home, and it breaks my heart to know that there are many people that are.  I will never know what triggers someone to physically hurt someone they love, but I hope they eventually realize they are doing horrible things and pushing people who care about them away.