It needs to be said...

One of the earliest and most vivid of my memories of my parents together was the night my mother ran away.  I can close my eyes and see everything, though all I have left is a mental video with no sound. The milky porcelain of her skin quickly turned purple under the barrage of blows from my father's closed fists.  His eyes, wild with fury, dance above a mouth wide open, teeth gnashing...and completely silent.  I can feel my own mouth moving, and I am aware that I am screaming in Korean.  My vision has not become blurry, so I know, unlike my sister, I am not crying.  I watch as my father throws my mother into a marble and mahoghany table which served as their nightstand and see the wooden support spintering with the force.  He quickly turns to their bedroom's closet in search for the M9 Baretta we all know rests in one of his many gun boxes at the top. 

 At a few months past the age of 3, a quiet promise to myself was planted as I screamed in all the English I could muster, for my father to not kill my mother. At that point, my memory blanks. 

I was 7 the first time my father punched me because I looked like my mother.  The same face I remembered staring down at my mother's body crumpled on the floor from that rainy October night, returned during a ride to school.  In slow motion I saw his lips part to bark out "You lie like your mother" as a bitter cold radiated from my nose to chill my entire body, freezing time until the warmth of blood pouring from my nose seconds later, forced me into the reality that I did not want anyone at school to see me crying and bloody.  It was the first of a few memories, concentrated in the next 3 years, that turned a quiet promise into a vow that I would never let a man lay a non-loving hand on me.

Statistically speaking, I am 6 times more likely to accept physical abuse from a relationship partner than a woman who did not witness or experience abuse on her mother.  I am more susceptible to allowing a spouse or relationship partner to commit some form of sexual violence against me.  It is a fairly widely-known and accepted belief that women like me will probably fail to report instances of abuse.

I grew up without a mother because she refused to continue being a punching bag for a man who could find no constructive way of dealing with his own demons...many of which came from his own father's use of physical domination tactics on his wife and children.  My father never touched alcohol in the fear that it was in the liquor that my grandfather awakened his rage...but my father needed no external catalyst to unleash his own misery on others.  Domestic Violence is not only physically violent, it is emotionally, mentally, as well as financially abusive.  Whether it occurs in private, or in the public sector to be disected and analyzed by those who have never experienced it personally, there are other issue present.  I do not condone physical violence of any kind on anyone...but I do know what can cause it.  I will not allow a man to put his hands on me, I will not stay if I see the signs of an abuser, but I will also not put my hands on him.  I will not create an environment where the possible escalation is abuse.

Before you judge the life and relationships of some celebrity...check the mirror first.  I'm not saying you won't come to the same conclusion...but...maybe when you make your opinion known, you won't sound like a jackass on the outside looking in...to someone who really knows the feeling.