{"id":89427,"date":"2021-01-27T11:03:56","date_gmt":"2021-01-27T19:03:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.yesmagazine.org\/?post_type=article&p=89427"},"modified":"2021-01-29T14:30:53","modified_gmt":"2021-01-29T22:30:53","slug":"inauguration-biden-harris-abuse-survivor","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"https:\/\/www.yesmagazine.org\/opinion\/2021\/01\/27\/inauguration-biden-harris-abuse-survivor","title":{"rendered":"What the Inauguration Meant to Me, as an Abuse Survivor"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
As I watched the inauguration of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris last week, I was emotionally transported back to my younger self, in the first days after I ended a yearslong abusive relationship. I felt just as vulnerable and unsure last week as I had more than a decade prior\u2014because in this moment, I sense we are all emerging from years of abuse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We got together when I was 19, coming off a long-term, serious relationship with someone I loved deeply. I was sad and lonely, and this new man talked a big game about all the things he could do for me, constantly reminding me how lucky I was to be with him. That should have been my first red flag.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Instead, I brushed aside his narcissistic tendencies as \u201cjust who he is.\u201d I let him insult me because I didn\u2019t want to trigger his alternating rage and perpetual victim complex. Nothing was ever his fault\u2014including the time he threw a cellphone at my head one night in my apartment. It missed and shattered on the wall instead. I stayed with him, in one form or another, for at least another year. Each time I had a moment of strength and tried to break up with him, I\u2019d turn around and let him back into my life, finding myself too broken-down and tired to withstand his crying, screaming, and empty promises to do better. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
He was cruel, manipulative, and a master gaslighter. He had me convinced that I deserved to be belittled and couldn\u2019t be trusted with my own agency, so it was best to let him be in control.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After months of back-and-forth, and with thousands of miles between us, I finally found the conviction to say \u201cenough,\u201d and end the relationship permanently. By then, I had isolated myself from most of my close friends, who eventually tired of the evermore absurd accommodations I made for him. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
After years of mistreatment, basic decency felt foreign, and almost threatening.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
What I remember most from those first days out of the relationship are the two friends who stuck by me. For weeks, their small acts of kindness would bowl me over emotionally. A friend\u2019s offer to pay for dinner floored me. A simple, earnest compliment could bring me to tears. After years of mistreatment, basic decency felt foreign, and almost threatening. I spent a lot of time wide-eyed, trying to remind my body and my mind what tenderness felt like. It took many months before my nerves\u2014and my heart\u2014felt less painfully raw. I cried often.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Over the past four years, I often found myself reliving the emotional trauma of that relationship. Watching another egotistical, proudly cruel man run roughshod over the people and things I held dear evoked a familiar trauma response. I could often anticipate how the president would react to critique, based on my own experience trying to hold my abuser accountable for the daily indignities he inflicted on me. I saw the same insults, the same gaslighting, the same insistence that I was (or we were collectively) too stupid to know what was right, played out daily on national news.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So maybe that\u2019s why, last week, I found myself sitting in front of my screen with tears running down my cheeks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Neither Biden nor Harris was among my top choices for the nomination, and I am deeply skeptical of the focus on \u201cunity\u201d<\/a> that, I fear, will exploit our short cultural attention spans to avoid any meaningful accountability. But during the inauguration, the COVID memorial, and the Celebrating America<\/em> special, I couldn\u2019t help but feel a familiar catch in my throat with each kind word uttered by Biden\u2014such a drastic contrast to his predecessor. I felt the same wonder emerging at the now-unfamiliar sensation of respectful interaction, and the hint of consideration for our shared humanity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Like those early days away from my abuser, I find myself now reacting to basic, common decency\u2014or even simple competency\u2014with a sense of awe. Watching the president sign an executive order<\/a> reaffirming my right, as a queer woman\u2014and more importantly, the rights of the trans people I love\u2014to equal employment protection, felt monumental. Hearing a press secretary answer questions from members of the media, with minimal spin and clear respect for her fellow professionals<\/a> in the room, felt almost fictional in its functionality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
None of this can\u2014nor should\u2014absolve the incoming administration from critique. Indeed, we collectively face compounding catastrophes that will destroy us if we don\u2019t act boldly and decisively. The courage to do so will demand principled conviction and will not come without sacrifice and opposition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If you\u2019ve found yourself unexpectedly or inexplicably emotional over the past week, consider that we all have just begun to emerge from an abusive relationship.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
But if you\u2019ve also found yourself unexpectedly or inexplicably emotional over the past week, consider that we all have just begun to emerge from an abusive relationship. The 45th president of the United States wielded power with cruelty, he reveled in sowing division, and lied so frequently that the truth became unrecognizable. And though the relationship we\u2019re entering with the new administration is far from perfect\u2014indeed, many of those now populating the executive branch have their own problematic histories to answer for\u2014it is, at the very least, different. There is reason to believe that this new relationship will bring with it a touch more humility, more truth, and perhaps even more empathy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I realize this is an imprecise parallel. My ex did not have the institutional power that Donald Trump was granted. The damage caused by my ex\u2019s cruelty does not compare to the scale of suffering inflicted upon millions of people in this country and beyond over the past four years (and longer). My ex was enabled by a small group of those close to him, not by a major political party, organized White supremacists, and some 70 million of my fellow Americans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n