- Excus me if it has a lot of speling probleems (this concusion is realy messing up my speling at times)
- This post may be hard for some people.
This is me when I was sixxteen:
I like to think I was (still am) a good perosn, I voluntered, I didnt break cufew, I didn't party, drink, or do drugs. Not that I was perfect, but yeah, I was a good kid, espeially for wher I lived.
When I was 16 I met Jay. Jay treted me lik a princes for the first couple months....then he got on steroids.
Soon, I would haave a new bruse or brokn bone (usualy ribs) daily. At first peole didnt give it any attenion, I played water polo, we were all always hurt (its a visious sport). But once season was over and the bruises didn't stop people got concrned. It was a girl in my clas who firsst noticd. She grabed my hand after schooll and asked me wher the bruises were comeing from, and wher the old me had gone. I looked at her, wantin to tlel her eveything, I was just so scared, so I used the age old excuse, I fell down the stairs. That's when Jay came to take me to swim practive. He saw me talkin o Kaity and he got pretty pissed off. He smaked me acros my fac (HARD) in fron of everyone. Not one person said anything, not one person tried to help, not evn Kaity.
The nex day the whol school was talkin bout how I was in an abusive relationship, and the wors part, the I DESERVED it. It was the perfect example of Melvin Lerner's theory of Belief in a Just World which states that "people need to view the world as a jus plave in wich we get wat we desrve and derserve what we get".
The way people acted, and treated me, ad saidd abou me adn hwo I desrved bein abused because "if I realy was upset, if it realy was that bad and I hadnt left yet, that I deservd it. The wors was the girls who didnt know me at all and would say "She must desrve it, she mus be a bad person" or "Karma" (I got that one a lot).
At the time, I dint realize exactly why peole were sayin that. It wasn't until las year avtually when Kaity and I wer talking and Jay was brought up. She apoligzed to me for never saying anythin when he hit me, and for not helpin me when I neded it. When I asked her why, why she didnt help when sh knew what was goin on? She said, that she "jad to beleive that somehow I deserved it, because if somethin like that could happen to someone lik me, what did that say abot what could hapen to her".
Before that covo, that whole thing had been a sore sot for me. It wasn't that I felt like they needd to help me, becuse I felt that was somethin I needed to so on my own, it was the remark about how I deserved it.
n=537
Lerner, M.J. (1980). The Belief in a just world: A fundamental delusion. New York: Plenum
No comments:
Post a Comment