Feet to the Fire

One of the boldest, most incorrect statements we can ever make about another person is that we know them. If there’s one thing I have learned in my 32 years, it is that there is no way to completely know every aspect about a person. We tend to show people the side of ourselves we want them to see, and conceal the rest, until we feel comfortable enough to reveal our hidden selves. Sometimes, after a while we can do that, sometimes we never can.

Today I was at lunch with a friend who shares my same birthday, albeit different years. We get together a minimum of once a month and email each other silly spam jokes and messages quite often. She is one of the most positive people I know. We discussed the typical lunch topics: work, spouses, and the upcoming holidays. During our talk about various holiday trepidations we got on the subject of dates we don’t look forward to. I get a little weird about Thanksgiving, because my mom died two weeks before Turkey Day, and when she was alive, that was her holiday to shine. My friend has the same funny feeling on Christmas Eve, because that’s the day she lost her dad.

Just as we were winding up our last trip to the salad bar, she mentioned her apprehension about another date at the tail end of the year. Then she began to tell me about an incident that changed her life 15 years ago. One night, while she and her spouse were sleeping, two guys targeted their house for a home invasion. They robbed my friend at gunpoint, beat her and her spouse nearly to death, completely trashed their house, and because my friend is a woman, I don’t have to tell you about what they did to her. Anytime there is a crime involving a woman, it’s a given that she will be raped. When Mia Zapata was murdered on Capitol Hill, the news didn’t say she was raped in the beginning, but everyone knew she was.

I listened in disbelief as my friend recalled the details of that terrible night, and the long, recovery that followed. She told me that she overcame her fear of the world and rid herself of the nightmares by taking a self-defense course. Then she became a bit of an advocate for women learning self-defense, and spoke about her experience on local news shows.

We parted ways as we always did, but hours later, I still can’t get her story out of my head, particularly when she talked about how she survived the experience. She told me that it didn’t happen like she thought it would. When you’re a woman, you grow up keenly aware of rape. One out of every ten women in this country survives a rape, so it’s inevitable that on a dark night, after watching the news or hearing a story, you go through a mental scenario of how you would fend off a would-be rapist.

Deep down, we all want to believe that we would be Lara Croft or Aeon Flux. We would be strong, and pull out some amazing martial arts moves that would be the beginning of a serious ass-kicking for the bastard who thought of assaulting us. We would all be Wonder Woman, and in our moment of fear and panic, would instantly gain the strength of ten men leaving a bloody, broken heap of a human in our wake. This is what we all hope we can do, as did my friend.

Prior to that night, she said she used to tell everyone she would fight like hell if anyone ever tried to rape her, but that night, all she wanted to do was survive. She said she did everything they told her to do, and in the end, she was left bloody, broken, but still living. 15 years later, she talks about it freely, because she said she has nothing to be ashamed about. If she kept quiet about it, that would mean she believed that it was her fault, or she brought it on in some way, so she talks about it openly.

I thought I knew the extent of my friend’s positivity, but after this lunchtime discussion, I realized that her favorable outlook on life didn’t come from having lots of friends, or neat hobbies, or the fact that she reads at least a dozen, really funny spam jokes per day. Her happiness resonates, because on that devastating night, she could have died a horrible death, but didn’t. She overcame a brutal attack, and put herself out there as an example.

If I could say anything to my dear friend right now, I would tell her that I’m grateful that on that night, when they came in, I’m glad she wasn’t Wonder Woman or Lara Croft, because if she would have tried to be a superhero, she would be dead, and I would have never had the opportunity to know a truly amazing person. I’m better for having known you, and I look forward to next month’s lunch.