by
Studs Terkel
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I took pride in what I did. I made myself do it right. But it became increasingly ridiculous to spend all that time and energy making sure a print got to the station on Thursday the twenty-second at six ’. I dropped the film off myself on the way home because you couldn’t be sure a messenger would get it there on time. What difference did it make if the film was there on Monday or Thursday? I felt, to live miserably under such pressure, to knock yourself out—it should be for something more important. Life was too short for this.
You pack your lunch, or you buy it at the vending machine. We used to have a canteen in there, but they cut that out. The vending machine is lousy. It hurts a man when he’ll put his quarter or thirty-five cents in there for a can of vegetable soup and it takes the coin but don’t kick anything out. There’s no one there to open the machine and give him his quarter back or a can of food. (Laughs.) A lotta machines are broken that way. Every day it occurs.
To be free is to have some kind of say-so about your life. I have no vote on the board of directors of Commonwealth Edison. I count for absolutely nothing. But that company is polluting my environment, is shaping my life, is limiting it and the chances of the kids at St. Daniel’s parish. It’s killing me as a person, as life in the steel mill is killing my father. I have to fight back. That brash act—that rude act—of interrupting the chairman of the board did it. I felt free. I don’t have to be afraid of him. He goes to the toilet the same way I do. What makes him better than me? His hundred thousand dollars a year? Hell no. Well, that act made me free. You can’t emerge as a person if you’re a yes-man. No more yes, Mr. Mayor. No more yes, Mr. Governor. No more yes, Mr. Chairman.
I think about guys that were in college with me in the early fifties. They sell real estate, insurance, they’re engineers, they’re bankers, they’re in business. They probably make a lot more money than I do. It’s like they’re twenty years older than me. They seem a lot closer to my father than they do to me. They’re in a groove, they’re beyond change. They’re caught into something which is so overpowering—it’s as though their life was over. It’s all settled. I think my job is keeping me young, keeping me alive.
The thing is you gotta like people. If you like people, you have a good time with ‘em. But if you have the attitude that people are the cause of what’s wrong with this country, they’re gonna fuckin’ get you upset and you’re gonna start to hate ’em, and when you hate, you get a shitty feeling in your stomach that can destroy you, right?
I was in a four-man detail in Harlem for about six months, just before my transfer to Canarsie. It’s four thirty-story buildings, and the people’d be movin’ in there. Every day I have a list of names of people that are movin’ in. One black family came with eight kids. They had seven rooms on the twentieth floor. The mother, this big, fat woman, asked could I show her the apartment. The kids just wanted to see it. Beautiful painting, real clean. The kids started crying, little kids. I could cry when I think of it. They ran into the bedrooms and they laid on the floor. They said, “This is mine! This is mine!” The kids said, “Look at the bedroom, it’s clean.” These little black kids with sneakers and holes in their pants, crying. It was empty, but they wouldn’t leave that room. The woman asked me could they stay over night. Their furniture was gettin’ delivered the next day. You get people a job or decent housing, you won’t have no trouble.
I like everybody workin’ together. You chip in for a meal together. One guy goes to the store, one guy cooks, one guy washes the dishes. A common goal. We got a lieutenant there, he says the fire department is the closest thing to socialism there is.
Martin, a man in his late twenties, joined my abuser group while also seeing an individual therapist. He told me the first day that he was confused about whether he had a problem or not, but that his long-time girlfriend Ginny was preparing to break up with him because she considered him abusive. He went on to describe incidents of insulting or ignoring Ginny and of deliberately causing her emotional pain “to show her how it feels when she hurts me.” He also admitted to times of humiliating her in front of other people, being flirtatious with women when he was mad at her, and ruining a couple of recent important events in her life by causing big scenes. He justified all of these behaviors because of ways he felt hurt by her.
THESE ARE JUST a very few of the many confounding questions that face anyone—the partner of an abusive man, a friend, or a professional—who is looking for effective ways to respond to abusive behavior. I came to realize, through my experience with over two thousand abusers, that the abusive man wants to be a mystery. To get away with his behavior and to avoid having to face his problem, he needs to convince everyone around him—and himself—that his behavior makes no sense. He needs his partner to focus on everything except the real causes of his behavior. To see the abuser as he really is, it is necessary to strip away layer after layer of confusion, mixed messages, and deception. Like anyone with a serious problem, abusers work hard to keep their true selves hidden.
Part of how the abuser escapes confronting himself is by convincing you that you are the cause of his behavior, or that you at least share the blame. But abuse is not a product of bad relationship dynamics, and you cannot make things better by changing your own behavior or by attempting to manage your partner better. Abuse is a problem that lies entirely within the abuser.
He’s crazy.
He feels so bad about himself. I just need to build up his self-image a little.
He just loses it.
He’s so insecure.
His mother abused him, and now he has a grudge against women and he takes it out on me.
I’m so confused. I don’t understand what’s going on with him.
aaahhh this is triggering lol