I Am What I’m Not Poem by James L. A. Huetson

She was a rebellious woman,
And yet she was needy.
She yielded to no fear,
But lived in a nightmare
Of terror and dread.

The first time it happened
She had become insanely anxious
Over an unimportant event
She screamed with no pause
Until he slapped her.

It wasn’t a hard slap,
No bodily damage was done.
She was shocked
Because it wasn’t his nature,
A nature of gentleness and caring.

It must be her fault,
The screaming must have caused it.
And in placing the blame on herself
She joined a third of the nation’s women.
Who are repeatedly battered every year.

He was so devastated,
As to be unable to breathe.
He had just needed
To stop her screaming
Before she waked their baby daughter.

The words he used to make her to stop
Were not succeeding.
What horrors would her screaming
Inflict upon a three-year old child.
With no thought or planning, he hit her!

This woman, his wife,
And the woman, his mother
Were constantly in conflict.
He applied the Biblical admonition
To put away his mother and cleave to his wife.

As he left that town
His mother told him tales about his wife.
How she had contacts with another man.
It wasn’t long, in the new town,
That friends told him the same type of story.

Those who govern community mores,
The courts, police, and some churches,
Have sanctioned patterns of family behavior
Allowing a husband the inherent right to
Have sexual gratification from his wife.

And so he exercised this marital right
Without a thought about how she felt,
And her screams of frustration and pain,
Triggered his rage so that he left his body,
And watched himself in this despicable action.

Then from the darkness came a voice
That said, “Stop it! You will kill her! ”
And miracle of miracles, he stopped.
He stopped, and he left.
And he stayed away for hours.

When he returned his wife and child were gone.
And he knew they should be gone, never to return.
Regardless of the law of the time, he knew,
Rape is rape no matter how you justify it.
No matter if it is accepted by the society you are in.

A telephone call came from the family Doctor.
Came from the hospital.
His wife had overdosed on medications.
She had taken the baby with her to the hospital.
She had been treated and they were sending her home.

During the rape and the beating
She became numb both physically and mentally
As though she was no longer a part
Of her body and what was happening.
Someone else was being battered as she observed.

Her mother-in-law blamed her for the event
In order to make herself feel less guilty’
After all, she had initiated the negative idea.
It left the wife feeling trapped with
No way to reestablish her former sense of safety.

He now understood.
There was no way he could stay with her.
He was totally out of control in her presence
And to stay would be to slay.
He left.

In the years that followed he drifted into alcoholism
And stopped drinking seventeen years later.
Living with two different women for a number of years
He rarely had even a cross word with either.
At any signs of imminent violence, he fled.

She completed college obtaining a degree in journalism
Working for some years as a teacher of children with disabilities.
She renewed a drug addiction that she had acquired from an accident.
On leave from a mental institution with a fellow resident
She died of a suspicious drug overdose.

Everything happens for a purpose,
Even the tiniest detail.
Be an observer of that purpose.
Don’t judge it. Don’t fight it.
Don’t try to change it.
Observe it only!