On Clarity, & A Clarification


My intention in using the phrases 'women's shelter' and 'domestic violence'
in the post I just erased wasn't to elicit sympathy. I was making the worst
mistake a writer can make: adopting recieved conceptual shorthand.

I have found myself deeply resenting the responses I have recieved to this
post, not because they have been ill-intended, but because they are responses
to something less than the truth.

Language, if it is used effectively enough, can gesture towards the truth. I'm
going to try again. Because this is who I am.

'Violence' is always, always reciprocal. There is no absolute victim, no absolute
perpetrator.

I can easily imagine a situation where my partner might have been the one
seeking shelter. Economics - as is so often the case - has charted my course.

The phrase 'women's shelter' is misleading. Men suffer. And women abuse. I
have been abusive towards my husband.

Love, even in its dissolution, is a two way street, always.

My husband read what I wrote. I never dreamed that this would happen. And
I am sorry it has happened.

Private hurts hurt all of us, and this blog has evinced this fact. I wish you had
read the love poems, Colin.

"I trust in a gentle world,
I trust in you."

The most any writer can hope for is to fail with grace.