"Playing The Game"

More than three weeks ago, my Heart-Sister Pat wrote a guest post for my Blog. Things were not going well, and I was waiting to feel better before I can come back to this blog and publish her post.
The situation didn't get any better yet, but I know it will at the right time. 
I am so blessed to have the support of a great family in Canada as well as the support of amazing friends helping me cope day after day.

Pat has created her own Blog Pat's Perambulations, which is divided in 7 chapters:

1. Channeled and Inspired writings
2. Living in dementia
3. General Stories
4. The 10-years cruise
5. Colloquial Verse
6. spiritual teachings
7. General Verse

Thank you Pat for updating my friends on the blog of the actual situation. Love you <3

Nikky

I live in England, where we have a reputation for "Playing The Game".

This means that, however bad things get in our lives, we are expected to laugh and carry on without giving in to the pressures and stresses ... this, of course, doesn't happen in real life, much, but we still like to pretend that, on the surface, all is good.

In one particular country, in the Middle Eastern area, there is a similar situation ... it's all about appearances and acting the part ... to the degree whereby, even a life of SHEER HELL must be smiled through and ignored as if all is wonderful. Black eyes and even stitches must be hidden and lied about or the poor woman is not 'playing the game'.

You see, in that area of our world, in the country I am thinking of, a woman is property ... she BELONGS to her man and is his to do with as he wishes. Her job is to bear his children and jump to his every whim, even to the extent of rising out of her sickbed to fetch him a glass of water if he demands it. There are men over there who have never opened a drawer or a cupboard to get a pair of socks or a shirt out; who have never entered the kitchen to get a snack. They don't need to ... they have a wife to do things like that.

The husband has the power to abuse his wife in any way he chooses ... by law he can break her major bones if he wants to. I suspect that, should he succeed in killing her, he may well, if he is skilled at telling tales, get away with murder. If she were to escape this life of hell, he only has to turn to the Police and they would search diligently, returning his property to him as soon as they found her. Oh, and by the way ... the children are his property, too. So, should she manage to escape AND take her children WITH her, then she is a robber and a thief, a kidnapper, a criminal of the highest degree.

One wife has just escaped, fled half way round the world ... AND taken her children with her ... HOORAY ... but, my friends, this is not the end of the story, not by a long chalk :

After she has successfully escaped, her name is vilified, even by her nearest and dearest BLOOD relatives. Hands are held up in horror by these people who have helped her conceal her broken bones, bruises and stitches ... who have turned a blind eye and a deaf ear to her situation all these years. He can even grab these in-laws of his and threaten to kill them in order to get her to return and the horror of it is, as this is happening, with both the husband AND her father yelling at her down the phone, while the husband is forcing her father up, over the balcony railing, her father accepts this as perfectly normal and acceptable behavior, well within his son in law's legal rights.

As it turns out, the father is still with us ... telling his daughter that she MUST return to her much-abused husband ... rationalising that the man has the perfect right to go around her family, wreaking whatever havoc he chooses in just retribution. The father believes his son in law has the perfect right to kill them all ... ... ... AND to get away with it.

She is now on the receiving end of phone calls from her sister and father, badgering her and also verbally abusing her. Added to that, the children are in receipt of calls from their father, telling them how much he loves them, how he cannot live without them, etc. The relations believe her husband's stories of her lies and duplicity, (they have watched her being beaten for years and just accuse her of being a bad wife) ... They uphold his claims to love his wife, who is obviously, he argues, mentally ill ... saying he cannot live without her, etc etc etc. However, her biggest crime is that of theft: she has not only stolen herself away from her abuser, her captor, her jailer ... she has stolen, kidnapped, his children ... the beings who were also becoming targets for his mental and physical abuse as they approached and entered their teens.

Why does she not get new phone numbers, one asks? Why not totally break all contact?

Because, my friends, she has escaped to join many family members already living in this other country. Family is important to her. Westernised family are more understanding (to a certain extent) of the rights of women.

However, I wonder at their inbuilt gut reactions to all this ... how thin is the veneer of Western values which overlays the indoctrination of childhood and youth? One hopes that it is strong ... that the aunts, uncles and cousins all continue to make her welcome and that the caring sister who has given her refuge WILL remain strong ... will continue to say, with feeling, as she did only last night :

"I will NOT let you go back"