Valentine’s Day is all about love! While showing love for friends, family, your significant other, and yourself should be a year-round practice, February 14th inspires many to take it one step further. For many, this includes giving a meaningful gift.
abuse
In this land of the free, abuse is woven into the foundations of numerous systems we have come to depend on. It is normalized, hidden behind metal walls and closed doors, and reinforced by oligarchic corporations that benefit from continued silence. It is because of this silence that the abuse largely goes unnoticed and unchallenged. Yet when brought to the surface, illuminated and exposed, this abuse is then repackaged by corporations to be a necessity rather than an immediate and ongoing crisis.
In the age of social media, self-absorption is routinely mistaken for self-knowledge, and a culture that indulges this confusion turns even the language meant for healing into weapons of solipsism. Language that clarifies our inner lives is now being flaunted by people who cannot distinguish a genuine boundary from mere discomfort. To hold the scalpel is not to understand the incision; to speak the words is not to inhabit their meaning.
Wait, something is off… It wasn’t the fact that I was physically shoved down to the ground by my own mother’s two wrathful hands that had smacked, pinched, and pushed me in the past – or even my father’s unsupportive silence while he was there. All of these things were my “normal.” It was you. You just stood there, and you didn’t even say a word to help me.
When a parent tucks their child into bed and kisses them goodnight, they expect to find them still sleeping soundly in the same spot when morning comes. A home is supposed to be the safest place a child can be, shielded from the dangers of the outside world. But that was not the case for six-year-old Becky Kunash. After her father lovingly put her to bed, something unthinkable happened. In the middle of the night, an intruder opened Becky’s bedroom window, entered her bedroom, and abducted the little girl. She was never seen alive again.