Bruises Don't Equal Abuse!

[calulu]

So it was my turn today. Remember 6 weeks or a month ago when someone here got their head bitten off by some twatwaffle in the library because they were bruised and not admitting it was from abuse? It happened to me today in the grocery store!

Back story. A month ago I was at the beach and took a header down the steps bruised myself hard, Hit in head with surfboard, etc. I get shots of this thick solution to keep my asthma in check mixed with getting flu shot and pnemovax last week and I bruise when you breath on me. Add in I'm now having a charming side effect that has robbed me of my balance and makes me perpetually dizzy. Meaning I have a purple bruise the size of a fist on an upper arm, a greenish purple array head to toe from vacation, and the bruises I've sustained walking into walls and falling down due to no balance.

Today I was approached by a store manage at the local grocery store. He tried to give me the number for the battered womans shelter and turned nasty when I said I wasn't being abused. I was just trying to keep from puking from the dizzy while he stood there and harangued me on becoming a statistic.

If someone was really being abused does anyone seriously think that being yelled at about it might move the abused into admitting they were being abused?

Okay, so I do appreciate that someone shows concern over the possibility of abuse but the reaction when you tell them it's mere clumsy mixed with medical treatments is out of place.

[sprocket79]

Geez! When you're feeling better, I think you should go back and talk to him and tell him how he made you feel. If he's still a know-it-all jerk, then maybe you should take it up with corporate.

[lupo pazzesco]

Yeah, that was me. In the bookstore. with Sir Twatwaffle from Assville.

Seriously, what is with people. And if it's an employee, at the very least, I think a letter to corporate is in order. Abuse victim or not, no manager should yell at a customer about that kind of crap. Period.

[HorrorFrogPrincess]

Yeah. Call Corporate for his ABUSIVE behavior. 0

[ShadowTiger]

We do need to craft some sort of signal that there is genuinely no abuse going on. I can totally imagine how difficult it is to get such a message across to people just trying to help.


... because sometimes they try just a bit too hard...

[ditchdj]

I actually blame the media for this. Everytime you turn on the "news" there you see then going on and on about some "Boogeyman" (in your case: "The Wife Abuser") that we all have be in fear of. Problem is that there's so many "boogeymen" that our media perpetuates that it's almost impossible to keep track of.

[RecoveringKinkoid]

I guess it never occured to him that you might have been in a car wreck, might have been mugged, might have fallen down a flight of stairs, etc.

I knocked myself out hiking once, and looked like I'd been in a fight. Bruise on face, sprained right hand, slight limp.

Fencing bruises look very much like handprints if you get the right grouping. They frequently land on your upper arm (for instance, in my friend Y's case, they landed on her left upper arm because she's a lefty. And a smoker who bruises easily.

So she had this grouping on her arm that looked like a right handed person had grabbed her and dug his fingers in.

Some lady tried to give her a card for Sistercare down at the University swimming pool. Wouldn't believe her when she denied she'd been abused.

This chick is a double black belt who put a guy (and possible two guys) she "met" at the bus station one night in the hospital. Believe me when I tell you she wasn't being abused.

[Ben_Who]

My sister once had to go to the emergency room after she really did get clocked in the face with a door that was stuck. She tried to explain. Good lord, did her boyfriend get some dirty looks...

Love, Who?

[BethB]

I was nearly on the other end of an abuse thing. When my oldest was about 11mos old, she was tottering around the house and she was not the most graceful of creatures(sadly it's an inherited trait) and she smacked her cute little face onto the coffee table. Her nose started bleeding and I took her in to the ER in case of breakage. I had to tell like 5 different docs and nurses the same story while getting the "you evil b***c, hitting your baby and making up stories to save your sorry ass" look. Even with my brother there who witnessed didn't make it better. They believed me in the end. Gah!!

[Amina516]

This reminds of exactly the opposite:

When I was a lass of about 11, I had a parent-teacher conference with my 6th grade teach and my dad. Lets just say my dad was (and still is) generally an angry person, and it radiates off him like you wouldnt believe.

Anywho, I received a less than stellar report from the teacher about my behavior..and my dad was visibly mad, grounded me when we got home and etc. Fast forward to that evening, my dad was working in his friends club (hes a mason) and about 5 of us kids were playing hide and seek. Somehow or another, I got hit in the eye with the corner of a door. Come that evening before bed, I had a HELL of a shiner.

I go to school the next day, and the teacher takes one look at me and SMIRKS, shrugs his shoulders and proceeds with class. I swear he looked at me like i got what I deserved.

Now I of course, was not abused, but you would think this wouldve raised some flags in any teachers mind. Years later when I think of this, I get pissed off kinda.

I SWEAR this teacher began to hate me after I lost the spelling bee which mightve been why he didnt care. Weird right? But the change in his attitude towards me was palpable.

Life is weird.

[BookstoreEscapee]

I was nearly on the other end of an abuse thing. When my oldest was about 11mos old, she was tottering around the house and she was not the most graceful of creatures(sadly it's an inherited trait) and she smacked her cute little face onto the coffee table. Her nose started bleeding and I took her in to the ER in case of breakage. I had to tell like 5 different docs and nurses the same story while getting the "you evil b***c, hitting your baby and making up stories to save your sorry ass" look. Even with my brother there who witnessed didn't make it better. They believed me in the end. Gah!!

When my cousin's oldest was little, just about the height of, say, the seat of a kitchen chair, she fell into one of said chairs and wound up with a huge purple egg of a bruise right above her eye. I don't know that my cousin got any dirty looks at the hospital, though (said child is now 22).

[BethB]

When my cousin's oldest was little, just about the height of, say, the seat of a kitchen chair, she fell into one of said chairs and wound up with a huge purple egg of a bruise right above her eye. I don't know that my cousin got any dirty looks at the hospital, though (said child is now 22).

Most likely your cousin did get dirty looks. Working in the hospital, whenever a kid came in with any kind of injury, even a papercut, the staff usually cried abuse. Had a child admitted who got ahold of some boiling hot water and the staff cried abuse. One guy set them straight saying he knew the family and it wasn't like them to abuse the kids. Yeah, that shut 'em up considering only a few of us had kids and don't like to be thought of as monsters.

[RecoveringKinkoid]

The problem is that nobody ever admits to abuse. Even the ones being abused.

So if anyone denies it, it doesn't really matter. Everyone always denies it.So it fits the abuse pattern.

It also fits the no abuse pattern, but nobody ever thinks about that.

[Samaliel]

My mom once broke her glasses. The only spare pair she had were her sunglasses. Some of those huge ones that almost cover your whole face. Everybody thought my dad had punched her and given her a black eye. Some were still concerned when she had explained what happened and showed them she didn't have a black eye.

People are just paranoid.

[Misanthropical]

When I fell into our dining room table and fractured two of my ribs it seemed like everyone and their brother kept asking me if I was sure that is what really happened. The God's honest truth is I tripped over a toy while carrying a bowl of popcorn and didn't want to spill the popcorn all over the floor, so instead I slammed into the dining room table. At least I didn't spill any of the popcorn.


I suffer from insomnia, so I usually have dark circles under my eyes. This lead to someone telling former BossMan that I was being abused. He came over to me and asked me to take off my glasses, which I did because I had no idea that he was checking for abuse. He told me I looked like I had been punched in both eyes, do I need to talk to someone about abuse? I told him he lost his damn mind, because the insomnia caused it, not my husband or my oldest son beating on me.

Yes, now people think it could be either my husband or my big guy, when the truth is neither one would dream of hurting me.

Growing up, no one batted an eye when I showed up covered in bruises and welts. It's weird how things change.