What could you do if it, domestic violence, happened
to you?
Nowadays, women in Taiwan get married quite late in life. The median age of those married for the first time is currently 29.5 for women and 31.9 for men (Statistics Department of Ministry of the Interior, 2013).
The marriage rates like other continues continue to decline for women from 55.53% to 38.7% in ten years and for men from 40.82% to 32.11% (Statistics Department of Ministry of the Interior, 2013).
What would you do if you were one of them who were destined to face domestic violence? Remember it occurs not only once for a while but regularly – probably every week, or unpredictably?
She was one of the girls living in poor households. She started working an hour-paid job with 9-year compulsory education when she was 15 years old. She married to him when she was 19 years old while her most girl friends continued their schooling, who were in middle-class or higher income households.
Before their engagement, she worried about their differences
of eight-year age apart, the education level and family background. How could
she marry to a thoughtful and good-looking guy from a sound family? But, he
brushed it aside.
He convinced her
to marry him and it wouldn't be a problem to give her mother NT$10,000 monthly. He
had a high-paid job and made enough money to start a family right away after marriage too. She
quit her job.
They were not in the
middle of a marriage crisis, but this happened whenever he got drunk. She waited him to fall asleep when this occurred. It seemed
to her a thing she had to deal with and a night’s sleep was a nature’s cure to
gain her strength back. It took only one night and he would be what he was again.
Day repeated itself. The first time she remembered
after marriage, she thought her world was spiraling out of control when she couldn’t
temper his unknown anger. But, the following day after he woke up, he acted
like the one he used to be and it seemed to him there was nothing which had
happened.
He was the one who had done terrible drinking before coming back home but his anger rose when his voice got louder. She forgot to question why he didn’t come home after work for dinner while she soothed her starving children to wait for their father longer.
His clever tongue
seemed not to fail him even when he was drunk, stuttering to deliver those
insulting words to accuse her mother of having children by
different men.
She regretted she
had told him everything about her mother before marriage. Then she trusted him with
her own heart when he looked at her with admiration and said how beautiful she
was.
Why had she told him? She wanted to share with him, who was that into her then and so was she, about
how difficult it was for her mother to raise them and why she did not go to
senior high school but found a job to support her mother financially. She did it
out of love for her mother. Besides, she needed
to know if she could plan her future with him without making a mess of it. He was
so smart that she was able to rely on him.
When he acted the
drama, she dared not to challenge his rage while he was drunk. She did never defend her mother but was worried about their children might be still awake or give ear to (聽). Her
children kept quiet without mentioning it and got pretty well with their
father, who loved them dearly too.
He never stopped
giving her mother money every month as he promised, but
he never went back home with her
on the second day of Chinese Lunar New Year, which was “Married Daughter’s Day.”
She always told her mother he couldn’t make it because of being on duty, and
her mother never complained about his absence from the gathering with his
relatives-in-law. When he was sober, he told her he couldn’t go because he
couldn’t touch the wine on that special occasion or he would ruin their
time.
Gradually she gave
this serious thoughts and she knew the moment she lost her self-esteem when
she took his money to her mother, especially the dowry. Her mother did need the money.
It never was a
problem to worry if he had an affair with any woman, and she surely knew he
still loved her. A part of her always loved him she knew and she wasn’t trying
to stay active and make the best of their relationship. What she did was to let
it take its course and to pretend that it was all going to be well in the end.
What about her children? Looking at her children, she convinced herself that tolerance was an only response to what he did to her, unacceptable but taken. There wasn’t a thorough resolution, and she saw no reason to get it said and done. How could she move on with all of her life away from this?
Even in the
bleakest moments
of her childhood, with the name of her father unknown on her ID Card, she had managed to hold the hope that each
day, things would get a little better. Hopelessness was beyond her
comprehension.
The fact
One fourth married women in Taiwan, whose ages are between 18 and 74, have been abused according to the data revealed by Ministry of Health and Welfare on March 2 before International Women’s Day this year, 2016.
Please break the silence
and
make it loud, my dear. Yes, make it louder possibly and needed. It is the fact
that men and women are created differently. Surely again, there is no equality
for both genders.
That is why women should fight bravely and consistently if mistreated while good men help them out. And, that is why women have International Women’s Day on 8 March and International Day of the Girl Child on 11 October since 2012.
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