Last week, during dead days, several of
my friends and I decided to treat ourselves to a night of fun instead
of studying. We ventured to a house party just off of campus, walked
around the side, opened a steel gate, and let ourselves in. You never
would have guessed it from the unassuming outward appearance of the
single story residence, but there was a huge gathering inside. The
night began well enough, and everyone was having a good time. We
passed people playing games outside as we made our way to the back
door of the house. As we entered, we quickly realized that someone
had gotten a bit inventive with the smoke machine. None of us could
see more than three feet ahead of ourselves in any given direction.
Toward the end of the night, as the
party was dying down, I walked out the back door to reconvene with my
friends after having gone to the bathroom. They were all sitting down
in a circle of lawn chairs as I approached them. What I saw next
really disturbed me. I watched as my friend Kate point at Jake, my
fraternity brother, and call him something unintelligible that I
couldn't hear because I was out of earshot. In response, I witnessed
Jake reach out and slap her. The whole incident, maybe ten seconds in
length, seemed like an eternity. I could feel time slow down as my
heart sank.
Everyone sprang into action. Just as
suddenly as it had slowed, now time was moving in fast forward. I ran
to join two of my other brothers as we worked to corral Jake.
Everyone else gathered around Kate to make sure she was okay. Before
I was able to take notice, the girls up and mobilized, leaving the
party with haste. Largely by ourselves at this point, we asked Jake
what the hell had happened.
He said that Kate had teasingly called
him a name or something to that effect, and in retaliation he
“playfully” hit her. With a unanimous “What?! You never ever
hit a woman!” from the three of us, we proceeded to confront Jake
about the error of his ways. Obviously not in his right mind, he
attempted to make his faulty case, claiming that women always ask to
be treated the same as men and he was doing just that. Always a
stubborn one, it took a long time to talk Jake down. Ultimately he
owned up to his wrongdoing, but that wasn't anywhere near the end of
the conversation.
Jake started opening up a little bit
and the whole incident boiled over into a different set of emotional
issues entirely. At this point, my other brothers took their leave,
and I was left to console him by myself. We talked about a lot of
things: he talked about how he wasn't a man of principle, how he
knowingly continued to make the wrong choices, how he didn't feel
like one of our brothers, and how he always pushed people away who
tried to connect with him. We spent hours talking. I broke it down to
him like this: even if he didn't care enough about himself to clean
up his act, I did. I told him that I was there to hold him
accountable, and even if he didn't see any good qualities within
himself, I did, excluding the incident that night, of course. I
walked him to his dorm and then went right to see Kate in her dorm.
We sat in her room and I asked her
about what was going through her mind. She was definitely still
shaken up. Kate said that he didn't physically hurt her. The slap,
however inappropriate, was not hard enough to cause any damage. She
said she might have thought the whole thing to be playful if she
wasn't so scared. Then Kate told me about how she had been in an
abusive relationship her junior year of high school. She said that
when Jake reached out at her that night it brought back up all these
old feelings that she thought she had overcome. I told her it wasn't
her fault, listened to everything she had to say, and acted as a
shoulder to cry on. It was four in the morning by the time I left her
dorm.
Prior to this night I would have
labeled myself a cynic and a misanthrope at times, mostly caring for
myself and not being a big proponent of sappy emotional
understandings. However, this was a real growing experience for me. I
had never really envisioned myself as someone else's counselor, but I
learned that sometimes all it takes is for you to listen. People just
need a friend to hear them out.
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