It was one thing to impugn my gender identity and to say that Dr. Marci Bowers had created a "Frankenstein" right after the surgery she performed on me. Children who don't get their way are always calling people--including the adults who deny them what they want--names.
But it's something else entirely to make false accusations against someone. It's something else again when those accusations include racism against someone who works as an educator and sexual crimes against a transgender person.
Such was the way in which Dominick's attacks against me escalated. When I saw him, for the last time, in the court, he whined that he "never would have said those things" if he "knew that it would lead to this."
By "this", he meant being in that court--not the damage he did to me. That was when I realized I'd been entirely too forgiving of, and merciful toward, him.
All he cared about was the ways in which the exposure of his deeds and words would inconvenience him. When he begged for me to "forgive" him, he wasn't looking for absolution or making--implicitly or explicitly--a pact to make amends and be a better person than he'd been. Oh, no. All he wanted was to be "let off the hook" and, as he said, to have the opportunity to live his life. After all, he said, he's young and has "a lot of years ahead".
So what was he telling me? That my life was over? (Perhaps it is.) That his life is more important or valuable than mine? (Some would see it that way.) Or was he finally expressing, if not admitting, the disrespect--if not outright contempt--he always had for me?
Actually, I realized that he respects no one. He has the sense of entitlement that, when I first started teaching, I saw only in very wealthy kids. When he makes a mistake--no, when he hurts someone--he thinks it's the obligation of the people around him to cover up for him, and to help him "move on".
Now, in spite of everything I've experienced, I don't believe that most people are born wicked. At the same time, most people have to be taught morality of some sort. Whatever sense of right and wrong I have, I learned from my parents, grandparents, teachers and other adults in my life when I was growing up. It's also been refined by some experiences I've had.
Dominick spent even more time in Catholic school than I did. And, I guess, there had to have been at least one or two people who inculcated him with some sense of moral judgment. Even if his circumstances were--in spite or because of all the time he spent in Catholic school--more dysfunctional than mine were, I still don't understand how he can say that making false accusations and othewise lying about me, or anyone, simply because he was angry is right.
Then again, he is an abuser, a predator. I don't know what made him--or whether he was indeed born--that way. All I know is that he would lie, manipulate and make any attempt to destroy the life of someone who was even more vulnerable to stereotypes and judgments than he is.
I know this: Whatever he was born or made, he is a bully and a thug. His "apologies" the last time I saw him were nothing more than attempts to save his own culo.
That, after his abuse tore away at something I always valued: the notion that I could help someone become trustworthy by trusting him, that I could teach him that someone was indeed willing to love, support and forgive him when he "lost it" or made a lapse in judgment.
The thing is, people like Dominick don't become better people when you love and forgive them. They simply see another way they can "get over" on you, if you're lucky, or to bully and harass you if you aren't.
Sometimes I wish I'd been more of a bitch--or, at least, someone who doesn't take any shit--when I was with him. Then, he wouldn't have done a lot of what he'd done, mainly becuase the relationship wouldn't have lasted nearly as long as it did.
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