What drew me to my wife in the first place is her strength of spirit, her strength of mind and personality. Since we first met online that strength communicated itself in textual, non-verbal ways. It communicated itself through the 'darkness' implicit (and often explicit) in her writing. Both in her poetry, some of which is here on JU, and in the often extreme cruelty of her wit in chat.
As I came to know her, learned the history of her life, that strength of personality became ever more evident to me. It has sustained her through real-time crises of horrifying proportions, through year on year of abuse by her former husband, the continual but unwitting misunderstanding, the suspicion and sometimes overt hostility of her family, the help they have given her over the years that has always carried with it a pricetag of manipulation and control.
Her courage is beyond doubt, her will beyond any but my own strength to master. She is an apocalypse compressed into the form of a small red-headed woman. She was never more delighted than when I coined the term 'Her Malignancy' to describe her.
I have no time for moral, intellectual, spiritual weaklings. Her courage and her strength, her biting, cruel wit: these things delight me and I take great pride in her because of them.
Her reputation in chat, and now in JU, has been an endless source of delight to me - and watching her make mincemeat of JU denizens such as the infant brat Muggaz and the effette poseur Peter Maxwell have amused me no end.
Never once did it occur to me that my pride in her ability to deal with such posturing, hysterical children could be interpreted by her as a failure of chivalry on my part, as a kind of indifference or lack of care.
Recently, yet another of JUs infantile bloggers has taken to spending his puerile malice against her. Yesterday he did so as part of a response he made to something I had published in one of my own blogs, 'American Trash'. The only response I made to this fool's insults to her was to tell him she needed no defence on my part as she is more than capable of trashing his ass on her own - as both Muggaz and Maxwell, and more than a few others, can testify.
Yet what I failed to realize, enamoured and proud of her strength as I am - is that sometimes that very strength is a burden to her. It isolates her, because the strong are always alone. This is something I've known in my own life. There have been times and places and situations in which, though I have dealt with them myself, and come through them depending solely on my own strength of mind and will, I have wanted another to step in for me. Wanted another who would, if only for a moment, stand up for me and take the strain.
I too have wanted a knight in shining armor to come to my rescue - and no one ever has. I have fought my battles and if help has come from anywhere at all it has come from my faith, not from man or woman. So I understand what it is that caused her heartbreak last night. I understand that it was not the childish insults of some faceless and irrelevant blogger that overwhelmed her spirit, but the need for a hero to stand between her and the world - if only for a moment.
And who else but her Husband should be that hero? And I, being a man, and sometimes blind to what is written plainly before my face, did not stand by her to take the strain that she was under from her, but through misunderstanding and involvement in my own thoughts, let pass a moment in which I could have blessed her, and undone some of the damage that she has sustained over the years. Damage I understand because I have sustained it myself, in similar ways and for similar reasons.
Moments like that come rarely, and once missed are lost forever. It was not a good thing that I did, last night.
But if they are lost, then the cause of that loss can at least be amended. Never again will I tolerate the personal abuse of my wife in these debates. The person responsible for this most recent incident is permanently blacklisted on my blog. His comments will be deleted from my site, and I shall not again engage him in any kind of conversation.
It's the least I can do, as her Husband, and her knight in somewhat tarnished armor.
