Follow your pain, reclaim yourself
I believe pain changes us. Sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. Actually, usually for the worse, with most of us. I’ve been through more than my own share of pain, it feels like, and I’m slowly learning how to be changed for the better, but it’s not an easy path. The fact that it’s so hard is probably why so many people, including myself, are so bad at it. But like most ways we can grow, it starts with awareness, and a little awareness goes a long way.
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For a long time, I didn’t like police officers. Actually, you could say that I outright disliked them (or worse, some days). You see, I lived for a long time in a shit part of town, where the personalities were rich, and the wallets were light. We had gangs, prostitution, murders, drugs, poverty, abuse, and all the other fun things in life. Oh, and a lot of sirens and flashing lights in the night (And the day. And all the other times).
Photo by Andrew “Donovan” Valdivia on Unsplash
Now, before that I had grown up in a small town where not a lot happened. At least not that kind of stuff. Sure, we did have (some) cops, but we never really heard any stories about them ever having to do anything. Not like in my new home, where everyone and their dog had a story about a run-in with an officer at least once. The really interesting thing, though, was just how many of those stories were actually a story of being mistreated, stereotyped, demeaned, or just downright abused.
Sure, not every one of these stories was really true or was as one-sided or unjustified as they made it sound. But there were enough to sow the same seeds of malcontent in my mind as it had in theirs especially when I had my own run-in with injustice at the hands of the “justice” department.
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It was a late winter evening, dark and cold, and I was looking out the window of the place I volunteered at. A lady was standing at the street corner just across from ours. She wasn’t wearing much, which would’ve been unusual in -30C — just not on this corner. A car pulled up. A window rolled down. Words were exchanged. Then she got in, and the car slowly rolled to a stop in our parking lot.
What people get up to behind closed doors is their own business. But this was our parking lot, our property, and the rocking of that car was not ok by me. I didn’t make a habit of calling in illegal activity when I saw it across the street (that’d be one hell of a phone bill), but when it was on our property… well, I called it in. “Yes, I know this is ‘prostitution corner’” I had to tell the 911 responder. “What do you mean ‘What do I want you to do about it’? Stop it, of course! It’s our property, and it’s not ok!”.
Ironic to be having to convince the 911 responder that illegal activity was something to care about. That was nothing compared to what happened when the cops finally showed up, though. The unmarked car rolled up to the “funmobile,” and the officer who got out and knocked on the window had a cordial-seeming chat with the “gentleman” who emerged (after a few minutes — a gentleman must respect common decency, of course).
To my surprise, the conclusion to that conversation was the woman being cuffed and stuck in the back of the cop car. I could just barely see her there. Her head drooped so low in shame it almost touched her knees. Bent and broken. And the driver? After a nod from the officer, he went back to the corner and enticed a new woman back to his car as the cops prepared to drive away.
I get that the legality of these activities and how to handle those who engage in them (whether soliciting, working, trafficking, or otherwise) is a subject of hot debate. But regardless of right or wrong there, I thought we could at least agree that the law either condemned all equally or would be bent for all equally. It had been one thing to hear all the stories from the other people in my community, but to experience it first-hand — that was the nail in the coffin for me.
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To be honest, things just went downhill from there. There was bad blood between the community and the cops, and that blood was now in my veins. Over the years, I became more and more bitter and jaded, more and more angry and cynical, and more and more vocal in my anger, contempt, and criticism of the police force and justice system in general.
At first, that all just seemed so sensible and natural. Someone screws you over, screws over all of your friends, screws over your community and what seems like their entire race, and yeah, of course, you’re going to get a little upset (“a little”). That seemed fair and reasonable — what was the problem with that?
Then, after a while (and many little nudges from my boyfriend/now husband), I realized that maybe I was actually bitter and jaded and all the rest. But hey, it was just toward cops, and it was totally justified, right? What’s the harm there?
Here’s what I’ve learned about pain. Pain is universal. You don’t feel it with one part of your soul but not the other. When you are hurt, it doesn’t go away just because you move to another city, come home from work, start a new relationship, or cross any other “boundary” in your life. Those may be boundaries in your head, but they aren’t boundaries in your heart. You feel pain, and you carry it with you. And it spreads.
At first, I really just thought that the cops were corrupt and shitty, specifically toward aboriginal people. I thought it was a matter of race and socioeconomic status — if you were aboriginal, poor, or worse, both, then they’d screw you over. But if you were white, middle-class, or managed to get into their ideal “in-crowd” somehow, then you could trust the men with the guns to take your side.
At first, I thought I had that boundary — that my pain was localized to just a race and money thing. But have you ever noticed that when you have pain, poking it just makes it spread? It turns out the same thing happens with emotional pain, as I found out the hard way.
Imagine you’re walking down the street on your way home from work. You notice a car slowing down beside you and realize with an uncomfortable shock that it’s actually keeping pace with you. A window rolls down. “Hey, you need a ride?” No, you don’t need a ride from a man you’ve never met before. In this neighbourhood this is how women go missing (and there had been many of them over the years). “Hey, c’mon, it’s fine, just tell me where you’re going, and I’ll give you a ride there.” You’re starting to think you need a ride even less now. But he persists. And persists.
When you’re in those shoes, that behaviour’s straight-up freaky. “Look, I’m not a bad guy or anything, y’know?” Uh-huh. Right. So why do you need me in your car so badly? Flustered, pressured, hunted — in desperation, you call out, “Just leave me alone, ok? Or I’ll call the cops.” And with a screech of tires and swirling summer dust, he tears around the corner and is gone.
With his retreating license plate still fresh in your mind, you dial 911. Sure, cops can be hard to trust, but only if you’re aboriginal and poor, right? Good thing you’re white and appear middle-class. They’ll talk to you. They’ll listen to you. They’ll take you seriously and make sure this guy doesn’t hurt anyone more vulnerable than you. Right?
Wrong. Apparently, they’ll accuse you of being a prostitute of being someone who was soliciting this behaviour. They’ll suggest you had it coming because of having a disgruntled former customer. Or perhaps someone “wanted your services when you weren’t working.”
The pain of being treated this way poked my wound, and the infection spread. This pain — now magnified a hundred times by such a personal experience — caused a division between me and the “others.” Anyone who was a white male in authority over me immediately became the enemy. Someone who I couldn’t trust — or worse, someone who I actually believed would deliberately seek to harm me, given the chance. I ended up resenting anything I had to do because of someone with authority, no matter how reasonable the expectation.
And what was even worse was that I became so very alone. Because I couldn’t trust the people in authority, I couldn’t trust anyone to have my back anymore. At least, not anyone who had the power for it to mean anything. And with all this internal change came an outward one — the bitterness building up in me came out as aggression and hostility toward people who, most of the time, were really just doing an alright job.
It took time to become aware of this pain on a conscious level. It took even more time to stop telling myself that it was justified or that they really were monsters and deserved it. What took the most time, though (and I’m still working on), was discovering all of the other areas of my life it spilled out into.
To this day, I still wouldn’t say that I really like police officers, but I’ve worked hard to try to understand that the police I’d experienced were the exception and not the norm. Sure, the exceptions might be frequent enough to seem the norm in some places, but that doesn’t mean that it’s fair to treat people that way straight off the bat. The reality is we will all go through pain. It’s probably the pain of compassion fatigue and frustration at being helpless to make a difference that led most of the officers in those horror stories to the places that they were at. But even though pain can explain a lot of our behaviour, it still doesn’t excuse it. Not for them, not for me, not for any of us.
There are some people in power — officers or otherwise — who abuse their power. There are some that don’t use that power when they should. But there are many that are just getting up every day and trying to do their best. It’s taken me a lot of work to be able to understand that, but I didn’t do that work for their sake. I did it for mine. So that I could reclaim the areas of my life lost to pain. So that I could reclaim myself.
Look at your pain. Follow where it leads you. Reclaim yourself.