What. The. Hell?!?! (Or Wherein Lupo is offered shelter from domestic violence...?)

[Dreamstalker]

I once slammed my hand in a car door and--no kidding--didn't notice until my friend's mom freaked. Not a lot of pain, no bruising whatsoever and I was running crew fine the next day (the stage manager actually asked the friend why she was "hovering"; when SM was told what transpired she didn't believe it at first; a person who has just slammed a car door on their dominant hand should in theory not be able to work the fly rail).

I have been known to injure myself in various stupid ways that nobody has thought possible

[BookstoreEscapee]

As pale as my skin is, I'm surprised I don't bruise so easily. I fell and hit my knee going up the stairs to my apartment a couple months ago and by the time I got up the stairs it looked like there was a blue marble under my skin on my kneecap. I was expecting it to bruise pretty good but it didn't, really. I did put ice on it so maybe that's why. Though when I was in college, one night my dorm hall went ice skating, which I suck at, and I fell a few times. The last time I really went *splat* on the ice and my right knee took the brunt of the impact. I turned in my skates after that and sat in the bleachers with my friend. That bruise was massive and purple and angry and took weeks to go away. Too bad it wasn't shorts weather...it would have been a good story.

My roommate, on the other hand, has had some spectacular bruises in the last year and a half or so I've known her. Mostly from things like walking into doors at school and stuff.

[MadMike]

I bruise pretty easy myself, and I have this bad habit of walking into things. Even if I just clip something, like the edge of a table, I bruise pretty easy. Sometimes I don't even know I did it, and then I see a bruise and wonder how it got there. Then again, I'm sure some of those happen after a night of drinking.

[Cia]

A week after my DH and I were married we'd moved to Ft. Leonard Wood, MO. I don't handle stress well, it makes me sick, and I ended up in the ER on base. The nurse pointed at a large bruise on my leg and asked me what that was. I said 'a bruise' really slowly, trying to figure out why she wouldn't know what a bruise was. Then she asked me how I got it, 'a table bit me' - yeah I could have answered better but I wasn't feeling good so my smartassness rackets up a bit.

If you really wanted to see a huge bruise, you should have seen the one I got when I went through the flooring in the garage attic. Black and blue from ankle to hip. Man that hurt. Another beauty was the one I got from getting on the back of a motorcycle wrong - it's me I do stupid things all the time - a huge bruise on my inner thigh from knee to crotch.

A real abused person doesn't show it off by saying 'Check out this bruise, beauty eh?'.

[Soulstealer]

A real abused person doesn't show it off by saying 'Check out this bruise, beauty eh?'.

Not unless it's followed by, 'and check out the testicles I ripped off my ex, let me get out the microscope.'

[Geek King]

A real abused person doesn't show it off by saying 'Check out this bruise, beauty eh?'.

Don't be sure. There was a report on some high school girls who showed off there abuse bruises to each other as badges of honor. They thought it proved how much their boyfriends loved them if they were so worried about losing them that they'd hit them.

I spent a lot of time staring into the dark that night wondering what the hell is wrong with some people.

[RebeccaOTool]

Just...wow.

[Blade]

Side note

due to her sexual orientation, there are even fewer partners she would hook up with that could even possibly be a threat to her

To be fair: Unless her sexual orientation is "very tiny and not particularly strong or violent people," this is probably not true. Not for her, per se, but in relation to "orientation" as a whole.


IE: There are a metric fuckton of lesbian abuse stories, for example, that tend to be covered up for one reason or another.


People being abused by women, whether other women or straight men, tend to be *severely* underreported abuse circumstances.

[Blade]

it's weird, as a guy people assume the opposite...

Weirdly enough, I was thinking about this recently.

You see an identical mark on a guy as you do on a girl, and overall, people will be prone to assuming that "haw haw he just got drunk and got in a fight and he got a black eye but you should see the other guy" or something, whereas she must have been all darning socks and been punched by an abusive spouse for not making the macaroni with enough hot dogs. Or something.

[ArcticChicken]

To be fair: Unless her sexual orientation is "very tiny and not particularly strong or violent people," this is probably not true. Not for her, per se, but in relation to "orientation" as a whole.

I interpreted that as "she's larger than most women, so she's less likely to wind up with a partner large enough to be a physical threat" not "lesbians don't get abused as much".

[Blade]

Sure, I just see "due to her orientation" to mean, uh... orientation, vs size.

(I've known way too many big chick/ little dude, big chick/big chick, little dude/little dude couples... and that's just assuming 2-person relationships... too many mixes of people to assume "orientation" would presuppose anything about size or physical propensities)

[DeltaSierra]

Many years ago in college, I was playing football with a group of friends (male and female.) It was wet and muddy and in an attempt to tackle one of the guys, I slipped and fell and ended up grabbing his ankles, he in turn fell on me, and his elbow connected with my face. HUGE shiner resulted. The next day I was having blurry vision, so I went to the college health facility. After being seen by the Dr, the nurse asked me to come with her, and I was led into a room with 4 other people who started asking me questions about whether or not I "really" was playing football and if I was "sure" that was how my injury occured. It appears they thought I had been hit and wanted to make sure I wasn't in an abusive relationship/situation. It was rather awkward, but at the same time I was glad that they at least don't ignore signs of possible abuse. I think its better that they inquire and be told its NOT abuse than to not inquire. That said, this was in a medical setting, and it was totally inappropriate for that guy to give you the third degree.

[BookstoreEscapee]

... is it going into Fratching territory if I relate this to .....

Not a mod, but I'm gonna go with "yes."

[AccountingDrone]

I was working alone one saturday in the storage room for my machine shop and a box of valves decided to jump off a shelf and hit me. About 75 lbs landed on my right shoulder, so I had a broken collar bone, a dislocated shoulder, assorted torn muscles, tendons and ligaments, the entire right side of my face was black and blue and swollen, my lip got split, my eye was swollen shut and there was blood everywhere. The phones in the building were turned off at the switchboard [back in the 70s we had a truly ancient switchboard so I had to lock up the building, get into my car and drive to the firehouse and gimp my way around to the side door where they were having a smoke break.

It was amazing, they wanted to call the cops, and were sure I had been assaulted and possibly raped. No rape that time [I have been raped, but it was nowhere near as bloody, thankfully.] but I did get a fast ride to a hospital and they called my parents [the perils of small town employment, everybody is in your business!]

When my BF and I would go out for about a month after that, I would get all sorts of people trying to intervene ...

I am personally a klutz. If I had grown up now, my parents would have been under investigation constantly. I fell out of trees, got stepped on or thrown by horses, fell down stairs, fell up stairs, fell on a nice flat empty floor ... I swear I did not have a day without a bruise or scrape somewhere until I was probably 14 or 15. I had black eyes, split lips, broken bones, bruises, scrapes ... I can trip over the shadow of a thread on a flat clean dry surface