LEAVE TO LIVE, WOMAN!

This is going to be a pretty long read, and I type this post feeling very sad, and very angry as well. 

I have been seeing posts about a deceased lady since yesterday and I didn't pay much attention to it until I discovered today that the deceased and I have a friend in common. This mutual friend is someone I hold dear to my heart and she's now grieving so much I can feel it in her posts on social media. 

I am hurting almost as much as her because the cause of her friend's demise is something I talk so much about, and with so much vehemence, at the risk of being called a 'backslider', but I don't care.

Let me state now that I have no intentions of downplaying the hurts of the bereaved, or of being intentionally insensitive to the deceased's misfortune, but the more I think about the sad story, the more difficult it becomes for me to brush off the irony that hits me smack dab in the face, and to just mind my business. (More on the irony later) 

Now, the deceased has died just four months after her wedding, and two month's pregnant. The disconcerting part is that she didn't die of a situation that was totally out of her control, say, an accident caused by a reckless driver, or a medical procedure gone wrong due to a doctor's unethical practice, or something like that. 

In her case, she died from domestic violence, a totally avoidable situation. 

She died trying to STAY married to a physically abusive man. She probably died hoping that her submission would turn a beast into a domesticated being. She probably died being afraid of walking out alive and into safety, for fear of what family, friends, and religious folks would make of her decision- her decision to stay alive.

This lady died- she died because of family and friends like us who are too holy to confront issues affecting our secular lives for once as gods with common sense and not as religious junks. We ignore any post that is not written in Jesus' name. Even when true feminists try to speak out against gender discrimination, against putting too much of the burden to make marriage work on the woman only, it is regarded as another foolish feminist rant. 

When people with common sense who value the precious lives God has given us over some darned institutions advise women to walk out of abusive marriages, we treat such advisers and their advice with contempt. We seem to place so much value on matyrdom within marriage, otherwise we would not keep advising people facing domestic violence to 'endure' and 'keep praying'. 

Now the irony of the matter is that the same set of people whose silence on feminism and domestic violence has been so audible are now boldly calling for justice on social media. I'm like, Wait. What!

Do we wait until our loved ones are taken away before we take a break from posting verses from Genesis to Revelation to actually chip in posts and statuses advocating against violence? 

Do we realize that if we hadn't always been so hypocritically holy, some of these deceased victims would have been able to open up to us, get practical advice and would have remained alive? 

But no. They figure, "what's the point?, I'll only be advised to pray, hold on to my marriage, fast and get his meals ready on time so I don't provoke his anger". 

They are so afraid of the label the society will place on them. And when I say the society, I mean those of us who are so heavenly conscious that we are blind to the earthly challenges of others, to the point that we don't talk about them, we don't advocate causes. And so, in  our silence, we relegate these issues to a status of unimportance. 

By society, I mean those of us who are so contemptuous of 'westernization' that we continue to make excuses for the lapses of some local customs that have far outlived their usefulness, to the point of being a danger to the common man, and woman mostly.   

What right have we then to mourn her unjust death, and that of thousands of others like her? She should be spared the hypocritical tears. 

Of what use is our seeking justice for the dead when we ridicule and look down on people who choose to stay alive by walking out of abusive marriages? 

Of what use is our seeking for justice for the dead when we keep quiet about the plights of the living? 

Please let the dead bury their dead, and every one else should go back to being holier-than-thou and forming proverbs 31 woman in the face of death. 

REST IN PEACE GLORIA ONYEDIKACHI ODINMA.

19.06.18