Optical Illusions

Yesterday I posted my “weekly” Internet sites (okay, so I don’t always get them up every week. Sue me.). I find most legal sites sort of boring, frankly, so a long time ago I started choosing three sites at a time: one legal, one practical, and one fun.

It’s been a while since I posted anything on domestic abuse, so I went in that direction. I chose a site that has Georgia domestic-abuse statutes, and I chose a site that gives warning signs of domestic violence. Then I got to the “fun” part. Well, there’s nothing even slightly fun about domestic violence, so it took a while to find a site that was fun without taking away from the seriousness of the subject at hand.

What I found was a really cool site with hundreds of optical illusions. It wasn’t until much later that day that I realized just how closely the subject of optical illusions ties in with domestic violence.

An optical illusion is an illusion of perception. As one who has been a victim of domestic violence, I know about that illusion thing, and it’s a bad business. No doubt there’s some evolutionary advantage to seeing things with rose-colored glasses, but like many evolutionary modifications, too much of a good thing can be dangerous. You can’t see what everyone else can see: that the person you’re with is hurting you. You see good intentions, sincere efforts, and the person as s/he once was –or was that an illusion, too?

Domestic violence does differ from optical illusions, though, in a profound way. With optical illusions, once you can see the object as it really is, that more realistic perception tends to be permanent. Not true for victims of abuse, though – at least, not for me. One day I’d see two faces, and the next I’d see a vase. Only during rare moments of clarity – or after a therapy session – was I able to see that both the faces and the vase were present.

Even today, I am unable to remember what was really happening. It’s just a fact I know, the way I know John Wilkes Booth killed Lincoln, and the way I know that water freezes at 32 degrees Fahrenheit. It’s not connected to my heart. When I have to speak to my abuser, and I frequently do, I often find myself remembering only the good intentions, the sincere efforts, and the person as he once was (and seems to be again). And it wasn’t an illusion…I don’t think.