OK... Ultimately, my friends and family and even colleagues at work saved my life, but fantasy football was the tipping point - Fantasy Football was the thing that eased me back into society in a very safe and controlled way, which was about the only way I was going to be able to do it.
I'm getting ahead of myself.
It started out innocently enough. My bestie was going to a conference where he could bring spouses, and - not having a spouse - asked me to go lie on a beach and get spa treatments with a bunch of executives' wives while he hobnobbed. In. I requested a week off of work.
Simultaneously, a good friend was spending a year traveling the world. He's a great guy and a dear friend. When he left the country, I told him to look out - if I found myself with any time off, I might fly somewhere fun and meet him for a week's vacation.
So, when my trip with my bestie fell through due to some sort of glitch, I shot my traveler buddy an email. Not wanting to waste the vacation time I'd taken (nor the passport I'd renewed), I asked him where he'd be the week I had vacation and whether he'd like some company. Hell yeah - let's meet in Argentina. Sweet.
We had a wonderful time. We drank awesome wine. We ate AWESOME food. We met some really nice people. We got robbed. We took the bus over the Andes to Chile, looking down at each hairpin turn (all 50-something of them) as the bus slowly crawls down the mountain. It doesn't look real.
To backtrack slightly, yes. We got robbed. We were robbed on our last day in Mendoza, right in their central park in broad daylight (seriously - 4pm on a Tuesday during their Summer). We were wandering some less-populated paths, which I suppose we shouldn't have, but at no time did the situation feel unsafe - until it felt totally and completely unsafe. The shift happened in about 10 seconds. I'm still not totally clear on the details - my friend and I have chatted them through a couple times, and there are a few things we can't agree on. We do agree that there was a gun and it was real bad. At least in my instance, PTSD kicked in fairly soon thereafter, which was a whole lot worse.
When I got back to the States, I couldn't stop smiling - thanking people for anything, everything they may have done for me. My brain had frozen in "please help me, please like me so you'll help me" mode - which I'd been forced into for the prior 2 days as I struggled to make my way back home through 3 countries, 4 airports, 2 customs offices... without my glasses, which were in my stolen purse. I'd run out of contacts the day before. I did manage to keep my passport, because I never walk around with it during foreign travel. (I'd always thought it was a fairly silly precaution, but have always done it anyway - even though I don't go to places where there is rampant crime... Hahaha.) Apparently, this behavior (smiling and pleading and being generally spastic) is not unusual when something like this happens, but when my Mom tells someone - anyone - that they need a martini to calm down, there's something weird going on.
My parents got me at the airport, and proceeded to tell me they'd been worried sick. I'd barely been able to talk to them since the robbery; no phone, spotty internet, infrequent facebook updates I wasn't sure went through because apparently you can't make collect calls anymore - at least not from the airport in Santiago. They told me I was an idiot. I sat there and took it, but inside I was really, really resentful that my parents were making it about their worry. But I just pushed through with a plaster grin on my face... Please, thank you. Oh parents, thanks for the food, and martini (very needed), and glasses, and phone, and money, and I have nothing but what you're giving me, and I'm 32... Jesus, this is humiliating.
I tried to go into work the next day. I made it as far as lunch before trying to barricade myself into my office, and was finally forced to tearfully creep into my boss' office to ask if I could go home. The next day I had to call my mom - who was starting chemo that day BTW - and ask if she could send Dad to get me. She did. I was shivering when he picked me up and put me in his truck - I finally had to make him pull over on the freeway so I could throw up.
When we got to the hospital, Mom had started her treatment and only one of us could go in. Dad sent me in. I was having what was later called a "psychiatric emergency". The nurses had to tend to me more than my cancer-patient mom. They got me warming packs, blankets, tea, and crackers, while my poor mother was starting chemo, which must have been scary enough without her daughter falling to pieces in front of her.
Humiliating. I wanted to be there, to be strong for my mom - and I literally couldn't handle my emotions - or at least my physical responses to emotions. On some level, I really hated myself for not handling it better. I new I was supposed to handle it better, but I couldn't the handle uncontrollable fear of some blind threat from completely and illogically terrifying me.
I am unusually logical - or so I've been told. When I suddenly couldn't explain my emotions on any sort of founding, it only made things worse - I mean, I'd survived - I was only robbed - I didn't get kidnapped or worse - I made it home... Why was I so terrified? Why was I so impacted that I had to go out for a month on disability, and then only came back part-time for several months before venturing fully back into my working life. I still have problems with work, but it's mostly OK. In any event, I was sidelined for months. It was difficult to get through each minute. I would look down at my watch and not understand how the eternity of worry and sadness and fear I'd just experienced had occurred in what the clock said was only 2 minutes. Things are much better now, even though it still impacts me daily.
All that said, the first step toward reestablishing contact with the outside world (aside from my yoga class, which I'd scamper in and out of hoping no one would talk to or notice me)... The first toe I figuratively stuck out the door was fantasy football.
That was my first attempt at reintegration. My first attempt to pay attention - real attention - to anything outside of my own miserable little experience - even if it was just how much Hakeem Nick's production as a WR screwed the first half of my season last year... And it did. That man killed me like Mark Ingram at RB the year before.
Suddenly, I had something to look forward to every week - almost every day. Games Thursday, Sunday, and Monday. Waiver wire on Wednesday. Did I get my players? Have I found a Nicks' replacement yet? Did the commish really block my trade! Outrage!!! I'm going to message my buddy and see if his trade went through. The commish will hear of this! (Poor commish - he let someone else take the league over this year - I think my PTSD-driven fanaticism was too much for him.)
Oh, Fantasy Football - you were my savior. In a world where seconds and minutes felt like eternities and one week ran into the next, I suddenly only had a few more hours until something happened. Something interesting. Something that would take up more time. Something that would help me get through my life. It was an unbelievable blessing. I'm really not sure if I would have gotten through last fall without my league.
But more than that...
I love the game. I love high school, college, and pro. I love the tailgate I get to help some college buddies put on. I love underdogs in general and the California Golden Bears in particular. I love all the many, many, many memories I have of family gathering around in the bleachers or on the couch to watch a game. I love hearing my grandmother yell "Whoa, the flee-flicker!" during a play she's correctly identified. I LOVE that my great grandpa was one of the first 100 people to buy season tickets to the Broncos, and that my family in Denver still has the tickets. I love that when I am at my most horribly, terribly, irrationally worried, I can get lost in strategy for my fantasy football lineup.
I. Freaking. Love. Football.
So... As a woman, this love of football has been a little problematic for me of late. As a feminist, it's become nearly intolerable.
I used to hate the idea of that - "Feminist". I didn't want to be angry - no one likes an angry person. And I used to think that all feminists were angry. But what I've realized is that - even if everyone outside the feminist community thinks the opposite - it's not anger. It's a resentment that lurks inside of you about the very way you are - actually, less that than an resentment about how society treats you for being who you are. To a certain level, it starts to ingrain itself into a part of who you are. I avoided it as long as I could, but once you see how crappy things are for women, you can't unsee it. And then as you experience that crappiness, you always wonder whether this is discrimination or whether you actually contributed to the situation... I didn't ask for this... Or did I? Crap. I might have. I don't want to be unreasonable and ignore my part in the situation. Where's the line? Where's the line?
The NFL and the Ravens tried to argue that this SHOULD be Mrs. Rice's thinking - I know in far less severe situations it has been mine. "I'm partially responsible - I hit him first (haaaaaa) - I feel terrible too - I'm being impacted by his suspension monetarily and otherwise." Or at least that's what the NFL thought was a sufficient defense at the time.
So Mrs. Rice, all of these horrible things are happening to you and your husband and everyone's judging your most personal moment and you are just laid bare. How's that going for you?...
--- I'm guessing not good.
This is why having a partial domestic-violence policy is problematic. It needs to be OK, or it needs to be not OK. (And by that I mean it needs to totally be NOT OK.) Anything in between screws the victim - media coverage continues and the court of public opinion is drawn out. Each time that video is aired, Mrs. Rice is having to relive this. It's wrong.
Had there been some level of certainty (like zero-tolerance) around penalties for domestic violence, Mrs. Rice could have been spared this... Swift justice might have been nice...
And (NFL, I'm looking at you) if you're trying to figure out where to draw the line - how to define the rule - I have a suggestion:
Why not just go to the other extreme?
If there's even an ALLEGATION of domestic abuse, the guy is indefinitely suspended without pay. Players, coaches, trainers, refs.... Doesn't matter. If there turns out to be a rampant over-reporting problem and players become victimized by wrongful accusers, we can cross that bridge at that point. If you get accused, or the police think there's a reasonable chance you're abusing your spouse, it's over. You stay home. You get no pay. Contract suspended - if you're exonerated, you can get your back-pay.
That seems pretty easy. You get no carrot for this one thing, dude. There's only stick if you do this. But we promise we'll give you the carrot back if we shouldn't have given you the stick. And we promise both sides we'll fairly investigate everything, and we'll do it quickly. You cool with that?
Players should THANK the NFL for protecting their wives/girlfriends/daughters/sisters/moms like that. If you love your (wife/girlfriend/daughter/sister/mom), and if you thought there might be someone else beating her - not you, but maybe her coworker - you want the boss stepping in like that. Just sayin'.
If you don't love the women in your life, examine that. If you do, what's the harm in making zero-tolerance the rule?
See what I did there?...
By NOT having a zero-tolerance rule, we're making it much harder for victims to understand that they shouldn't have to put up with someone hitting them. When you see movies with story-lines where love conquers all, or you've been fed a biblical version of a woman's role in marriage, or whatever... when there's no societal norm to contradict that - no norm to say "nope, you're right; that's NOT OK"... what else are you supposed to think? You think you're supposed to stick your screwed up situation out.
It would be SO easy for the NFL to impact the lives of its many, many female fans in a positive manner. So easy. But apparently we're talking about dollars and cents here. Are there more ladies and dudes that support them than there are idiot dickhead fans? Do the former outspend the latter? Do they speak louder? Those are really the only questions left in my mind. Apparently other questions - though argued over - don't matter...
Not whether Ray Rice should have been suspended sooner. Not whether Roger Goodell should have acted quicker. Not whether Goodell should have investigated better or told the media the truth about having video footage of the incident. He should have. He should have. He should have. He should have...
How many more 'he should haves' do women have to put up with before someone steps up and does what's right? At this point, even if Goodell did - and I'm not convinced he even knows what "right" is in this situation - would fixing the issues mean anything if Goodell stays on as league commissioner?
I'm thinking no.
