Ten Days, Ten Prompts: Is Cruelty Worse Than Violence?

I am writing this from the floor beside the bed where you are lounging. You didn’t tell me to get down here, not this time, but I felt like I needed to be here. My grandparents were professors in a very elder-reverent, post-colonial, small-town part of India, and until the end of their lives, their former students felt the need to touch their feet whenever they saw them, some of them wouldn’t even sit at the same height as them, opting for the floor or a low-stool when in their presence, that is how I feel and that is why I am here right now. I cannot express how I feel in words, but I can show you by putting myself beneath you. I’ve been feeling this way ever since I woke up before the crack of dawn. For two hours, I lay in bed beside you, staring at the ceiling and wondering how you could possibly make today worse than yesterday. Then you stirred and came closer to me, slid your hands into the quilt and started to touch my cunt. Your touch was so very gentle, an onlooker might mistake the caresses for the act of a tender lover, but you know what you are doing. Besides, if they could hear the words you were whispering into my ear, they’d need to call a therapist or a minister. I moaned out loud and you started to beat my cunt, reminding me that I’m not allowed to make a sound without your permission.

The slaps turned to punches before you flipped me over and artlessly plunged too many of your fingers into me. I screamed. You slapped my head, pushed it down into the memory foam until there was silence and went at me harder, I could see the speed and ferocity of your movements from the corner of my eye in the shadows on the wall and it twisted my guts into terror, the crescendo of the pain broke me, and I lost all of my words. You’ve hurt me so much by this point that the pain is radiating from inside me to my abdomen, to my hips and back, and I can no longer react to it. No sound remained inside my throat, no tears emerged from my eyes and no pleas escaped my lips. You hurt me till you were satisfied and then, with a gentle nudge, you dropped me back into bed, covered me up in the blanket and I fell asleep clutching my knees without saying a word. I felt like I had slept for days but only thirty-minutes had passed when I woke up to the sound of you returning from walking the dog. I stumbled out of bed and scurried past you, I wouldn’t meet your gaze but you pinched my arm as I walked into the bathroom. I washed myself, brushed my teeth and did in my hair in a daze, like I was awake for a nightmare, and when I came back, you’d brought me coffee. You grabbed my plats and tried to choke me with them.

“Please, don’t ruin my hair, I just did it,” I said.

I don’t know why I said that. I don’t really care that you ruin my hair, but maybe I just needed you to cut me the most minute amount of slack. You flung my braids back at me and retreated. I sat on the edge of the bed, because it felt wrong to occupy the same space as you.

“You know, I wonder, what is worse for you?” You asked, “Is it my violence or my cruelty?”

I’ve been thinking about that question ever since. They are different things but they intersect so much it’s hard to cleanly extricate one from the other. When you slap, punch and kick me, that is violence, but when you hit me harder for reflexively turning my face away from you, that is cruelty. When you smack my mouth, that is violence, but when you make sure to do it with the hand on which you wear your wedding ring, that is cruelty. When you beat and fuck my cunt, that is violence, but when you force me to stay still and silent during it, that is cruelty. When you threaten me with punishment as you play with me, that is violence, but the things you say to me, the way your touch is designed to humiliate instead of pleasure, that is cruelty. When you beat me with your belt, that is violence, but when you choose the one with the biggest buckle, that is cruelty. They are different, aren’t they?

Violence is an act. A glorious, albeit mindless, act that obliterates me completely. When you subject me to your violence, I cannot think, because there is no time or space in which to think. I just sway and fall, like a dancer with vertigo, propped up and pulled down by the dangerous but delicious taste of adrenaline. You can take me to truly terrible places with the violence. Like when you beat my face so very much, I flinch every single time I see your hand move too quickly. Like when you injure my insides so terribly, I cry when I have to move or at the sight of anything phallic you may want to put inside me. Like when you leave my skin and muscles so sore, I have to work much harder to live my life. Like when the fear gets so powerful, it makes my head spin. You’re not a gentle person. Well, in some ways, you are a very gentle person and the way you kiss my forehead when you pull me to your chest is an act so tender, it guts me every time, but in your desire, there is nothing gentle about you. You hit me so much harder than seems possible to withstand so yes, there is terror in me in response to your violence.

Cruelty is different. It’s not an act, it’s a filter. Nothing is inherently cruel, I suppose, but everything can be and with you, everything often is. It’s the way in which you do things. It’s who you are. You are not really a violent person but you are a cruel person, I see how it thrills you to annihilate my heart right alongside my body. It’s why you smirk when I scream. It’s why you laugh at me when I cry. It’s why you set impossible expectations just to watch me fail over and over again. It’s why you study my body for weaknesses instead of endurance. It’s why you intersperse fleeting moments of tenderness into your violence, just to show me what I cannot have and how far removed what I can have is from what you deny me. It’s why you take something as benign as orgasms and pleasure and turn them into the worst spaces in which you play with me. It’s why you make sure I can never meet your gaze when you’re inside me. I don’t know that you could even hurt me without being cruel, I don’t know that you could even love me without it.

Violence fades and cruelty lingers. Bruises heal but emotional hurt turns to conditioning and it changes me. Violence is why I am rubbing my hip, intermittently, to release the pain, but cruelty is why I am cowering beside you, afraid to move too quickly lest you see me. Violence is why I scream and cry, but cruelty is why I am able to be silent, it’s not peace or calm, it’s the opposite of that, I’m not being silent the way a monk on a retreat embraces it, I’m silent the way a potential victim hiding in the bushes from a mad-man might be. Violence is why my insides are bruised and sore, but cruelty is why I know I still have to thank you for hurting me some more. Violence is why I am so tired right now but cruelty is why I know if I am to rest, I must do it on the cold, unyielding floor. Which one is worse, though?

Violence, of course.

You’d think I would say it was your cruelty, wouldn’t you? But I am wiser than my pigtails would indicate. When I say it’s violence that is worse I criticise a faceless entity that can be wielded by anyone at all, but if I say it’s cruelty, you’ll know I am talking about you. Violence is worse, master, because cruelty, i

s you.