Friday, 11/04/05 - 10:24 pm.
My mom got back from the hospital. Thanks everybody for the good wishes. She's not doing that differently, though, because they didn't treat her. What the fuck. They just provided a bed for her to spend the crisis. Such is the medical system here. Fuckers. But I'm glad she's home.
She was released only a day later, and she checked out in the same state she checked in; it seems they just provided a bed for her to spend the crisis. A bunch of medicine students approached to her, in that awful way portrayed in Patch Adams. "Vertigo syndrome", was all they said, and they weren't even talking to her.
***
On my way back from the university, I saw one of the ugliest things ever: a man was beating a woman. We were on a fast lane, so my brother couldn't really see. At first I thought it was a couple of gang members fighting, one on top of the other, but then I saw a female figure run away from the man. As we were driving by them, I heard the woman screaming, sort of crying, with her hands on her head. The man was yelling, too.
It seemed like a scene from a nightmare, and the scream of the woman stayed in my head. I tried to get back on the topic with my brother, I wanted to tell him to get back and call the police. But we didn't say anything.
At home, he did approach to me. I've been in that situation before. It's useless calling the cops, and all that's left for you is interfere. But what are you going to do? The man can have a gun. And if you try to run him over with a car, even to scare him, what's next?. Unfortunately, he had a point.
It's not like I know karate. It's not like the man would listen to me. Maybe not even the woman would allow me to help her, because it's so, so deep in people's mind that it's ok to beat women, to teach them, and that this is a "private problem"; or even that it could make it worse for her.
This is awful. Not being able to do anything, after all this time of being told we have to make a difference. I'm going to be a psychologist, a social psychologist, hopefully, and as one, I'm supposed to be able to stand up for those who can't. And I can't do that.
Today I turned in the "culture of violence" research. The first part, actually, we also have to make some sort of analysis on our own. I'm so happy with the result, and in the end, all my friends helped (only, as usual, 90% of the whole thing is mine). But it also scared me to find this historical monster, in which people experiment differnt kinds of violence all through their lives.
I'm having some sort of crisis.
On a happier note, for the first time in a long, long time, my friends and I could get together for the sake of getting together. Well, Victor didn't, because he was very tired and went home. But Irene, Michelle, Priscilla and yours truly went for coffee. I hid behind the menu, in a "I don't know these girls" way, when they called the waitress to ask her how she'd managed to straighten her hair. A nice time was had by all, though. I missed moments like these.
Argh, well...tomorrow I have to go to the 45-minute-away town in the morning. We're pretty much wrapping up there, we're just missing parents. Hopefully they won't show up.
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