However, I remember the exact moment at 18 years old, when I learned how much every man in my life up until that point had been holding back with his physical strength and the crashing realisation that no matter how hard I fought, he was so strong and so heavy that it wasn't going to be enough.
My mother learned the hard way. My mother and I are not the same kind of people. She delighted in demonstrating physical power through acts of violence. I am far more reserved, and while I can be provoked to violence, that's not an easy feat. She hit a man at a party because he disrespected her. He knocked her into next week, which she felt was fair. She told me not to hit men. She, correctly, advised me that even a man who is significantly smaller and at a weight disadvantage is stronger and faster than I. She said if I hit a man I need to be prepared for retaliation from a much greater force. She further said that if a man's actions do not warrant his death, keep my hands to myself, but that if he is presenting a sufficient threat, end him. She said either kill a man, or escape him, but don't strike him unless I'm trying to kill him.
Then, she asked if I'd ever noticed the bottle of champagne in the garage. She said it wasn't being saved for a special occasion, but was an incognito weapon, one she'd already used the night she received it. She'd been to a different party on a different occasion at the neighbor's. A man there kept hitting on her. She told him from the beginning she wasn't interested. Throughout the party he was problematic, but she just kept telling him clearly to leave her alone, and avoiding him as much as possible. Finally, she decided to come home, and the neighbor gave her the bottle as a Christmas gift for our family.
She entered our house through the garage, and just as the door was closing, the guy rolled under. He was in our house! So, she beat him with the bottle until he was broken, bloody and unconscious. Then she dragged what she believed was his dead body into our backyard, and hoped he was just knocked out. She made as little noise as possible both during the fight and while removing him because my grandmother and I were just upstairs, and she didn't want us to investigate a ruckus and end up getting hurt. As an adult I bought myself a bottle of that sparkling wine, and it turned out to be very good. There is an empty one with dried flowers in it "decorating" every room in my house. I'm not afraid there's going to be a home invasion. I'm just prepared in case there is one. My mother didn't have to tell me twice.
According to my mother, our backyard was empty in the morning.
