Today I Was Assaulted

1. Assault: Law.
a. An unlawful threat or attempt to do bodily injury to another.
b. The act or an instance of unlawfully threatening or attempting to injure another.

Today I was assaulted.

I sat across a table from a man who stared at me with a threat to do me bodily injury in his eyes. I knew it. I could feel it. And I need to write my fear out of my system.

My job entails promoting the mental health and academic advancement of children. Helping those kids realize their potential is what drives me in my work. Everything I do is predicated on their best interest. Yet I am frequently seen as a representative of a monolithic system whose apparent purpose (in the eyes of some) is to tear those children down and reduce them to numbers. In their view, my every word and action has nothing to do with the kids, and everything to do with preserving the bureaucracy.

That’s bullshit.

But that is how I am viewed.

This morning, a man arrived at a meeting with plans that he thought would help his stepdaughter. I and my colleagues believed that those plans would have caused her positive harm. I tried explaining that to him gently, and making suggestions that would support her in other ways. Those included having her parents change the way they work with her. He clearly disagreed. And he was very, very angry. Yet he was silent as I addressed the child’s mother and biological father. Instead, he glared.

For over fifteen minutes, his eyes bored into me. I attempted not to look at him, but every time I glanced in his direction, he was staring at me, with clear aggression on his face. In his mind, he was beating me. I could feel it. I felt as though had we been alone, he would have reached across the table and grabbed me by the throat and hit me.

I have problems with “male anger.” I can’t cope with it well. It disarms me and makes me feel powerless. Nevertheless, I have never, before today, felt that my physical safety was compromised by a man’s anger.

It’s left me feeling shaken and still very frightened. I have dealt with many, many parents who have been upset or defensive, but this is the first time that I have been physically frightened. I trust my instinct. I know he wanted to hurt me. And in all my years on this earth, I have never had that sensation. I guess I have been lucky, until today.

I went away after the meeting and debriefed with a colleague. I wept some. And I wept some more tonight as I related the incident to my friend. I thought the feeling had faded, but it remains. I still feel brutalized. Today I was assaulted.