What is torture?

What is Torture?

Torture is the deliberate infliction of pain or suffering by a

government or someone acting alone on an individual in order to

obtain information or a confession, or for punishment, intimidation

or coercion. The United Nations declared that "any act of torture or

other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment is an

offense to human dignity and a fundamental violation of human

rights."

One day, Ob told me about a job delivering local papers and pamphlets. Looking at it, I said it might be the worst job someone with a deteriorated hip could take, but it might be good for the exercise. As it turned out, it was probably both.

I did this cruddy, no-pay job for more than 4 months. I could never finish the routes, of course. I walked too slow. Ob had to finish the routes after work or on weekends.

Frankly, I was tired of being accused of being lazy. I thought this gritty work might dispel the propaganda Ob had been spreading in her family.

I had good days and bad days, depending on the weather. Essentially, my hip was ortho-arthritic, and it reacted to a change in weather dramatically. Warm sunshine might allow me to walk – still in pain – for an hour or so a day. If the weather turned cold or wet, my hip just shut down like it was in a steel clamp.

Within a half block, I was usually sweating from pain and effort. Every step meant replacing the support and control from my hip with the muscles around my leg.

I tried to describe to Ob what it was like when I finished a day by saying it was like “a symphony of pain.

I would walk as far as I could, then make my way back to the car. When I sat down, the pain would hit and nearly make me unconscious.

When I told Ob about it, she just shrugged it off. I tried not to complain too often, but she still came to say that I was always sick.

I felt a lot of pressure from Ob and her kids because I couldn’t work a normal job. The pain was enough that to take the train into the CBD to a job meant I spent half the day exhausted and dealing with the swelling and various pains from my knee to my neck.

I thought getting out and walking, and the small income it provided, would rid me of the harassing looks and comments about laziness. The money went to fund Ob’s evening decompression talks anyway. At least I might get some credit for that.

I finally quit when one day I arrived where I was going to do deliveries, opened the car door, and my leg fell out. The pain was astounding. I almost passed out right there.

I just turned around and came home. That was my last day doing deliveries.

Ob had very little to say when I told her I had stopped doing deliveries. Her face just screwed up, and she said, “Well, you know good ole (Ob) will do whatever you don’t!”

I couldn’t believe it.

Ob just went on telling everyone (of her friends and family) that I was lazy; and more, that I was only there out of her pity.

When I got her on the stand in court, I asked her if she intended that work to torture me. She said, “No, I thought you enjoyed doing the deliveries.”

It’s hard to describe my feelings throughout all of this. Overall, I fought the sense of growing helplessness and depression in every way I could, day by day.

That hip meant that doing the dishes daily took over an hour, then I had to lie down for a couple of hours to let the swelling in my hip go down. The pain in my back caused a burning sensation in my butt; twisted my knee; and could cause a headache from pressure up behind my neck.

After an hour or so making deliveries, I collapsed, exhausted, and let the pain slowly go away. It took hours. Really, it took more than a day each time. I always gave myself a day to rest between delivery days.

For Ob, I lived a number of lies about the effects of my pain. I tried to put on a good front every evening.

There was little sense sharing with her the fear of spending the rest of my life in a wheelchair or hospital bed. She just didn’t want to hear it. She made her resentment plain.

Thing is, she couldn’t have missed my facial expressions and effort. She would have to have been deaf and dumb to miss how hard it was for me to stand, or sit.

I think she resented my illness so much that she enjoyed the fact that I was in particular pain. And I came to think that she – and Lob, her daughter – found my pain amusing. They had private little giggles just beyond my hearing.

Yes, I think she intended that work to torture me, and I asked in court.

Her answer only described how full of herself she was, and how blind her selfish ego made her. Then again, the fact that we were in court was only because of her self-righteous, resentful greed.