Tag Archives: rape

Yesterday wasn’t great and today is waking up harder

I’m crying a lot again. I feel bad and dirty and gross and like I don’t deserve any kind of goodness or softness or support of any kind.

My mama beat me because she didn’t like how I acted towards the boys who raped me 36 years ago. My Daddy hurt me 3 months ago because he didn’t like how I acted towards the man who raped me.

It is feeling entirely fitting that soft and gentle support and non-judgmental acceptance is for other people. I will never be good enough for that. Never. Because I can’t bear the thought of my Daddy hurting me again after someone rapes me I will need to not come home the next time. I know exactly what will happen to me and I can’t take it. I can’t keep surviving the punishment that comes after each rape.

I had to get up and leave the table when my son dramatically stated that we all deserve the same thing after something bad happens. I was freaking out.

No. We don’t. When bad things happen to all of you I treat you with gentleness. I baby you. I coddle you. I savagely defend you from being bothered.

We don’t all deserve the same thing when we are hurt.

I feel so bad. Why don’t I jump up and work hard and act all plucky and emotionally giving and loving and kind?

Noah is going to feel invalidated. He massages me! He does other nice things for me! He barely raises his voice at all. Does that all count for nothing?

It would count for fucking nothing and there would be insane amounts of violence if my children were harmed the way that I am.

But I consented! Yes. Absolutely. I consented. Of course I did. Was there a different option? No, not with what we are and what we do and what we choose. I don’t get to decide. That was an agreement made long ago. I am the fucked up, bad, out of control one. You do what you must to keep me in line. If I want to be treated better then I should act better.

No. We don’t all deserve the same thing.

I feel like I could blow away in a stiff breeze.

I have to go meet a different support person. I am not expecting much. I don’t have a way to try to tell my story in 1 hour blobs to strangers that gives me any benefit. Like, I can’t get any good from that. It hurts to drop these tiny pieces of me with these people I will not work with going forward. I don’t usually make a great first impression. So I’m briefly meeting a whole bunch of people who are probably going to think I am a weird freak and no, none of this makes me feel better.

I feel like I am not good enough to deserve kind, gentle support from anyone or in any way. I feel so lonely. I feel empty.

This election is a nightmare. I was trying to find a way to flip the script and try to future trip with the kids about ways to pivot… nope. Just fighting and pissiness and dissatisfaction. So definitely no bounce that direction.

Back to head down in miserable waiting to be judged by strangers. I have that lovely gift of a prophecy from Ted. But what if he is wrong? What if I am such a disgusting whore that these strangers look at me and know I deserved it?

Clearly my reaction in the two weeks following mean that I loved it and I wanted him more than anything. Obviously. There could be no other meaning. I am a disloyal bitch.

I deserve all the bad I get.

I could really use EMDR.

Surviving rape

Surviving rape doesn’t happen in one day. You don’t survive by getting the fucker into a taxi and out of your home. Out of my studio. Out of the place that is supposed to be my sanctuary. That is the first step, not the last. It isn’t like surviving a car crash where you wake up and the crash is over.

Surviving rape means being able to look myself in the mirror every morning afterwards. Surviving rape is about thinking that whatever you did to get to the next screen was harm reduction. Every single shitty thing that kept you alive was better than dying. Surviving rape is binge drinking and binge eating and screaming and crying and falling to the pavement when out on a walk because the panic attack made my vision go black. Surviving rape is believing that you do not deserve to be punished and harmed more because you were defiled and made dirty by someone touching you or you touching someone else because you felt like you had to.

Surviving rape means opening yourself up to lots of judgment, scorn, derision, and contempt. Good people wouldn’t survive the shit I have. They die.

My very survival is what marks me as a monster. Good people don’t do the things I do, the shitty, dirty, disgusting things that people like me do. Good people would rather die.

I am still alive. I feel like I owe the universe endless apologies for not having the decency to just fucking die already.

I have screamed so much today that my throat hurts enough that I don’t really want to eat this lentil soup that is the first food I’ve had today. I’d rather not eat. I also haven’t been drinking. I don’t want to.

I want my body to stop.

I want to be good. Good people don’t live through the things I do. That means the only thing I can do to be good is die. That hurts so much. I have tried so hard to be good. It doesn’t matter. When it counted, when I was supposed to display my loyalty I was only loyal to myself and my survival. And that is why I should die. If I will not pick death over disloyalty I am nothing.

I betrayed my family. I betrayed my husband and made myself the lowest of the low. I feel like I want to use a scalpel to flay myself alive. Maybe if I make myself hurt a lot lot lot lot lot more Noah won’t be so mad.

Mama told me I don’t need to stay and let Noah make me feel so bad about myself. I don’t think Noah is making me feel bad about myself. I think Noah is reacting reasonably to the consequences of being married to a nightmare. I’m in this pickle where I can’t act good enough to not hurt him and I can’t leave without hurting him more. I can’t see a path forward that doesn’t involve me wrecking his life even more than I have.

I’ve betrayed him a lot. It’s not like this is a one off. It’s who I am. I am shit. I am worthless and faithless.

But fuck me, definitely no EMDR before the trial. Couldn’t be having that. Fuck the NHS. I can’t believe I had the ovaries to say, “I’d like EMDR. If not that then Ketamine, MDMA, or LSD assisted therapy. If none of that then I want nothing from you.

That was pretty intense. I was freaking out and shaking and clearly not ok and I just blew off one of the higher up doctors at the psych hospital. That was maybe unwise. That smart mouth comment is now in my permanent record. I mean, I started with wanting EMDR? It’s not a controversial treatment? It’s not a drug? It’s not a wacky thing to ask for. That was not inappropriate. I just can’t have it.

I can. I just can’t through the NHS. Curse my internal hierarchy structure. It is fucking inconsistent and I hate it so much. One of the harem actually does remote EMDR already. It’s just a trick in his tool bag. I could probably have a session today or tomorrow if I could just ask him. Hell, I don’t need to ask, I need to say yes to his offer. He wants so badly to be able to help me in some way and I have not been able to let myself receive anything from him.

Someone who has been in love with me for almost 20 years wants to help me because my health care system is letting me down and I can’t let him. I have also basically stopped talking to Travel Boyfriend. I am deep in not-fun-land and I just can’t accept help in this place from people I am emotionally close to. I can pay for it. I can’t get it for free. I don’t deserve it. I do not allow myself to be someone who has consistent support from specific people. Well, not beyond Noah. The few other attempts I made as an adult went pretty sideways.

I am feeling incredibly burned. I miss the God Mama. I miss my mother. I miss Sarah. I miss the Bonus Mama. All these women. Hey look, Katy Perry’s song The One Who Got Away just came on. I’ve been calling Sarah The One Who Got Away on Fetlife. I failed to sustain that relationship.

It’s kinda funny that I don’t miss my sister. Fuck that bitch. I hope she suffers terribly for every day that she is alive and that her death is slow and painful as she fucking deserves for being a child raping piece of shit. She had a chance in this life to break the chain. Instead she forged new links. I wish her nothing but pain. Given her romantic choices I’m pretty sure she’s been punched a lot since then. I wish I could feel bad for her but I really can’t.

My brother is single and whining about how women use men up and take everything from them. My brother, who never worked full time or even managed to fully pay for his own vices let alone support his three children. Yeah. Poor guy. Fuck the golden boy too. I don’t wish him as much pain. He is suffering a lot from being who our father loved. He will suffer for all of his days. He refuses to believe that our father was evil. He tells people that our dad committed suicide because he was depressed. lol. Yeah, scared of a life of prison rape depressed.

Surviving rape is not pretty. I would argue that my sister’s soul has not survived. When she chose to justify her pain by normalising it and passing it to her children her soul died. What is left is a soulless monster.

I have not raped a child since I was a child. I’m not saying I get a pass. But my children have not been raped by family members. That’s something, I guess.

It’s really hard to eat this bowl of soup. My body does not want to. Why do I keep insisting on eating healthy food and exercising? Don’t I know that this is going to get me lots of years of more pain? 9.821 steps for the day. Even if I did have a panic attack.

I can’t keep getting punished for surviving. I don’t know exactly what that means, but I think maybe punishment is not something I can accept for something like this. I was ok with it when it happened. I consented. I consented, what, days after surgery? I kind of wonder how much I hope that you would hurt me enough to cause those complications I otherwise worked so hard to avoid. Could you have lived with that? Was it worth it? Sure. You think it was necessary to break the fawn.

Fawning is a survival tactic.

What I am doing now is not upping the chances of me surviving. I did that walking on the first day of my period without eating or drinking anything. Am I making good choices? I don’t know. I am flailing blindly. I’m trying not to talk to people more than I absolutely have to because I know that vile bilge will stream from my mouth. I’ve probably cut 80%-90% of my social chatter for the past I don’t know how many days.

Right now the random reinforcement of punishment (sometimes physical with consent in the context of our M/s dynamic and more often verbal in the form of lengthy diatribes about the crimes I’m about to commit) I have received in the past 4 months means I can’t risk talking to someone in a tone of voice Noah doesn’t like or I don’t know what will happen. I am afraid he will think I am fawning. He’s not ok and I’m not ok and I don’t know what will need to happen before either of us are ok.

I guess my sister and I both antagonise our partners to hit us. She does it by yelling insults and degrading their manhood. I cheat.

We both deserve what we get.

I say I won’t do things and then I go do them. Every time. Apparently.

It’s the first day of bleeding. With good luck part of this furious screaming in my brain will stop soon but I am not feeling like I’ve had a lot of luck lately. I feel like if it weren’t for bad luck I’d have no luck at all.

I listen to other people talk about family as if it is a permanent fixture that cannot be undone. I think of Bestie and the brothers she hasn’t spoken to in over a decade and my family I haven’t seen in a few years more than that. Family doesn’t feel very permanent to me, in a general way. I am having a hard time with the war in my brain. I have to serve my indenture. Do I really owe many more decades beyond that? Do I really? Why do I owe anyone this much pain?

I reread the book I bought at the Lakota reservation called Keep Going. Man. That’s not a book to make you expect much cheerful shit in life. I think one of the reasons I have never felt comfortable with most pagan community is because I’m not willing to co-opt an old-world-religion-that-was-and-has-been-reinvented. That’s what I see when I see most pagans. The heathen cultures I grew up around were indigenous cultural ones practiced by descendants. I sure as shit never felt entitled to join any of what I saw, but I feel like my ancestors closed their ears to the Gods. I had a Mayflower fucker in my chart and the most recent arriving branch was a bunch of Mennonites that had been running around Europe trying to be the most repressive dickheads around for a long time.

I do not feel entitled to any Gods.

I do believe that Akhilandeshvari chose me. The Hindu temple on the corner was full of people who were a little confused by the white neighbours who came to Hindi classes and who dropped by to pay respects to the Gods and Goddesses occasionally. I have been given the strong impression by every Indian friend that they are totally cool with a Hindu Goddess picking me. They said she obviously knew I needed her. I think that is most diplomatic of them.

Here I am breaking myself and breaking my husband. We had been at a much better place.

I did not deal with being raped in a way that worked for him at all.

I feel like I failed the exam. I do not deserve to stay in the program. This is not my first time failing and being kicked out because my body could not do what was being asked of it. I’m not being kicked out. Noah won’t kick me out. That’s not something I worry about in any way. Just like I don’t entertain the idea of leaving him. This marriage is till death parts us.

Surviving rape over and over and over and over and over is partly done in stutter steps of eventually asking to be allowed to have some kind of agency and autonomy for my body after more than 4 decades of not being allowed to make all the decisions. No. That’s a no, dog. I’m a set of holes and somebody bought them. How dare someone else touch them.

I feel deeply dehumanised. I suppose that is a natural and obvious outgrowth of some of the kinds of play I choose to do. I suppose it is unsurprising that it is a natural and normal state for me to slip into sideways. You think maybe getting kicked out of a community for being a loud mouth who objects to homophobia, and dealing with denial of service from the NHS has something to do with it?

Hell, I’m even freaked out about how far from what I wanted the prosecution process is going to be. I’m going to have to go to court this time. They won’t let him out so he can suicide the morning of the trial. Phew. I have options about how to do it. I’m going to pick sitting in court and looking at him. That’s the least shielded way. Because why in the fuck would I do it by video in a room alone? That would be even more alienating for me. I would be even less of a fucking person just a figment on a screen.

My life is wildly out of my control right now. I can’t even seriously future trip as a hobby because I don’t know when the fucking UK government will finish our paperwork. We are picking this?

Yup. Better than Gunlandia.

I will take every piece of stress dealing with the NHS and the police and the courts and the cultural mismatch and low-key ostracism because I never have to worry about a cop pointing a gun at one of my children. I’ll take it. Most of my ancestors left this island (or the big one right next to us) almost 400 years ago. Yeah, there’s going to be some friction on reentry. I don’t resent that.

Noah is also unemployed for potentially the entire foreseeable future. It’s coming with a massive drop from where we had planned retirement income because otherwise all of the choices suck. I’d rather have his time than more money.

Yeah. Even though I had my door locked earlier tonight because I was not going to fucking talk to him right now. I feel like I want to kick him in the face and tell him to stop sniveling and get his fucking shit together. It is not your turn to fucking melt down right now and you are being a selfish dickhead. It can be your turn for the next 11 years, buddy. Knock it off until the trial. I guess you are right that it means you should just stop fucking talking for a while.

I just realised why I don’t like playing games. I don’t particularly enjoy feeling like a loser and I don’t have the desire to prove I can beat people. There is nothing for me in the process but bad feelings. I play because other people want me to. I never play enough to get very good.

Surviving rape never stops. The crazy shit I do that seems so inexplicable is maybe about my dad or Paul or Jeremy or Michael or Kevin and whatever the rest of those bitches names are. Fuck those guys. Fuck all of them. Every last fucking one. Right now I can’t remember the exact number and I really don’t want to try hard to figure it out. I think that would be really bad for me right now. I’m really glad I can’t think at all. Yay not eating or drinking.

The weekend that my rapist was arrested I played the song You Should Be Sad several hundred times. Yeah. That was fucking trippy to find out in the rear view mirror. I had no idea it was happening then. This song is going to loom large in my memory of this experience.

I think I am always going to be trying to survive all this. It’s going to be hard forever. I have a lot of physical pain that I can’t make go away with all the good food and exercise in the world. I am struggling on every level right now.

The most life affirming thing would be to throw myself on the net I have created. Instead I hide and scream and rock and cry. I can do very little right enough to trust that I am not going to get in trouble for it. Hell, an awful lot of this post feels like I am skirting the line of “don’t write about it”.

Wait for the trial to write. Wait for the trial to qualify for EMDR.

It’s like fucking no one wants me to survive.

I know you do. You don’t need to say it. Take it as read. I know. That’s not the point. I’m not whining about my friends doing an insufficient amount of reaching out. I’ve had more contact from old friends since I deactivated than I have in a long time all at once. I am not responding much. I can’t.

All I contain is poison. Am I even surviving? Traci said any amount of harm reduction that allowed you to get to another day was good enough. Traci ODed on heroin after getting kicked out by her wife and losing custody of her son. Yeah. I’ve gotten advice from some wacky ass sources in my life.

I have stopped daydreaming about the trip with TB. It is seeming less like a good idea by the day. I am scared that being in a room with me will be bad for him. I am going to fuck him up because I am so fucked up. 70 days from tomorrow. I wonder how I will feel by then? Fuck.

It isn’t feeling like a life affirming activity. It is feeling like proof of why Noah doesn’t trust me and why he should never trust me.

Just stop, Krissy. Stop being so bad.

Harsh

I’m not screaming and frantically wanting to hurt myself. I do feel harsh and angry and sick of being flexible. I feel like I cannot keep jumping through hoops to try and be good when there is no good that is good enough to not keep getting yelled at.

Parenting is a shitty gig in a lot of ways. Kids are feral creatures doing their best and you can’t regulate off of them. It’s not ok. There are predictable stages that are frustrating in their own special ways. It’s not that the kids are being extra hard. I just have so much less to give than usual. I feel depleted and diminished.

I’m really struggling with what it means to get help in this country. I am told I can’t get support from more than one person at a time… until suddenly I am told that if I wait to get help from different services one at a time I am told that I am declining help from one of the services and they won’t help me later if I turn down this offer. I’m deeply confused and overwhelmed. I feel like I’ve been threatened repeatedly by NHS doctors that if I am not properly compliant I will be barred from basic medical care from the NHS. I feel scared. I feel fucked over and abused.

Seeing more than one therapist is medical malpractice… until it isn’t and refusing the second person who is offering assistance means I am not compliant and I don’t deserve future help. I felt like I was going to get help from the ADHD prescribing lady until I talked to her boss and now I feel more hopeless, helpless, scared, and vulnerable than I did before.

I feel like I’m about to be barred from medical care because I can’t perform patient properly.

As we have just hemorrhaged money to be able to live in this country permanently, I’m feeling very scared that I will be unable to access the normal medical treatment that citizens get here because I don’t know how to be good enough. I feel deeply abused that this is getting so much worse because I was foolish enough to report a crime. I feel punished. I feel sick to my stomach every time I think about having to deal with the doctors here.

When I think of that insulting lecture about how people don’t get better because the glacial pace of the NHS is deeply painful and they don’t continue to come back for inadequate, inappropriate care. I can literally tell these people that I have paid for tests that reveal that genetically a drug won’t work for me and they tell me I have to take it anyway or I am being uncooperative and I am not interested in my own mental health.

I am fucking livid.

Mama was asking me if most of my feeling bad-ness is coming from Noah and the way he is melting down. No, he’s not helping overall at the moment but he’s not the reason I feel as bad as I do–certainly not on his own. I do feel really bad that he thinks I betrayed him but he’s entitled to evaluate my behaviour in any way he sees fit.

I mean, 2016. I will never be done being yelled at for my craven and disgusting behaviour. I can’t describe myself in mean enough words to convince Noah that I am sorry. I can’t debase myself enough to satisfy his feeling of being wounded. I don’t think he will ever forgive me.

I feel absolutely overwhelming like the next time I am raped I need to die. I cannot survive any more of this. I can’t. People are so fucking mean about me surviving. I can’t keep doing it. If I were a good person I wouldn’t be able to keep going through so much evil. The fact that I keep walking is part of why I deserve every punishment and insult. If I were a good person I would have been destroyed. I am a monster and I deserve every scrap of bad I receive in this life. The only thing I could do for the smallest ounce of redemption is to just fucking die already.

It doesn’t matter though. I have 11 years, 3 months and 19 days on my indenture. I am not allowed to die. I have to, in fact, work really really hard night and day to stay alive. I have to be careful about every fucking aspect of my life if I am not going to die in my 50’s. Between my 4 grandparents and 2 parents there were 2 suicides preventing folks from hitting their 50’s, and 2 folks who died because they wouldn’t take care of their bodies, and 2 motherfuckers who are too god damn mean to die–my grandfather made it to 86 and my mother is still alive.

My indenture runs out when I’m 54. I am going to have to work at making it that long. This is why I couldn’t have another child. Here is a fucking horrible thing: if I fell pregnant this week I would abort. That’s how not fucking ok I am. The idea of extending the indenture by an additional almost 8 years? Now. Not fucking ok. I am not working for that. FUCK NO.

Every time I do that silly thing where I bring up the 60th birthday party I want to have it is me trying hard to believe that I have that much of a future. That’s a sand castle I am not sure that I believe I will ever live in.

I don’t know how to get my head to be ok with the idea that I can’t survive the next rape. How do I endure the days of fear between now and then? I feel like I can’t get yelled at ever again for surviving. I can’t. If I am bad for keeping this shitty meat sack moving then I need to stop. I don’t want to be bad.

I am unable to perform the behaviour as a mother that lets me feel good in that role. I am not being a shitty abusive mother, but I’m not hitting the metrics I self assign.

I am definitely feeling like a shitty wife. My lack of instinctive monogamy is hurting my husband deeply.

Maybe it won’t matter. Knowing that I really should not survive another rape is going to be a good reason to never be alone in a room with people. Maybe I can cut off enough of myself that I will never be put in that position. I don’t think I would be forgiven for whatever I do so I need to ensure it doesn’t come up again.

The only sure fire way to make it not happen again is to die. The second most effective way is to be alone in a room as much as possible until I die. I feel really scared. I feel really helpless. I do not foresee a path forward where I can be alive and good and that hurts very badly.

Everything feels raw like a cheese grater has been at me

I’m rereading Noah’s email to me for his equivalent check in for the week. I wrote the last piece after skimming it on my phone. On a bigger screen I see more nuance but I’m still wildly hurt.

He didn’t say that M/s isn’t working for him he said it isn’t working for me. Which is probably partly fair. I should be accepting that he has the right to treat me any way he sees fit. That’s my role here. If I don’t like it I can leave. Only I can’t leave. Of all the options on the table that’s not one. Not because it is logistically impossible (it’s not) because I would never be ok again. Yeah, people try to tell me I’d be fine and I’d move on. They are wrong. I would never be ok again. This is my only shot at a family. If I don’t get to stay in a family then I’m not staying.

This is what I get.

I am struggling with layers of stuff around sex tremendously. The pagan book about consent I’m reading is actually really evocative and useful as I’m trying to figure out how to put into words why I’m not ok.

Historical actual slavery sucks because humans are not given a choice about being treated as objects to use until they wear out. They aren’t people. BDSM and consensual slavery is not the same thing. It’s about devoting your life to serving someone else’s life by choice. There are manipulative, evil, psychotic people in the scene who try to pretend that if you do M/s then you are genuinely becoming chattel. I’ve made my feelings plain.

Noah, the bits I’m freaking out about around you forcing me to do stuff, hurting me, orgasm control, and disapproval are all coming up around sex. Not elsewhere in our relationship though you are abandoning a fair bit of that consistency to instead be freaked out by me flirting. Last I heard you weren’t upset about how I’m washing your underwear. You don’t object to how I am raising your kids or how I manage your money.

The problem is sex.

I fucked up in 2016. I said shit that hurt you to the core of your being. I did that. I’m not claiming to be better than I am. I’m not delineating all of it because doing so doesn’t help. Not because it is a “dirty secret” but because I have fucking groveled for 9 years.

I fucked up in 2016 because I couldn’t handle the way my body was being disrespected sexually.

I fucked up in 2024 when someone sexually assaulted me.

Have I ever gone off the rails sexually at other times during our 18 year relationship? Not at all to the best of my knowledge. You have a fuck ton of trauma you need to work out Noah and you do need to go do that part with someone other than me. You yelling at me that I’m about to cheat on you again is not ok when I am literally giggling with a stranger whose name I don’t know.

Do I deserve your suspicion since I have already cheated? Hell, now you can say I’ve cheated twice. Both times quite soon after being raped. If you are going to treat me with this kind of suspicion and shame at all times then you need to stop pretending you want me to have a good opinion of myself. You think I am an untrustworthy piece of shit and I need to understand that or I will be incapable of understanding the parameters within which I must operate to be “good”.

The amount of “Carry the trauma and act like it has no impact on you” that is expected of me is quite literally inhuman. I can’t be fun and upbeat and harangued for hours about how inappropriate I am. Those are two states I can’t carry at the same time. I’m not that good. If the tirades are going to be part of every single time I am near a human male because I am not trustworthy then I need to cut my fucking life down.

I feel like fucking garbage because I feel like you expect me to do what I did the first time you raped me in 2006. I didn’t fight back and try to hurt you too; I put my head down and got on with expecting this to be the rest of my life. After that I had a fuck ton more therapy which lead to more self esteem and self respect and then I fought back. I will be punished for the rest of my life for it. If I die in the year 2050 I expect that sometime in the 3 months before I die you will bitterly scream “2016” at me.

I was talking to my new counsellor today and describing how I feel about my sex life. She said it sounds incredibly dehumanising. I’ve noticed that too.

I need to be owned. I am not good enough to own the way I come out of the box. I’ve been altered a lot over a lot of years by a shocking number of people. I feel like shit. I have never and will never be good enough as I am as a human being. I will never deserve to be accepted for who I am naturally inclined to be. I am bad. I hurt Noah quite badly if I stop centering him as the only actual human in my life. If I act like I am a person whose sexuality deserves to be treated as a thing of its own then I am saying I do not want Noah to own me. That is what I got from his email today.

What I am hearing is that if I want Noah to stop yelling at me I need to absolutely go back into the Choke Chain and never rattle it again. He wouldn’t be yelling at me if he didn’t have to because my behaviour is so bad and so out of line that if he told anyone about it to try and get emotional support their only response would be to tell him to divorce me.

I am the problem.

If I want to not get screamed at I know what to do.

I guess it is back to the Choke Chain. I’ve loved these last 9 years of being afraid to say what I’m thinking or feeling. It’s been really rewarding trying hard not to think about sex at all because it is not a thing I am supposed to want. It’s a thing that is done to me when other people want to. I am a bad person if I do not hurt myself fighting off a rapist other than my husband. I am a bad person if I fight back in any way when my husband rapes me. I have consented to that once and now the conversation is over.

I am a bad person because I went and sucked my rapist’s cock two weeks after he raped me. Why did I do it? Because it felt like the only thing I could do.

Noah is right. I am a disgusting piece of filth who should not be around humans.

I’m not going to reread that email again right now even though there are many many many paragraphs I’m not responding to.

If I want ownership the price is getting to have any kind of individual sexual autonomy in this life.

ok

Social media is a bad place for a break down

I feel like one is starting and that scares me a lot. Alebeard is talking me down. This is a strange universe.

Ok, next day. This is good. Noah and I talked a lot. This is a hard space. A lot of what is going wrong right now is not about one of us being malicious. We are both feeling highly traumatised and that’s not a great thing. Noah doesn’t feel like he can get support from anyone because when someone hears about how I acted after being raped they will tell him to divorce me.

I can’t publish the transcript between the rapist and myself before the trial. I will afterwards. It will be in the public record how horribly I acted because then Noah won’t feel like I have a dirty secret. I’m a dirty whorish piece of trash. I never advertised otherwise.

After being raped I proceeded to do a really good surface demonstration of falling madly in love and being willing to toss my whole life aside for this man. I gave every sign of whole-heartedly embracing my new destiny as his partner. I was cruel and dismissive towards Noah and him knowing that I said those things is causing him a lot of intense pain. He’s sharing that pain with me. Fair enough. Maybe I do deserve this part.

I deserve to have everyone who hears about my behaviour tell Noah that he should get away from me because I am disgusting. I know I am.

I feel like this stupid rapist is the natural and inevitable follow up for what I did in kindergarten. I have been chasing people to give questionably appropriate blow jobs since I was 5 years old because my lizard brain is deeply aware that I exist for this purpose.

That hurts and scares Noah a lot. It is existentially threatening and terrifying to him that I have this programming in my brain.

Most of the time in most circumstances I have it well under control. I’m not handing out blowjobs for a fiver in a parking lot. But it feels like an overarching threat. I could. That feels like a threat inside of me to me. I assume it feels worse for Noah.

Compulsion. The fact that this stuff is compulsive and difficult to control if there are specific triggering events. Knowing that I have this cascade of behaviours living in me is a mixed bag. This makes me feel dangerous, like a gun. Like I am the threat.

This is part of why it feels like I am the problem. I am the threat. I am the one who is going to cause the pain. I am inappropriate and reactive to things Noah wishes I didn’t react to in any way shape or form. “Things” she says as if men are things. Noah’s not afraid of me leaving him for a woman, which is a bit funny, but holy heck any guy is a potential threat. I suppose it is flattering that he perceives me as being so desirable but I’m pretty sure I’m never going to be successful enough as a slut to be able to have every man.

Dale Estey’s gentle 1989 novella The Elephant Talks to God takes a whimsical jab at such a thought experiment. Immanent in nature, God appears as a cloud or rock to converse with the inquisitive elephant. The elephant wants to know: How is it that nature, which is so giving, can also be so rude? What does it mean to be an elephant, and not an ant, for instance, or a tree? Is there one truth about the world, which presents itself to all of them so differently, and how would someone find it out? Why is there fear, and what’s the deal with love? What happens in death? Why is there such a thing as “if” — that is, choices and possibilities? How tragic is it that a butterfly, so beautiful, lives only through the summer?

“Butterflies don’t live a season,” answers God. “They live a life.” The elephant protests. “They’re gone when it’s their time,” replies the cloud. “To a butterfly the season is their life, they expect nothing more and fulfill their existence. To the trees, your life is brief…. Seconds or hours, long shadows or short, it’s all the same kind of time. The butterfly feels he has as long a life as you.” Then pondering how such limits could be more gift than theft, “God spoke to the elephant, and called him by his name, and filled his heart full of his beloved butterflies, and they soared through his blood, wingtip to wingtip, until he understood the power of their life.”

www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/do-elephants-have-souls

What is the value of a life? What is the purpose of life? My purpose has been tied to sex in ways that are challenging and difficult. Noah’s fear of my sexuality is a big issue for us. Noah has terror about my sexuality.

If I were better able to be monogamous this would be no problem at all. I could lock it up in a box only he gets to open and everything would be fine. The trouble is my sex drive tends to be mostly “on” or mostly “off”. I can channel it when it is on but most of the time if monogamy is the requirement it is better for it to be turned off. I wish I could perfectly wish away/turn off my sex drive. I’m sorry for every time I can’t. It is turned off most of the time I am around my kids. That’s been part of why I don’t have a lot of spontaneous desire sitting around the house with my family and why Noah feels so threatened when I have it outside the house. If I’m not feeling it sitting in a room with Noah and my kids I must not want Noah very much.

I wonder on and off through the years if I shouldn’t go back on something like an SSRI because it will eliminate my sex drive.

Me wanting sex is a problem. I don’t want polite, legal, appropriate, monogamous sex. So it’s better that I don’t want it at all ever and I simply endure it. I am a big problem when I want it.

Time is a thief

Rosanne Cash wrote a touching essay about Kris Kristofferson. (https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/kris-kristofferson-tribute-rosanne-cash-essay-1235129095/)

Write about it.

I deactivated social media accounts today. I’m not ok.

There’s a lot going on and it’s hitting me in waves. I’m struggling intensely with my overwhelming sense of inadequacy and badness. I am not dealing with the way I feel like badness is what my soul has in it and it is what I am and I can’t be anything else.

I thought I wanted the Choke Chain to end but I’m not really sure that it can. I’m not sure we will stay married if I change my behaviour.

When you are so bad that your husband goes to the police to document your horrible self harming sexual behaviour maybe I should go on drugs that eliminate my sex drive. Maybe that would be for the best. I should definitely stop trying to talk to people. I fuck it up over and over and over in ways big and small.

Right this minute I cannot perceive a future in which I am anything other than bad. I cannot perceive a future with less pain. I don’t see value in me or my existence.

I don’t understand why anyone wants me to stay when they don’t particularly like me or what I do very much. It’s deeply confusing to me.

Noah brought up the birthday book this morning. See–people wanted to demonstrate how much they care for me! Would you like me to go through page by page and list off all the people who don’t talk to me anymore? It’s almost everyone in the book. Some of them are dead. Some we’ve just drifted apart with distance… like me moving out of the country because those relationships were not working for me. Several they specifically divorced me in loud and messy ways. The ones who wrote the most about how I am the most amazing–those are the ones who read me for the most filth when they were done with me.

I am feeling intensely done with me so I’m not judging.

Write it down. Be bigger. Take up more space. But I feel like when I do that what I am actually doing is spreading toxic sludge all over innocent victims who don’t deserve that.

When I take up more space and put myself out there I am raped again. Then my husband is going to spend months or years analysing every interaction I have with men for more proof that he has to lock me down to prevent me reacting poorly to a rapist.

No. No I should not take up more space and put myself out there in the world. No. Stop fucking lying. It is bad when I do.

I am bad when I do.

Sometimes I stop and think really hard about how terrified I am of the ocean. Of how deeply convinced I am that the ocean is going to kill me. Then I think about being a counter phobic 6. That which scares me the most is that which I need to run at the hardest.

I know one way to make sure I only do one bad thing ever again and then no more bad things. I know one way. Every other way I will be more bad. I will fail more. I will hurt people more. Every other path is more fraught with more pain for me and everyone I inflict myself on.

I am not going to kill myself. I have a 6 year old. That’s not an option. There is not an amount of pain great enough that I deserve to have it stop in favour of her hurting more.

I hurt and I feel empty and unlovable and worthless. I feel defective and disgusting.

I feel like the single most heinous thing I do every single day is wake up and force the world to endure one more day of me being here.

I need to change my mindset.

“I’m not rejecting you” he said. Enh, it depends on your perspective. Are you rejecting an offer that would give you small pieces of what you want in exchange for not being willing to give up on finding the whole package? Yes, you are. It’s not a bad thing to do. I walked out on a partner when I was 23 because he didn’t want to be a parent and I did. I am not offended that I am being rejected but I am. It seems pretty logical to me, reasonable even. I just hope it works out how you want it to.

I feel rejected because I was offering a way that I would try to change myself to fit around someone in a way I usually won’t offer. I’m not a vanilla girl. Trying to figure out how I would exist in that kind of long-term relationship is quite an interesting mental exercise but it doesn’t matter. It’s not going to happen.

I feel bad because I am probably not going to be open to that kind of option in the future. I think that he thinks I will kind of wait around to be a Plan B if he fails to get what he wants in the next 10 years. I won’t. That would destroy my self esteem and I am not going to do or be that for anyone. Fuck no. I am not a fucking option you can pick up and set down when you feel like it. I am not a fucking doll. I am not the sort to wait and pine.

I will never stop loving him. I have loved him for most of my life and that won’t change. I have *intense* love for my friends. I will jump through flaming hoops to support my friends. I am devoted and adoring and full of encouragement. The thing is, I put most of me in a box in order to be respectful to my friends. I am so much and I don’t want to be inappropriate or overwhelm people. I leave most of me in a box and only offer a very small portion to each friend. I support this partition by not talking to people all that often. When I talk to someone too often I start wanting and needing them to accept more of me. My friends are friends instead of partners because more of me is not welcome in that relationship.

I’m not complaining. I’m observing. This is part of why I will sort of disappear from the Scottish social scene for a bit. I brought too much of myself in June and July and now I feel like I want and need to be accepted more fully as myself and that is not actually on offer. I am not going to reach a deep and meaningful level with most people here and it’s going to go quite poorly if I try. I don’t have the ability to absorb that level of failure over and over without flinching and I can’t flinch right now. I can’t look weak because that is when people attack the hardest.

I’m really scared and I feel desperately insecure. In a way this summer has been quite an adventure through what Noah and I moving back towards being polyamorous might bring up. Travel Boyfriend is a dear friend who entertained the idea of a walk on the wild side before figuring out it isn’t for him. Bad Timing is a selfish jerk who did not care that he was putting me in a bad position where my life would incur harm. I feel like acknowledging these extreme differences of what dating might bring up is important.

Noah and I are continuing to talk and negotiate because this is going to be a long and slow process for us. Luckily we are both starting from a truly advantageous position: we are wildly compatible and our relationship is really fun. It means that when considering the possibility of dating someone else we have to pass up on time together for it. That means the person has to be really special and not many people are going to land in that zone for us. We are intense weirdos and we freak out most people–that’s step 1. Neither of us can date someone who acts in destructive ways towards our marriage–that’s step 2. That’s not ok. If we tell someone about a relationship boundary and they are disrespectful that needs to be an immediate no. My life is a very carefully constructed creation and I’m not blowing it up for anyone.

I’m not confident that I will be as open to someone else as I was with TB. He coasted through showing up with a lot of history. He didn’t have to actively earn trust. He started out fully trusted and could only lose trust from there. That was maybe not fair? I’m not sure. It’s definitely not my default approach to new people. Usually people earn trust in painstaking increments. I suppose TB did, but he did it while running in the background and I wasn’t expecting it or demanding it of him.

Noah and I are talking very frankly about the fact that I shouldn’t have someone be more than a friend unless they have the capacity to be obsessed with me the way I need people to be.

A friend recently broke up with a partner because she felt like she was being used like a fleshlight. He said, “You feel better than a fleshlight.” He thought it was a compliment.

I live with someone who thinks my existence is magical and sparkly and worth devoting his entire life to supporting. Why in the fuck should I devote a lot of time to someone who doesn’t think about me much and who doesn’t care about me and my story and my skills and my life? That sounds pretty stupid to me.

I am not a person with whom one passes time.

Either you are devoted to me like your life depends on it or we are just friends who spend time together once in a while. I have traditionally enjoyed having sex with friends; I see nothing wrong with it. Not everyone I have sex with becomes a boy/girl/theyfriend. I have expectations of people I date. I don’t have many expectations of my friends. I take people as they are and I don’t spend a lot of time requiring that they care about me intensely. I accept the relationship they offer. I rarely ask for more.

I go out in to the world and I exist loudly and I see who reaches out to me. That’s how I find friends. I love my friends. My friends are people who appreciate me and love me very deeply. They carry me through life on a wave of devotion. The thing is, I have to accept that each person will give what they have to spare when they have anything going spare. It has to be the aggregate that carries me forward because I cannot depend on a single friend to be there to catch me. I have to just hope someone shows up. I get lucky a lot.

Jenny is amazing.

A lot of my friends are amazing. I have been caught and then passed hand to hand over and over. I trust that I will figure out how to build it again, it just takes time. It takes time and vulnerability and right now I don’t feel like I have a lot of resiliency to offer. I’m really scared and I’m really sad.

I have good reasons for both feelings. I am also full of joy. I am really and truly living the life I set out to live.

The funny thing about not gardening almost at all this year: literally my point is that I want to build a regenerating food forest that will thrive with neglect. I am trying to build something self reinforcing. In a way taking a year off is a great idea because I see more of what is trying to happen without my interference. That’s an important lesson.

Things with the kids are at a better place than they have been for a while, it’s super nice.

I can’t figure out if I’m being unreasonable with myself about how I’m dealing with the sexual assault trial. I want to stop feeling active anxiety in my body. I feel like I’m simmering in a low level panic attack a lot of the time right now. It is a lot of why I am consciously choosing to be anhedonic most of the time because it is that or feel too much of everything and be overly volatile and inappropriate. I need to be chill and calm and gentle and patient. Do you know what is hard to do when you feel existential dread and terror? Be chill and calm and gentle and patient.

It’s hard to learn when your brain is exploding with fear and anger. It’s interesting feeling this now after so many years of having my PTSD symptoms under control.

And I can’t exercise until October because of surgery recovery. Woo. Awesome to have all these feelings and nowhere to put them. Noah takes as much as he can. I write the ones I can. There’s still a lot left.

One of the ways I manage my expectations of friends is to not talk to them very often and always show up and act like no time at all has passed. I don’t bring a lot of my burdens to the relationship. I usually literally monitor time and make sure I don’t talk more than 50% and I usually try hard to not even get to filling half the time. I know other people need a place to express themselves and they don’t write. I do. I leave the pieces of myself on the internet that I wish I had enough intimacy in my life to share with real people face to face but that isn’t a reality in my life. It never has been. I think that is part of why I have such intense need to write. If I plop pieces of myself on the internet then no one can say I “forced” them to listen to me talk.

The difference between trauma dumping and being a writer is: you are not forced to read/listen to any of this. If you decide to spend your time reading what someone has to say about trauma that’s on you, buddy. That’s consent, which makes it not trauma dumping by definition.

I’ve been feeling really ashamed to write about myself publicly since I moved. I have a lot of weird sex stuff in my life. I have traditionally written it down because I’m trying to figure out how to practice harm reduction in my life. I think that is causing me harm. It is going to be far more scandalous here than it was in California.

Other folks would tell me to just be anonymous. No. That is acting like I have something to be ashamed of. It is acting like I am committing a sin. I’m weird but I’m not evil. I’m not doing anything that is wrong. A lot of it is non-standard and broadly disapproved of, maybe even for good reasons. Every rule has exceptions. I have been exceptional all my life. I don’t plan to change.

I want to talk about Akhilandeshwari for a minute

So. I was raped again. I wrote this post as part of a series in a different location. I am not, at this moment, prepared to share the more graphic version of what I have been writing. However I liked this essay very much and I want to make sure I keep it even if I never make that writing part of this journal. I am choosing a restorative justice process, not one of retribution and punishment. It is not up for debate. Folks are struggling to understand why and this my response.

Recently I had a good conversation with a dear lady I like a lot. She was utterly aghast at how I am processing what happened and she cannot understand how I am expecting to move forward sharing community spaces with the person who harmed me. I want to talk about how being broken, assault, and healing work in my mind.

Akhilandeshwari is a Hindu Goddess. She is the Goddess of Never Not Broken. I will be lazy and steal some quotes from a website.

The intensity of emotions, the pain we do not want to feel, all the broken pieces in ourselves that we tend to neglect and try to push away and ignore, this is the very territory of Akhilandeshwari -She says:

‘Look at it. Deal with it. Look at your part in this.

Look at what is broken in you and you will understand what is broken in the world. Look at how you may be contributing to these conflicts in your ignorance, in your destructive tendencies, your addictions and denial, in your fear of anyone different than you.’

One of Her many gifts is to remind us of the power to be found in our brokenness, in the loss, the fear, and the anguish.

How do we contribute to the things that happen to us? Why did my first piece of writing about this rape sound almost like it was a mutual encounter? Because I went hard into the fawn response. Because I have spent decades looking into how I contribute to my own difficult situations. I spent years delving into how I did or did not contribute to the incest I experienced. I am truly unrelenting in my quest to perceive my effect on my life.

I have spoke to the man since. He is not acting like the serial predators from my past. “I don’t remember it that way.” “You are over-reacting.” “Oh so you are going to lie about what happened?”

He is freaking the fuck out and full of overwhelming self doubt. He is apologetic in the extreme and willing to jump over every hoop I put in front of him. He’s on board. He has said that he is stunned by my graciousness and compassion. (Which is not particularly flattering. Yeah. I fucking am. That’s exactly how I’m fucking acting. You fucking noticed. Well I’m glad you aren’t stupid enough to miss that. I dislike compliments.)

It is because I have been you. It is because I have erred as extremely and I have had to do repair work at this level. I have had to tear down my self beliefs and understanding of the world to the smallest shards of glass and reconstruct a mosaic that I can live with. It’s why I am so fucking scared of people not being allowed to atone.

If other people do not deserve to be allowed to atone then I do not either.

I told him that what he is going to do for me is learn how to do better. He is going to embrace every opportunity to study consent and negotiation and he is going to become a fucking community leader in talking to other men about this. He is going to work ceaselessly for the rest of his life to help ensure that his friends and his community do not have to go through more of this. He is going to do that standing in a room with me and the people who know what he has done. If people respect my wishes that circle will stay small.

Of course, as Noah reminds me, three can keep a secret if two are dead. Right now 12 people know who he is. That includes my family, four people from the vanilla queer community, and five from the kink community. No, I’m not listing their names. Perhaps at some point that will be public but not right now.

Right now I am five days out from being raped and I am processing at blistering speed. I am assembling community support and creating structure from scratch for managing an assault. No, I don’t have a pre-created plan in writing. This has always been theoretical and I wasn’t high enough in any formal organisations to feel the need to document this process in my head. I know what I need. I am doing it.

I went to a class on transformational justice in the kink community and it was great for me. I can understand why some people, including a lot of folks who run events in Scotland, are very dubious about how appropriate this is as a way of managing assault.

I am specifically choosing people for this oversight who are not all close friends of mine. These are not people who are deeply invested in me alone as a person. (A couple are close friends, not many.) These are people who have demonstrated through their actions over years that they are deeply invested in creating community. That’s what I need.

The crocodile [one of her guises] also invites us to consider the many illusions in this life – all the appearances of things, people, and places and all of our assumptions. She shows us that things are not what they seem to be. For Akhilandeshwari and her crocodile all the false pretenses and roles we play to appear ‘perfect’ and ‘whole’ are actually bait for Her to come shake things up so we can come back to our essence. She destroys all illusions and delusions. She reminds us of the cyclical nature of Reality that we are experiencing in every given moment. The potential of what we are becoming is ultimately limitless. Within that brokenness there is freedom. Everything is not so neatly ordered, controlled and contained nor does it have to be. She is not stuck in one form nor does She want us to be. She demands that we consciously face our fears and losses, without dismissing them, running away or sugarcoating them. She invites us to cultivate the patience of the crocodile. She invites us to see the limitless potential of being and becoming that brokenness holds. Akhilandeshwari’s intense teachings are not to harm us, but to disorient our egos so that we can drop our attachments and come into our authentic nature.

I am someone who believes that most of us have deep brokenness inside of us. I believe that this process of breaking over and over gives us a chance to grow back stronger. If you do much hanging out in survivor communities you learn a lot about the range of ways people respond to sexual assault. Some people become deeply fragile and unable to withstand life. Some people brush it off as barely a thing. Some people lie to themselves about it happening at all. Some people become demanding and clingy and expect everyone to “make them feel better”.

That is not a power that anyone has. We heal ourselves or we don’t. There is no fair in this. We need support as we heal ourselves, yes. The very best therapists, counselors, and faith leaders understand this.

“There is no such thing as a personal problem. Every problem is a problem for the community.” – Sobonfu Somé

Yes, Sobonfu, I believe you and I agree with you. The part I am struggling with is the methodology of that. I deeply value the grief rituals from your country (Burkina Faso) and I wish that such rites were common practice in the West. They aren’t though. I have to start from where I am and go forward within the limitations of community I have here.

I live in a Western carceral culture. There are nuances to my new one (Scotland) compared to my old one (the United States) but they are incredibly similar. I do not live in an indigenous community where people are committed to staying together to preserve their existence. I live in the world of “Don’t overshare.”

A long time ago I came up with a metaphor. I may not tell it as well this time. When a person is born there is a fairly predictable path their life will probably take. It is etched in glass and it shapes their journey. Sometimes folks lose a few chips here and there, because life is difficult, but the picture remains more or less complete.

My glass picture was shattered. Whatever might have been for me on the day of my birth was utterly ravaged and destroyed before I ever went to school. I have spent the rest of my life crawling through the glass shards trying to glue them back together.

I am always, in some part of me, dragging my bloody knees across shards of glass. This is why I don’t want Noah to wait on processing his feelings when I am hurt. If he waits every time I have something bad happen (like being suicidal, or being raped, or having dear friends die, or having a medical crisis, or… it’s a ridiculously long list) he will never have a life. He will spend all of it waiting.

I don’t want that for him. Honestly part of what I hope for him is that maybe I have helped him heal a lot of his broken bits such that whoever he dates in the future will be less obnoxiously fragile than me. I hope he won’t need that in a partner in order to feel wanted. I hate that he feels he cannot have feelings if I was already doing so. That’s fucked up. I am always fucking having feelings. The world can’t stop.

Not even when I’m raped. I mean, I am taking a break to process a lot of feelings for more hours a day than usual. I am a cat hiding while I heal. In here I can suddenly scream and start crying and freaking out and no one else will be hurt. I won’t make anyone else have to hurt too.

That was not what Sobonfu wanted for me. It is what I am capable of right now.

I will never not be broken. It is not an option for me in this life. I will always be broken then broken again then broken again. Through every shattering and recreation of self I perform I get closer and closer to being the me that lives through and beyond every shard. This is a core of me that is present in every part of me. This is something I have understood for a long time. In the broken 3 year old sobbing and rocking on the floor desperately missing her mother to the 18 year old who was told “We won’t ruin a nice boy’s life for a girl like you” to the 25 year old who chose to double down and commit to the person I hoped would be my last rapist to the 42 year old who will not be told how to handle my assault and every rape and molestation and beating in between.

I am here. I know how to see the part of me that is not damaged by any of these things. The part of me that has been broken and rebuilt so many times that one has no inkling of what the origin was but it is more pure with every transformation.

No one gets to tell me what I will do with my trauma. I will use it to make the community better. I don’t fucking care if you wish I would fall in line with the status quo and get mad and seek revenge.

HOW IS THAT FUCKING WORKING OUT FOR YOU?

I don’t know that I could write down an official policy for an organisation. I don’t think that other people who suffer harm are going to want to go through what I am doing. I never claim that my path is the The Way to absolution for anyone.

I simply describe it as it is. Fine, in a Deterministic Way. Only sorta, not really.

I think through my actions and choices. I research before I decide how to act. I don’t think everything is predetermined. I think I could have chosen different paths. What is happening is not inevitable. The only constant is change.

The problem comes when the way I believe I must act is of such a high cost that I cannot pay it. When are my knees too damaged to keep moving forward on the journey? There are many examples of this. I am not going to list them here. They really aren’t the point.

“Given that there is so much more to be done in life and time is so precious I can’t fathom having been through what you have and still to care enough about someone who could treat you that way.” (A friend who consented to this being shared.)

You haven’t depended on as many terrible people for support. This was nothing close to the worst thing I have experienced in terms of treatment and gone on to be friends with them later. It’s going to be kind of funny. Folks will try to figure out who he is by watching me interact with people.

Good luck with that.

I was handed an opportunity to slam down an assertion on the universe that no matter how many times it breaks me I will always repair back into a shape that is ever more myself and true. This time I spend with him is not really about him.

It is about Vicki. It is about my father. It is about my mother. It is about my family and helping to create the community they will grow up in. It is about ensuring that this man is now a helper in the process of ensuring less harm will happen going forward. It is about being able to look myself in the mirror and say, “I am proud of you.”

I need everyone. I have been saying this exact thing here on Fetlife for a while now. This is genuinely what I believe. I am consistent no matter how you challenge me. Sometimes I may not want to be friends with someone, and that is my right, but I don’t want people kicked out.

Even the people who harm me. Provided they are good for other people.

Akhilandeshwari dwells in the space between who we were and who we are becoming. She breaks our rigidity, our calcified habits and thought patterns. She is a Goddess of Transitions. Sadness, despair, and grief are some of Her fiercest medicines. Her teachings can feel brutal to our egos, but She truly has our best interest at heart. No matter the loss or sense of devastation we feel, Akhilandeshwari presents us with an opportunity to look at the wild kaleidoscopic nature of our Being. She shows us that in the splintered aftermath of any heartbreak, these disowned, disdained, feared, bereft pieces of our self reflect back an essential aspect of who we are. Our experiences shape us.

I shudder to think of the shitty fucking white woman I could have become if I had spent more of my life in my father’s house. If he hadn’t been a pedophile, merely a physically and emotionally abusive alcoholic and drug addict. If I had one abuser and one narrative for why I was broken I would have twisted myself around that wound and I would have stunted. Instead I have harmed and been harmed by many many many many people.

Truly. One more will not cause a full shattering. It will merely remove a small chip. Look, Ma. I’m practically a normal person. I don’t shatter when tiny leaves drift by on the stream.

Am I minimising my rape? Yes and no. It wasn’t fucking ok. It was a literal crime. I didn’t want it and I am very angry it happened. I also know that for my body, this is not going to be something that upends everything I am. When I talk to him he sounds like one of my students. He sounds like a fucking kid who can’t understand how they have gotten themself into a situation they did not intend and now they are trapped.

I remember the day that one of my students came into my class tossing desks to the side and looking for a fist fight. He was 16 and big. It made all of the other boys in class want to get up and fight back. This was a whole class full of those boys. That was a fun class. I yelled “OUTSIDE.”

I told him that he came in angry so it wasn’t about us. I asked him what happened. His cousin was in a gang and had been shot. He was being pressured by all the higher ups in that organisation to get jumped in and be the one who did the return hit.

I called all his other teachers. His work was sent to my room. He stayed with me all day for days. I didn’t give them a justification. Nobody else liked him and they were happy to be rid of him. As of the time I last saw him, several years later, he said he was still not in the gang. I think I did at most 35 hours of extra babysitting him in that time. I am not responsible for his future. He made that. I gave him a safe place to sit and write through what he wanted for himself. I am not his savior. Fuck saviors. He saved himself. For a short time I got to hold his hand on his path. Sometimes we all need someone to hold our hands as we figure out who we are going to be in this life. It is not a smooth path for everyone.

This is a dragon I can ride. This is an opportunity I can use to help make my city better. This is a message from myself that I can’t forget my duty to help strangers be safer ever.

My life was passed hand over hand for many years. Many of those hands tried to break me.

They only made me more myself.

How did you hurt your back?

I remember how blue the sky was.

Movies like to concentrate focus in a way that is just off center. Like when you see the boot lying on its side under the bed and hear springs bouncing so you know they are having sex.

I remember how warm the rock was.

I remember watching the snot roll down the rock because I was crying.

I remember fighting at first and then not at all.

I remember white hot pain that made me want to die.

And my back has hurt to one degree or another every single day for about 20 years. I’m not sure I will ever stop hurting. I don’t remember what exact position torqued my back. At this point I truly believe it just doesn’t matter.

More about sexual assault.

Note: I am friendslocking this because I think my journal can be searched via google and I am not yet confident enough about this subject matter to want to broadcast it on the internet.

Recently I’ve been thinking a lot about rape and rapists. I am close with more than one woman who was raped and who still has to deal with the person who raped her socially. In at least one case this feels even more personal and difficult and it has prompted me to do a lot of thinking. Not too long ago linked to a discussion about rape that made me think. How many people know rapists and don’t even realize that they do? No really–look around your circle of friends, you probably know a rapist and you may or may not be able to figure out who it is. That got me thinking more about my own history of sexual assault. I’ve written about my early sexual assault experiences here in some detail but I’ve skipped the last few sexual assault experiences entirely. Why? I feel like part of the reason is because they were all less physically traumatizing so I minimize them in light of the rest of my history. I mean, if I can survive being brutally sodomized when I was like nine years old, what is a date rape here and there between friends? I say that sarcastically but that is basically how I have treated this subject. There is a part of me that believes that given how “minor” the sexual assault was–no physical damage–I need to just get over it. There is that fucking phrase again. “Just get over it.” Fuck that fucking phrase with a fucking chainsaw. (Can you tell I like stream of consciousness writing?) There is another part of the issue that plays a much bigger part I have realized recently. All of the recent assaults touch other people in my life in some way or another. Two of them are still friends with people I am friends with. If I talk about the assaults I will name them. Naming them creates a situation where people might say, “Oh I don’t believe that ‘x’ did that to you”. How fucking awful is that. I have counseled dear friends to publicly name their attackers because otherwise the bastards get to continue to have squeaky clean reputations and when someone eventually says they are a rapist it will be harder to believe–if there is a history of it, maybe something will actually be done about it. But that means I have to put myself out there and make me vulnerable to disbelief and maybe even to losing friends. That is scary. Hey wait! I’m a counter-phobic six! It’s scary! Here I go.

Cut for length.
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Social issues

So there is a weird situation in my life. There is this guy I’ve known since high school. Many of the people I am still friends with from high school hang out with him quite a bit. They really wish I would “get over” my issues with him and come hang out with the group because it would be fun. They think I should give him another chance.

But you see, the problem is that he tried to rape me. He was physically pulled off my kicking and protesting body by another friend. I’m really not interested in finding out if he is an awesome guy these days because I will never ever trust him.

So it’s all awkward and shit. I get the impression that folks think that since I wasn’t actually raped it’s no big deal. But it is.

{my shit} Therapy homework.

It is interesting to me as I sit here dispassionately looking at the many escapist ways I have of not getting to thinking about what I don’t want to think about. I hyper-notice the cleaning that NEEDS to happen (emphasis added to explain degree of obsession), and I need to go eat. Cleaning house was always one of the few things I could do to make my mother happy. I am also back to a feeling I haven’t had in a long while. When I am completely overwhelmed by my emotional state I cannot eat enough food to make me feel food. My stomach aches with hunger even after consuming a decent sized meal. Given how much of my life I have spent feeling this way I must stop and realize that I actually have a decently quick metabolism. Hm. But I am babbling because I want to procrastinate. I need to stop, but I really don’t want to do this.

Oh, this is going to be one of the few times I really ramble on and on as if this is a paper journal just for me. I don’t blame you if you don’t want to follow my ramblings and ickiness. And just to prove how much you really don’t need to read it: Here. It’s not even on your screen.