29 May 2021
17 May 2021
0 fire in the hole!
today, i got in a fight with my parents because they took their masks off in church. which surfaced the deeper truth that i do not trust church to keep anyone safe.
so that's fun.
i called a family meeting. they came. we talked emotional dynamics and came up with two new phrases for the familect.
i'm coming in hot.
fire in the hole!
yesterday, it was four months since a man raped me.
these events are maybe not unrelated.
i'm texting him again.
do i feel shame? i don't think so. i think i recognize it for the coping mechanism that it is and i am ok with how i am coping.
this afternoon, as a very round-about way of getting to the grocery store, i walked down to lafayette square. a guy i went on date with in march had texted that they've opened up the park.
and, yo, lookit.
The mouse enters the cage to take a bite. No sooner does he touch the morsel with his teeth, than the trip wire releases the door and it slams shut behind him, before he can turn his head.
It takes a mouse several hours to realise that he is a prisoner, unhurt, in a cage measuring 18cm. by 9cm. After that, something in him never stops trembling.
13 May 2021
0 some day we will talk about something else
on tuesday, i went to the dentist. it was the first time something i didn't want went into my mouth since his dick.
i warned my therapist of my fear last week. i said, my fear is once we get going this is going to be like one of those magicians with the handkerchiefs, on and on pulling them out of their sleeves.
the hits keep coming.
it was the x-rays that did me in. i already knew i was going to have to tell the dentist that i'd been raped (ie. a man had raped me). i knew i was going to need to do that in order to feel safe. what i didn't factor in was how out of control i was going to feel before doing that, nor how activating it was going to be to endure discomfort.
to lay there and take it.
to open up.
i seriously do not know how i will ever go to the gynecologist again.
what are you feeling in your body? my therapist asks.
i wonder if my numbness frustrates her.
in the moment, after the x-rays and before the arrival of the dentist, i noted the adrenaline was in my torso so that i could tell her later.
hey, look, i felt something in my body!!! like a cat laying a dead mouse at its owner's feet.
this is a thread i do not want to pull. it feels like some sort of rape/assault hide-and-go-seek.
our metaphor was driving around the neighborhood and pulling the car into the driveway of the house of the abusive relationship from college.
i don't know what the metaphor is that describes how it is that i am actually going about this.
there are black spots. there are a lot of things i do not remember.
i'll allow the possibility does exist that some of it was wanted, some of it wasn't coercive, but then again, it seems like you can only be told you're a cocktease so many times before you're totally worn down and all of your decision-making is taken away from you and you have no choices left.
looking back, there were no choices. only grad school.
grad school got me out.
i want so very very hard for it not to count. my brain works overtime for ways to make it not count. because he wanted it so it can't be unwanted, right? even if i wouldn't have done it had i any choices left.
mercifully, i seem to have edited him (this is "college man"-- not "the date rapist") out of my memories. what i remember is waiting for the adults, bracing for the adults, to come and catch me and blame me and save me.
the adults never came.
i do not blame them.
debo reads my essay and expresses her guilt and i tell her NO. NO. we are not to blame here. in therapy, i say i do not blame myself, i do not feel guilt, but as i tell her this, i'm aware i'm extending to her a generosity unavailable to myself.
but this man abused our daughter, debo says and i am distraught for debo's daughter.
how dreadful for this to have happened to debo's daughter.
that it has happened to me feels less severe.
but stick it in the constellation of family relationships and i'm all like, omg, debo's daughter has been harmed!!!
my therapist asks if i want her to investigate whether the statute of limitations is up and i say no. because what even is there to say? how is this a story that can be prosecuted? how is this a story that can even be told?
there's the time in the lower bunk of the nephew's bed.
the time in his mother's shower.
the time on the back stairs at my parents house.
there are all the times i bled.
there's the way in which he took over my whole life so that i would go to the gym for three hours a day and, junior year of college, claimed wednesday nights as my alone night where i wouldn't be expected to shave my legs or see him.
this puts that picture from your graduation in a whole new light, debo says.
and i'm not sure whether it does or if this is something we're imposing upon it.
i was angry at him, undoubtedly, for showing up to my graduation, uninvited. i was dating donovan (albeit secretly, because we both feared that, if this man knew, he would beat him up). i did not want this man there. i didn't want him talking to me or my family.
there are actually two pictures. in one, i look fine.
04 May 2021
0 elsewhere...
men have raped me. https://t.co/56vhZTe9pi
— oh!-'lighn (@oline_eaton) May 4, 2021