Don't tell me, show me

 Although I have very few boundaries in some of my social media accounts, twitter has been one that I don't divulge a lot of personal information. The other day, however; someone had posted something to the effect of "Hey men, if a woman identifies a sexual abuser/harasser she  is giving you the gift of trust...so don't fuck it up." Perhaps all the shit that's up in my psyche just overflowed like a toilet full of shit, and that's why I replied "My brother showed me who he truly was when he remained besties with him (my abuser), but it took me 40 years to *see* who he (my brother) was."

I didn't really have any feelings about said discloser until someone commented, "That's fucked up. Anyone who hurt my sister would be come a statistic." Now this person obviously had good intentions, but the statement pissed me off, and here in my disorganized way are the reasons why:

1. My brother upon my disclosure called John up and told him he would "fucking kill" him if he ever touched me again. At first glance that might seem super awesome, but here is the reality:
    a. a couple weeks later they were indeed besties again, and I had to hear about his buddy John for the         next 20 years, including the phrase "You remember John, right?"-um, yeah, I remember the fucker             every single day of my fucking life because of flashbacks and intrusive memories.
    b. as a 7 year old, I took his threat to kill him very seriously and it scared the fuck out of me.

2. A few years back there was some survey of folks asking if they would step in if they saw someone experiencing a hate crime and something like 9 out of 10 people said they would. It has been my experience as someone who has experienced hate crimes that even when there are literally 100s of people around, no on fucking steps in, so yeah, everyone wants to fantasize about being the Red Dawn hero, but when it comes down to it, no one is fucking willing to actually do anything when they see someone being hurt...esp if it is a male doing the hurting.

3. Related to number 2, I have experience sexual harassment at work multiple times and the men around me did nothing but minimize the behavior (oh, he doesn't mean anything by it-meanwhile my manager has to physically restrain the fucker from pulling out his dick while he stands on the lunch table right in front of me.), and do nothing to stop it or confront the person.

So, in conclusion wannabe allies, just as writers are told; don't tell me, SHOW me, otherwise it's just meaningless bullshit to make you feel good about yourself, to make you feel like the big tough hero. Tell me about the time you have stuck up for a woman being harassed/abused/assaulted/terrorized, because I know there isn't a person out there who hasn't witnessed their bestie, dad, son, coworker, or fellow dude in line at starbucks engage in shitty behavior. Tell me about the time you confronted one of these douche bags.

Thank you for coming to my terry talk.

Early Lessons in Boundary Trampling (TW: SA)

Sometimes when I was in grade school if my parents weren't going to be home until late and my siblings weren't home they would have me stay with the bus driver until they got home. Now this was never a pleasant experience as her house smelled of rotten onions and the downstairs toilet that was filled to the brim with piss and shit, and which her boys continued to use.

This particular evening she sent me and the boys aged 1 year younger, 3 years older, and 7 years older downstairs to play while she made dinner. Upon arriving downstairs the oldest boy asked if I wanted to play strip poker. Now, being a naïve 7 year old, I didn't know what the "strip" in strip poker meant, but my spidey senses told me I better clarify. So I asked, and the answer I got was, "you know, STRIP poker." No, I didn't know, and I kept asking and kept getting the same answer. And just to make it feel a little more hinky, I was informed that if I agreed to play I wasn't allowed to quit until the game was done. 

After the round and round of trying unsuccessfully to get clarification as to what exactly this card game entailed, and getting badgered by 3 boys I finally agreed to play. As S shuffled the cards he explained that whoever last the round would have to take an item of clothing off (Oh! I get it...STRIP poker), but just incase their mom came down we just had to take off our clothes long enough to show everyone then put our clothes back on. I immediately rescinded my consent upon realizing what kind of game this was, but was informed that since I had said I would play I was not allowed to not play, and my arguments that I didn't know what the game was was met with, "Well, you shouldn't have said you would play then." And what about the fact that I didn't know how to play poker; well, no worries because P was going to help me.

And so, thinking I had no choice to play, the card game began. Interestingly enough, I lost every round even with P's help. And as each round progressed, so did my humiliation, and shame. And each time the cards were dealt I begged that they let me go upstairs, but my protests, and my discomfort were no concern of theirs, and their solution was that I should just enjoy watching as my fellow losers took of their clothes. But I had no interest, or curiosity in seeing any of their bodies, just humiliation and disgust. 

When we got to what would be the last round, and the losers were going around I begged not to have to do it, but I was informed that if I didn't remove my clothes they would do it for me. In either his misguided attempt to make me feel better about it by watching the oldest, or some twisted enjoyment of my repulsion at seeing his brother S, P pulled my hands away from my eyes and turned me toward his brother and wouldn't let go until I opened my eyes. So I begrudgingly peeked and got it over with. And I had seen penises before; living on the prairie men are more likely to pee on a bush than go into the house to use the bathroom, so the accidental viewing when rounding a corner isn't uncommon, but I had never seen an erect penis, nor did I understand that whole process, but I was disturbed at what I saw in the brief second I looked at S. Looking back and realizing how much worse this could have been, I'm grateful that this was the end of the "game" as their mother called us up for dinner.

But this little adventure in fuckery apparently opened a door into SA for S. As we trekked up the stairs, S came up right behind me, and flung his hand between my legs with such force so he could grope my crotch that he knocked me off of my feet. And from that day forward, whether we were at his house, or at school (yes, with plenty of witnesses around) until he left for the Navy he would repeat this behavior, and no amount of telling him off would phase him-he would just laugh in my face and play innocent, "What? I didn't do anything!" 

When I blog about shit I often try to find some silver lining, or positive lesson I've learned, but fuck that shit. What I learned, and a lesson that was repeated is that my boundaries as someone who inhabits a female body will not get respected by males. What I've learned is that when I say "no" to men, no matter how forceful, in the end if I don't comply I will be physically forced to comply. And more importantly, I've learned that they will never be held accountable (nor will they take accountability), and I just need to not make a "big deal" of it.

In broad-fucking-daylight in front of multiple witnesses. And still we are asked, "why didn't you report it."

(It's all my) fault

I want to make sense of all the shit in my head, and the stuff stuck in my body that I can't attach words to, but sits in me like congealed oatmeal weighing me down, hindering free movement. A 30 year fucked-up-shit anniversary is coming up. Over the last year I've tried unpacking it through therapy, and writing, and although I've had some epiphanies when I've taken the time to step back at let Author aspect of myself take an objective look at it, its still...a spear through my heart? a weight on my chest? a yoke around me neck? 

Self blame. It's a core operating principle. It's what keeps me mired down.

So, why is it my fault...why is that the default-setting regardless of the issue or circumstance? Why does it always have to be my fault? Mom? Certainly that is some of it...she was so very fragile and I had to take such delicate care of her, and gods forbid she ever felt guilt, shame, or regret...the world would implode, just as her psyche did that night in the kitchen when she had her psychotic break. She decompensated, and at 9 or 10 I was the only "responsible adult" trying to make sense of things, trying to prevent it-and failing. It was my fault.

Skip back a few more years, and there's John...he at 15, me at 7...and it was my fault. I should have fought harder, I should have made him drag me back there EVERY time, I should have said "no" more than the countless times that I had said no. I should have run away from home, I should have thought to kill myself. Notice not once is the narrative, "I should have told ____." I knew better, I know better. There was no one who would come to my rescue. It's your fault, figure it out or deal with it.

Fortunately, a few years back I finally unraveled that particular moldy bundle of "its all my fault"  trauma...well as much as I can unravel it. And the key thread that really got shit moving was the self-blame piece. When I could quiet the loudest voice in the living room who was so quick to always shout above the rest, "If I just would have done something different!", always quick to find a reason that it was my fault, then the hooks started to disintegrate. 

I wish I could say quieting the self-blame voice from that particular situation had carry-over to the hills and valleys of memory and experience, but unfortunately it didn't. So here we are again, trying to slay the hydra that has its many sets of fangs sunk into that experience.

I have a list of objective, legit reasons it's not my fault-but logic doesn't matter. Facts don't matter. That self-blame part is like an old redneck screaming, "I've done this for 30 years, I've believed this for 30 years-fuck your facts! I know what I know!" There is no logic to this voice. Only defensiveness, and a hard shell of defiance. 

What purpose does it serve? What is the job of this part? Why the defensiveness? Who will keep me safe? Maybe it's like how I point out how I'm fat to everyone before they can tell me-yeah, I already know; no need for you to shame me too! I'll attach myself before you have a chance to. Yeah, it was my fault-we don't need to discuss it, I already know. Thanks for playing though. Thanks for playing. It was my fault, and i know it. Now let me slink off to the corner and sit with my shame. MINE-I don't need any more from you, I already have plenty of my own, thank you very much. I have plenty of my own. Fucking shame. What would I do without it? What would I be without it? My mother? My sister? My father? What would I be without self-blame? Dead? Would I exist without it? There has to be something more, right? I don't know. I don't fucking know. I don't fucking know. 

***

Since leaving this to sit and ferment I had a session with my therapist during which she wondered aloud if the self-blame, and minimization was a way that I have protected myself from the terror. Terror that I had no room to fully experience, Terror that was never validated, Terror I've been too afraid of looking at. 

Damn.

Terror, that I finally need to slow down and take a look at. Terror that I need to honor. Legit fucking terror. 

As uncomfortable as shame is, it's far less (ahem) terrifying than terror. And there is a little bit of terror in admitting how terrifying so much of my first 20 or so years was. Even as I write this, there's a little chihuahua nipping at my heals saying, "Well, Les didn't ACTUALLY shoot you-that bullet was 2 feet away from your heart! What's the big deal?" But really, is it normal or common for a gun to go off in a dining room-is it normal and okay and no-big-deal that if you hadn't just stood up to turn the fan off that that bullet would have torn through your heart? 

The good news is that with this new insight the voice for the most part is a chihuahua, not a belligerent mobster with a baseball bat. And as I review some of these old files through the lens of terror rather than shame they start to feel a little lighter, a little more manageable. 

Explorations of Terror (Trigger Warning: Medical and DV terror ahead)

This week I had my first colonoscopy. It's something I've been needing to do for a few years as my mother was diagnosed with colon cancer about 5 years ago, and I was having some concerning symptoms. I...explored the idea of getting a colonoscopy back then, but wasn't super excited about it and my PCP was a bit on the dismissive side when I tried to bring my concerns up, and that was enough to slide in to the pit of...I don't know. Like most people I'm just not super excited about anything that is a colonoscopy; the prep, the having a stranger shove a tube up your butt, all the potential risks associated with anesthesia and the procedure, but then I also had my own Dr Nassar when I was a youngster to add a nice heap of trauma on top of that shit sandwich. Fortunately, while chatting with a friend recently she told me about her very positive (?) experience with her MD, and since I had some other invasive tests I was avoiding I thought I'd distract myself by taking care of a test I would be unconscious for. 

When i arrived at the site and they were taking my vitals I made an interesting observation. Usually in times of intense distress/terror (including/especially medical shit) my blood pressure and heart rate drop, but when I went in for that morning they were both elevated...so apparently I switched out of my usual "freeze" response, and into "fight" or "flight", which makes me think perhaps I'm shifting out of pure hopelessness/powerlessness as my auto-response to perceived threats. Although medical shit still is equated with trauma and terror, I'm responding differently, so even though it feels like I'm merely treading water in therapy I am apparently moving forward.

Speaking of terror...I have an old blog back there somewhere where I talked about discovering that the un-identifiable emotion that I struggled with when I approached my trauma in therapy was terror. One might think that identifying terror should be pretty easy, but I had this bias that it couldn't be terror because my life wasn't in danger. Even now as I'm exploring a mine field that I have kept buried for almost 30 years that belief that "terror" must equate "life in danger" keeps interfering with getting a handle on this shit. Specifically, "I wasn't afraid for my life so I wasn't "terrified" enough to justify freezing, I wasn't terrified enough to justify not fighting back harder"...so it was all my fault.

This is still an incomplete thought but I was thinking about terror and how there's also this thought that terror for me can only be associated with real potential severe bodily harm/death from physical violence...not a half-assed threat of physical violence, but actual physical violence. (the funny thing is that I don't really fear physical violence...I kind of get a delightful adrenaline rush from it-i hate the confrontation and conflict of it, but I love the actual violence, the fighting). As I was thinking about this, this memory popped into my head: I was about 14 and my sister was over with her husband, and he just flipped out with no warning, threw her in the chair, pinned her, and was cocking his fist back to beat the fuck out of her again. She was terrified (maybe that's why I can identify my own terror in that moment), and telling me to call the cops, and he was looking at me with his crazy-rage eyes telling me not to, and I froze. Good news, he got himself under control before he struck her. But I did nothing; I was frozen by my terror, by his uncontrolled rage, the conflict, and perhaps the fact that he threw her around so easily (my psycho sister who EVERYONE is afraid of).  I wasn't afraid for *my* life, but I was legit terrified, and I don't question that terror.

Family: Age 7, part 1

We were isolated, living in the vast emptiness of the ND prairie-no friends, no play ground to escape to, no crowds to disappear in to. My father was melting into his alcoholism-most of his day was spent away from the house hiding his drinking, and when he was home he was nearly comatose from his non-stop drinking. My mother although she hadn't had her first mental-health hospitalization of my life-time, I already knew that her emotional state was on a delicate balance between volatile and fragile, and any false move on my part was not acceptable. My half-sister, was just volatile...she loved you, or she wanted to "FUCKING KILL YOU!!!" Her chaos ruled our house. Her screaming flip-outs, the running away, the going to The Social Workers and telling fantastical tales furthering the family need for secrecy. The chaos that was her, and the chaos that she created in the home was enhanced by her diet-pill addiction that would leave her sobbing and waling incoherently as she cut a path from bathroom to kitchen on her knees. She would laugh in your face when she hurt you, because she truly found delight in doing so. My half-brother was my closest ally, my protector when my sister was at her worst, but just as emotionally unavailable as the rest. And there was no respite to be found outside of the home. I was drowning in shame. I was in tormenting pain. A pain I had to hide, I pain that I had to bear alone. There was no place to be safe. There was no place to let my guard down. There was no place, and no one to provide solace. How did I bear it? How did I carry on? How did I survive?

Everything is My Fault. The Gift from my Mother that Keeps on Giving.

My life revolves around the knowledge that Everything Is My Fault. I've been exploring on particular event, and I went exploring in the rabbit hole of "everything is my fault" (and because everything is my fault, this event can't be named for what it is, because that would mean it wasn't my fault, and clearly it was because everything is always my fault). 

So where did that belief about everything being my fault start...oh yeah-as per my mother everything is my fault (for example: she stayed with my dad because she didn't wasn't to upset me {and then her suicide attempts because she was so distressed from living with my dad were by default my fault}, we moved from WY because I was unhappy (really she was escaping her old ex-husband), she can't have anything that makes her happy because of me (there's a blog somewhere about her smashing all of her plants-its a super fun read)). 

I pondered the idea, "what would be like to navigate through my life not operating from a place that EVERYTHING (bad) IS MY FAULT?" And my first thought was that my life isn't really MY life because I am still driven by her...only now instead of my directly trying to save/rescue/take care of her, I am focusing my energy on avoiding her so I don't upset her (or me), and still trying to avoid doing anything that will upset her. 

 So, as I sit with this little gift from my mother, I wonder how much easier it would be for me to let go of the All My Fault filter when it comes to exploring things like my mis-adventures with men who should be locked up for the good of society if I wasn't carrying around the ball and chain from my mother. And I get that for many of us who walk this world in a skin suit designed for females the default setting seems to be "its my fault" or "i did something wrong" especially when it comes to unfortunate incidents with male skin suits (esp pervy male skin suits), but would i be able to escape or at least navigate the shame a little easier if my mom hadn't done such a good job of ingraining in me that it's all my fault?

Sisters

I have two sisters. Half sisters. My oldest had moved across the country by the time I was one year old, and although my mom and I lived close to her during part of my junior year of high school, we were never really close. As she slipped further into racism, the little connection we maintained for the sake of family was severed. My other sister (K), who is also my closest sibling in age at 9 years older has been since some of my earliest memories a source of chaos and terror in my family. Her volitility made even the most dysfunctional of adults in the family seem stable. One minute she loved you, the next minute she was screaming that she was "GOING TO FUCKING KILL YOU!!!" She would laugh in perverted delight when she caused, or attempted to cause me injury (piercing my flesh with her fingernails to see if she could get a good enough of a hold to throw me, trying to pour scalding hot water on my head, fun things like that. She is so unwell, and I feel sorry for her children who couldn't escape her. I was so grateful when she finally left home for the last time and I didn't have to fear for my safety. So, I have two sisters, and no relationship with either. One is the kind of person that is a racist hypocrite who I will never have room for in my life, and the other I am terrified will find me. On social media I'm incognito so she can't find me. I have alrady decided that when my mom dies I won't be going back for the funeral, and any time guilt starts to creep into my decision I remember that K will be there, and no way in hell will I expose myself to the utter fuckery that will ensue when she shows up in all of her glory. But the good news is that I have found my own family. I have my wonderful in-lawas. I have my wonderful friends who are my sisters, my brothers, my brother-seestras, and that is all i need.