Last Thursday I was getting a massage and this memory popped into my head as my therapist was working on my chest: When I was 17 I had this job for part of the summer as a fencer. It was just me and this other guy who co-owned the company. The draw where we were doing this fencing job had an an old, abandoned white, Colonial style house, complete with columns slowly being swallowed up by trees, and vivid green prairie grass. Was again I was drawn into musing about just how odd it was to see that style of house in juxtaposition to "out in the middle of nowhere", nowhere-rural-Grassy Butte, ND. And I was thinking about that house, and how I'd wanted to go inside and see what it looked like (and my disappointment that I never did) when this other memory from that place popped up.
Joe, my boss, and I were taking our lunch break. I was ready to get back to work, but he pointed out that he was the boss and we didn't have to rush back to work, and in fact he wanted to lie down for a bit. So we were lying in the midsummer sun on the pile of loose, dark brown soil piled up next to the trench it had come from. Just me and Joe, miles from another human. Joe, over 20 years my senior. Joe, stroking my back, then asking if I wanted to make out.
In spite of the multiple times adult men had made advances, or just tried to assault me I was naïve. I thought I was safe with Joe, I thought he was a nice guy.
Cue terror. My "go to" when I'm terrified is to freeze. And freeze I did, pretending to be asleep.
The interesting thing about this particular memory popping up on this day is that earlier in the day I had been seeing my (mental health) therapist. We've been grinding through an old memory for a few months now in which, after trying to redirect another man 20+ years my senior (coincidentally, this man is the person who got me the fencing job with Joe) from assaulting me, and failing I eventually froze. That particular day in therapy I was lamenting about how there is a part of me that continually goes into freeze-mode when its a sexual assault situation, whereas if someone just tried to fight me I'd go full-on scrapper-mode, and so I feel like a failure, like I failed myself whenever I froze.
Back to my moment of terror, "freezing" seemed to work that time. Maybe he felt me tense when he asked, maybe he knew I was faking sleep; regardless he didn't ask again, he didn't force the issue (or force himself on me). I was lucky that time. Lucky enough that I didn't have to dedicate months or years of therapy to Joe. Lucky that it was a memory that I hadn't thought about in years. Lucky, that this adult man who decided to ask a 17 year old to make out decided to respect my boundary.
Looking back I think "holy shit, that could have gone SOOOO bad". However; seventeen year old me thought he was one of the "good" ones because he stopped...but how fucking "good" was he? we were out in the middle of nowhere, I was 17, he was old enough to be my father, and he had to fucking sexualize me. And because nothing happened, I was lucky.
Over the weekend I started having really intense anxiety, and I was perseverating on all the things I potentially had said wrong the previous day. And as I was dialoguing with myself about why the hell I was feeling so life-and-death terrified about these different interactions the puzzle piece clicked into place. When I was a kid I was unsafe, period. There were no adults in my life keeping my safe, and so I took on the full responsibility for keeping myself safe, and if I failed to do so, it WAS my fault. There were so many encounters in which I wasn't as lucky as I was with Joe, encounters where I was not saying/doing the right thing to stop a man from assaulting me-thus it was my fault. In addition to the list of men, there were so many times that I physically (let alone emotionally) wasn't safe with my sister. Times my mother was completely unhinged either "because" I'd said the wrong thing or I took on the responsibility for not saying or doing the right thing to keep her from a psychotic break or an overdose of pills. Of course feeling like I've said the "wrong" thing makes me feel absolutely terrified.
Now, perhaps with a little luck, now that I've made that connection my nervous system will chill the hell out a little when it comes to thinking I'm going to die if I say the wrong thing. And, at least one time, freezing seemed to save me.
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