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[Therapy] It's my anniversary!
Apr. 29th, 2010 07:23 pmCurrent list of people explicitly on this filter: Magus, Tho, Brenton, jere7my, Bethany, Jesse, Racheline, Mek, Veronica, Lauren, Emily, Maddie, Sparr, Mom, Ria, Keria, Rackle, JoshZed, and Caelyn.
The fact that I was raped is no longer something I consider secret about myself. I'm still gonna have the filter, and use it as I need, but I'm opening it to an increasing number of people as time goes by, and when it comes up in relevant conversation, you better believe I'll put my two cents in.
Thank each and every one of you for helping me have a safe space to talk this shit out. Thank you for hugs. Thank you for trying to understand. Thank you for re-evaluating your bad behaviour1. Thank you for letting me say that damnéd three word phrase over and over again and not getting impatient or angry or upset.
Thank you for holding me as I cried. Thank you for understanding when the words just couldn't come in any form more personal than a computer screen. Thank you for absolutely everything, and thank you for letting me feel that maybe all this pain and fear and weakness isn't necessarily such a bad thing after all.
Thank you for giving me that shred of normality I just can't have otherwise.
A year and a week ago, it was time on campus for the Clothesline Project. The brief run-down is that such a thing is a public collaborative art project consisting of pretty brightly coloured t-shirts with decidedly non-pretty words scrawled across them. You make a shirt to talk about yourself or your family or friends, about domestic violence, about abuse, about incest, about GLBTQ-bashing.
About rape or sexual assault.
So, we had all these t-shirts strung around the student center, and as I walked around looking at them, all the little tiny pieces of my brain clicked together with a final twist, and all of a sudden it all made sense. The relationship wasn't just weird, or badly handled. It's not just that kSatyr and I weren't compatible, that he clinged, that I was poly.
The relationship was abusive. All the little bits of sex that had made me uncomfortable in the back of my mind were sexual assault, were rape. For at least half and possibly longer of our relationship, I was not enjoying the sex because I was being raped.
In one swift moment, whatever walls of self-denial I had built over that year-and-a-half-post-kSatyr crumbled. While I had always know that I had been raped2, now I actually understood that I had been repeatedly raped, and I understood what that actually meant.
And as I stared at the nice sweet women at the feminism club table, in the middle of the busy student center, inviting people to add their own shirts to the clotheslines, add their own words, their own *stories*, I felt myself freeze.
And then I turned around and walked back to my room, and cried for a while about how weak I was, that I could not even say the words, could not acknowledge to myself or others that this terrible thing had happened.
A year passed. You guys have been watching that, for varying lengths of time.
And oh hey, it's time for the Clothesline Project to be back on campus. They were shirt-making today, out in the middle of the quad this year, to hang on the lines blowing in the breeze. I was flip, I was strong, I was ready. I was gonna put some awesome words on an awesome shirt. I even got to help my friend Annika get the materials for feminism club, be a sassy awesome girlthing who is just so cool that this dumb rape thing can't get her down.
Which is not to say I wasn't serious about making my shirt. When I sat down to do so, I did so with the sardonic grin of someone who's about to rip her heart out in front of whomever stops by to witness. I had words, they were good, and this time, I was not going to be too weak to tell my story.
On the front, "He said if I loved him, I'd fuck him..."
On the back, "...I say if he loved me, he wouldn't have forced."
It looked good. There were hearts replacing the "o"s in loved. I like the sentiment, I think it's strong, and effective, and sickeningly true. And so I capped my marker, and picked up my shirt, and two clothespins, and took two steps towards the clothesline with a nice clean space in it, just for me.
The entire thirty foot trip across the quad was one of the most panic-inducing and frightening walks I have ever done in my life. And then I put my words up among the words of the other abused, and there it was. I had just outed myself, albeit anonymously, to my entire school.
So.
Two years ago, I did not even have a concept of what was going on.
One year ago, I knew, and could tell no one.
This year, I do know, and I do tell people as it comes up, because it is an important thing to know, that this happens.
And who knows. Maybe next year, I'll be able to make this post public.
~Sor
MOOP!
1: This has happened twice now --once a friend having it dawn on him all that is bad about trying to kiss a girl who has already told you know and realizing that he's not going to do that again, and once a friend who made a triggery as hell joke to me, and apologized when I pointed it out, then apologized again, thoroughly and with an edge of begging for forgiveness in an e-mail I found in my inbox the next morning.
Both cases mean that people actually pay attention to this shit that I have to deal with, and are trying to work to become better people. I cannot get across how happy this makes me.
2: BehindtheWalls, 4 December 2007: Someday soon I will write out proper what happened between Ksatyr and I that Sunday morning in his bed. It needs to be written, even though it is distasteful.
The event that finally tipped the scale enough so that I *could* break up with him was me waking up to feel him probing my ass, something I had specifically and repeatedly said I _was not interested in_. I knew I had been raped from the day we split paths, I just hadn't realized that it was way *way* more than a one-time thing.
It behooves me to mention that, a year ago, I wrote a bunch of words in my BtW file. And I ended them with this:
With that in mind, it occurs to me that there's a harder set of words, that I've barely come close to ever saying. I can groove having the anniversary being the day to break through that fear. Pretend, just for one day, that all of the reasons not to say it don't exist, pretend that I can live in a world where he was absolutely wrong and I was absolutely right.
And so, even if I still don't always feel like I've earned the right to say the above, and I definitely don't feel like I have the right to say this:
kSatyr raped me.
kSatyr. Raped. Me.
It's progress.
The fact that I was raped is no longer something I consider secret about myself. I'm still gonna have the filter, and use it as I need, but I'm opening it to an increasing number of people as time goes by, and when it comes up in relevant conversation, you better believe I'll put my two cents in.
Thank each and every one of you for helping me have a safe space to talk this shit out. Thank you for hugs. Thank you for trying to understand. Thank you for re-evaluating your bad behaviour1. Thank you for letting me say that damnéd three word phrase over and over again and not getting impatient or angry or upset.
Thank you for holding me as I cried. Thank you for understanding when the words just couldn't come in any form more personal than a computer screen. Thank you for absolutely everything, and thank you for letting me feel that maybe all this pain and fear and weakness isn't necessarily such a bad thing after all.
Thank you for giving me that shred of normality I just can't have otherwise.
A year and a week ago, it was time on campus for the Clothesline Project. The brief run-down is that such a thing is a public collaborative art project consisting of pretty brightly coloured t-shirts with decidedly non-pretty words scrawled across them. You make a shirt to talk about yourself or your family or friends, about domestic violence, about abuse, about incest, about GLBTQ-bashing.
About rape or sexual assault.
So, we had all these t-shirts strung around the student center, and as I walked around looking at them, all the little tiny pieces of my brain clicked together with a final twist, and all of a sudden it all made sense. The relationship wasn't just weird, or badly handled. It's not just that kSatyr and I weren't compatible, that he clinged, that I was poly.
The relationship was abusive. All the little bits of sex that had made me uncomfortable in the back of my mind were sexual assault, were rape. For at least half and possibly longer of our relationship, I was not enjoying the sex because I was being raped.
In one swift moment, whatever walls of self-denial I had built over that year-and-a-half-post-kSatyr crumbled. While I had always know that I had been raped2, now I actually understood that I had been repeatedly raped, and I understood what that actually meant.
And as I stared at the nice sweet women at the feminism club table, in the middle of the busy student center, inviting people to add their own shirts to the clotheslines, add their own words, their own *stories*, I felt myself freeze.
And then I turned around and walked back to my room, and cried for a while about how weak I was, that I could not even say the words, could not acknowledge to myself or others that this terrible thing had happened.
A year passed. You guys have been watching that, for varying lengths of time.
And oh hey, it's time for the Clothesline Project to be back on campus. They were shirt-making today, out in the middle of the quad this year, to hang on the lines blowing in the breeze. I was flip, I was strong, I was ready. I was gonna put some awesome words on an awesome shirt. I even got to help my friend Annika get the materials for feminism club, be a sassy awesome girlthing who is just so cool that this dumb rape thing can't get her down.
Which is not to say I wasn't serious about making my shirt. When I sat down to do so, I did so with the sardonic grin of someone who's about to rip her heart out in front of whomever stops by to witness. I had words, they were good, and this time, I was not going to be too weak to tell my story.
On the front, "He said if I loved him, I'd fuck him..."
On the back, "...I say if he loved me, he wouldn't have forced."
It looked good. There were hearts replacing the "o"s in loved. I like the sentiment, I think it's strong, and effective, and sickeningly true. And so I capped my marker, and picked up my shirt, and two clothespins, and took two steps towards the clothesline with a nice clean space in it, just for me.
The entire thirty foot trip across the quad was one of the most panic-inducing and frightening walks I have ever done in my life. And then I put my words up among the words of the other abused, and there it was. I had just outed myself, albeit anonymously, to my entire school.
So.
Two years ago, I did not even have a concept of what was going on.
One year ago, I knew, and could tell no one.
This year, I do know, and I do tell people as it comes up, because it is an important thing to know, that this happens.
And who knows. Maybe next year, I'll be able to make this post public.
~Sor
MOOP!
1: This has happened twice now --once a friend having it dawn on him all that is bad about trying to kiss a girl who has already told you know and realizing that he's not going to do that again, and once a friend who made a triggery as hell joke to me, and apologized when I pointed it out, then apologized again, thoroughly and with an edge of begging for forgiveness in an e-mail I found in my inbox the next morning.
Both cases mean that people actually pay attention to this shit that I have to deal with, and are trying to work to become better people. I cannot get across how happy this makes me.
2: BehindtheWalls, 4 December 2007: Someday soon I will write out proper what happened between Ksatyr and I that Sunday morning in his bed. It needs to be written, even though it is distasteful.
The event that finally tipped the scale enough so that I *could* break up with him was me waking up to feel him probing my ass, something I had specifically and repeatedly said I _was not interested in_. I knew I had been raped from the day we split paths, I just hadn't realized that it was way *way* more than a one-time thing.
It behooves me to mention that, a year ago, I wrote a bunch of words in my BtW file. And I ended them with this:
And although I still don't feel I've earned the "right" to say it, maybe doing so's the next step:
I was raped.
With that in mind, it occurs to me that there's a harder set of words, that I've barely come close to ever saying. I can groove having the anniversary being the day to break through that fear. Pretend, just for one day, that all of the reasons not to say it don't exist, pretend that I can live in a world where he was absolutely wrong and I was absolutely right.
And so, even if I still don't always feel like I've earned the right to say the above, and I definitely don't feel like I have the right to say this:
kSatyr raped me.
kSatyr. Raped. Me.
It's progress.