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sorcyressIn most ways, I resemble my mother more than my father. Not just appearancewise1, but in terms of personality, I find it the greatest compliment ever to think I am growing into my mother. We are both loud and exuberant and goofy and while my cult of personality is a lot less trained than hers, gaw-damn if we can't both make people like us3 just by being unrepentantly our own awesome likable selves.
But my father's influence is definitely in there too. And things that come from both of them, like my sense of humour. My weird, goofy, sharp-edged, teasing, ultimately good-natured and really really stupid4 sense of humour. Makes sense! Your family is the often ones you spend the most time with for the first mumbledy years of your life, humour is super cultural, naturally it'd rub off.
So I have my parents sense of humour. And this means there's one more adjective that's worth presenting, and it's the one I want to talk about. My parents sense of humour is dark. Like, "my mother's family were cracking jokes about her mother's death on the drive home from the funeral"5 dark. Meanwhile, my dad and his and his are all doctors, and if any field makes your humour darker, it's medical.
So nothing is sacred. Anything can have a joke made of it. Anything. I have danced on my grandmother's grave. I think she would approve.
Now, even before there was a term for it, we all subscribed to the idea of "punching up" as much as possible. Our humour is gallows-dark, but it's meant as a coping mechanism, a way to deal, a way to laugh at how bullshit ridiculous and hard life can be. I knew how to recognize snark and sarcasm before I even knew what they were. We're mostly not cynical --mom and I especially subscribe to the "it's easier to just have fun" side of things-- but we recognize that the world is deeply and troublingly flawed, and a lot of bad shit just happens sometimes.
Now. With that background out of the way, my point:
I wish I had more people around who I felt comfortable joking about my rape.
I was sexually and emotionally abused for a hefty chunk of time7. It happened. It sucked. Ultimately I feel I'm the stronger for it, but it's still bullshit that it occurred. I have been processing and working for over six years to be able to deal with the feelings. I've done a bout of therapy that was helpful (and a couple bouts that weren't). And my upbringing and twisted mind enjoy making jokes and snide comments about it, because I can find genuine amusement in it.
(I mean, let's be serious, he affiliated with satyrs! Like, how can you possibly be more stereotypical, you say the fae best known for luring young girls off to the woods and doing terrible things to them...lured young-me off and did terrible things to me? I can't help but laugh, because the only alternative is to sob.)
First things first, the goal in my making jokes is *not* to cause discomfort in others. I already shut myself down fairly often from just *talking* about it because I don't want to cause discomfort in others8. I know not everyone is so cavalier --and some because they're healing/scarring their own past traumas at their own pace and in their own ways and don't want to hear about mine right now.
But the way I am means that I laugh in the middle of tears. I find my pain to be fucking absurd half the time or more, and I find that treating it such does so much to help me heal to help me normalize to help me feel like a real functioning stable person, to feel whole and complete, to feel like me and all the weird and odd and quirky I am.
If I treat my abuse as Always Serious All The Time, then I am giving it an incredible power over me, and one that it does not fucking deserve9. The biggest fear I've had since I figured it out, the biggest fear I had when I first told Magus10, the biggest fear I *still* have is that by telling someone, I stop being Kat and start being "the one who was abused".
I am so much more than the sum of my traumas.
So when I am given opportunity, even if it's just to myself, to chuckle darkly and make a wry comment about grown men who want to marry teenagers, I take it and feel all the more golden for it. I can do it around my mom, and she'll laugh too, come back with something sharp and silly in return. I can do it around Alys, and we can both dissolve into giggles, because oh gods, how pathetic this piece of crap who didn't even know how to love someone without destroying them.
I can laugh because it makes me strong. Because I *am* strong, and this is how I show my strength, by taking all the little pains the world tries to throw my way and laughing in their face until they slink off, defeated. So yes, hell yes, I will make jokes about my abuse when it comes up. I will mock him for hurting me. Sarcastic comments about how blackmail always works out for the best, sneers that any mere boy could think himself more important than Veronica, snark at the movies when I hear the "and so now you have to fuck me" unspoken after the "I love you", and rampant mad cackling as I look around an event like faeriefest and realize that I'm surrounded by at least a dozen satyrs and yet not one of them is making me feel unsafe.
There aren't a lot of people who get this kind of humour. Usually, they've got their own traumas they're healing from, near-death, neglect, the trifecta of physical-sexual-emotional abuse, but like me, have decided that the coping mechanism they're gonna use is over-the-top sarcasm (<>). Because they know that method in themselves, they'll joke right back.
Those people are important to me. Again, I recognize that everyone deals with difficult stuff differently, and that my personal method is irreverent --not just seems irreverent, but actively and specifically *is*. I do not want to make anyone uncomfortable, not with my wounds and not with theirs.
But if you're the sort of person who'll give me a high-five for a sweet zinger, or sarcastic right back with me, or at the very least, aren't gonna be any more uncomfortable when I talk about this past than if I talked about any other...maybe drop me a line and let me know?
I can't be the only funny freak out here.
~Sor
MOOP!
PostScript: You may have noticed that I have pretty much given up entirely on masking my abuser. Because you know what? They were a fucking asshole to me, and they are almost entirely out of my life, and I don't have to protect them. Someone goes all "but I know who that is and he's my best friend and how dare you accuse" and decides that they don't wanna be friends with me and my "vile lying ways" anymore? Good.
I see no point of directly dragging their name through the mud (and using their wallet name could open me up to all sorts of legal funtimes that I'd rather avoid), but it's been four fucking years since I saw or heard from them last, and I just have no patience for hedging anymore.
So yeah. My stories don't work if I can't comment that they're satyr aligned, and above much else, I am a Storyteller. You want me to tell good stories about you? Don't fucking abuse me, mate.
1: I definitely look like my mom. Every once in a while a photo from Markland will surface where even *I* have that moment of "...but how are there pictures of me if I wasn't alive then?"
If this trend continues...honestly, I'm not particularly bothered. My mom is utterly adorable and has muscles like an ox and I'm all for it. 'bout the only bad is the idea of having bigger boobs2, and that may not even be a concern if I never get preggers.
2: I should make a post sometime about my relationship with my small breasts. It is overwhelmingly positive! I do enjoy admiring extensive cleavage, but not enough to ever want to swap.
3: Good things from NYFaeFest: The gentleman running grounds crew, who said at one point he wanted to take me home, and also routinely described me over the walkie as "anyone need help from someone smart and capable?" *melts*
4: *drops a bag of frozen bananas on the floor, is confused when no one else cracks the fuck up*
5: Well, lots of the family initials make words, like mom was R-A-P and her sister was S-A-P6 and their mom was R-E-P, which isn't really a word, but I guess it doesn't matter since now she's RIP.
6: There is a small chance I am forgetting my aunt's middle name and it's something else. 'sbeen a while since I heard this one.
7: Relationship as spoken was under 10 months (2/22 to 12/2). Uncomfortable grooming beforehand, and emotionally abusive blackmail/suicide threats afterwards extend the time I was directly entangled with his bullshit to about 2.5 years.
8: This is actually a really big thing, and has been pretty much since I got past telling the first four people or so. I don't talk about my abuse to make you uncomfortable. I talk about my abuse because it is a relevant part of my history and sometimes comes up because of the ways I interact with time and memory.
I find it seriously annoying when someone gets all solemn and serious and "I'm so sorry" and "you don't have to talk about it" at me. Intellectually, I recognize and appreciate that this is probably the right response to someone just setting out on their healing journey or talking about it for the first time. But the problem for me is that this is not the first time. This is not even the hundredth time. Believe me, I know I don't have to talk about it, I'm talking about it because I want to and because it shouldn't be a big deal that I have a trauma history.
Yes, on the one hand this is a serious part of my outlook on the world. But on the other? One. In. Fucking. Three. women are sexually assaulted in their lifetimes. If you think it's a big deal I have a trauma history then you damn well be treating just as tender at least a sixth of everyone you meet. Don't treat me as fragile just because I'm bold enough to state it plain.
9: . My abuse history already has an incredible power over me. Things which I cannot hear about without having memory-edges go off and remind me include (a non-comprehensive list): satyrs, Settlers of Catan, vegan food, naked smoothies, chainmail, toy swords, hybrid cars, the name "Beast", learning to waltz, learning to drive, the game set, valentine's day, the fourth of july, Doctor Who, "Blink and you're dead", Torchwood, House, British radio dramas, atheism, pacifism, and all dairy products. And, you know, discussions of sexual assault, consent, and rape.
Usually it's not much. Just a feather-edge of "right, that". But this is why I appreciate trigger warnings, because while there's no way to prevent me from ever thinking of my abuser, I can at least get warning of how deep down the rabbit hole I'm about to fall. Some of the memories are even happy. Please don't let me get blindsided by the ones that aren't.
10: No matter what happens between us, I will never stop caring for and about Magus because he was the First Person I Told. I owe him a debt that I don't think can be repaid, he gave me my humanity, my very Self at the moment I was most scared of losing it, and he did not take my bait and break up with "the stupid crazy chick" (my words, not his).
I am sad for all the ways that relationship eventually fell apart, but he remains one of the most genuinely good people I have ever had the blessing to know, and nothing can ever take away the fact that he was willing to lend me that goodness and his strength and help pull me through the first, and worst, of the healing.
But my father's influence is definitely in there too. And things that come from both of them, like my sense of humour. My weird, goofy, sharp-edged, teasing, ultimately good-natured and really really stupid4 sense of humour. Makes sense! Your family is the often ones you spend the most time with for the first mumbledy years of your life, humour is super cultural, naturally it'd rub off.
So I have my parents sense of humour. And this means there's one more adjective that's worth presenting, and it's the one I want to talk about. My parents sense of humour is dark. Like, "my mother's family were cracking jokes about her mother's death on the drive home from the funeral"5 dark. Meanwhile, my dad and his and his are all doctors, and if any field makes your humour darker, it's medical.
So nothing is sacred. Anything can have a joke made of it. Anything. I have danced on my grandmother's grave. I think she would approve.
Now, even before there was a term for it, we all subscribed to the idea of "punching up" as much as possible. Our humour is gallows-dark, but it's meant as a coping mechanism, a way to deal, a way to laugh at how bullshit ridiculous and hard life can be. I knew how to recognize snark and sarcasm before I even knew what they were. We're mostly not cynical --mom and I especially subscribe to the "it's easier to just have fun" side of things-- but we recognize that the world is deeply and troublingly flawed, and a lot of bad shit just happens sometimes.
Now. With that background out of the way, my point:
I wish I had more people around who I felt comfortable joking about my rape.
I was sexually and emotionally abused for a hefty chunk of time7. It happened. It sucked. Ultimately I feel I'm the stronger for it, but it's still bullshit that it occurred. I have been processing and working for over six years to be able to deal with the feelings. I've done a bout of therapy that was helpful (and a couple bouts that weren't). And my upbringing and twisted mind enjoy making jokes and snide comments about it, because I can find genuine amusement in it.
(I mean, let's be serious, he affiliated with satyrs! Like, how can you possibly be more stereotypical, you say the fae best known for luring young girls off to the woods and doing terrible things to them...lured young-me off and did terrible things to me? I can't help but laugh, because the only alternative is to sob.)
First things first, the goal in my making jokes is *not* to cause discomfort in others. I already shut myself down fairly often from just *talking* about it because I don't want to cause discomfort in others8. I know not everyone is so cavalier --and some because they're healing/scarring their own past traumas at their own pace and in their own ways and don't want to hear about mine right now.
But the way I am means that I laugh in the middle of tears. I find my pain to be fucking absurd half the time or more, and I find that treating it such does so much to help me heal to help me normalize to help me feel like a real functioning stable person, to feel whole and complete, to feel like me and all the weird and odd and quirky I am.
If I treat my abuse as Always Serious All The Time, then I am giving it an incredible power over me, and one that it does not fucking deserve9. The biggest fear I've had since I figured it out, the biggest fear I had when I first told Magus10, the biggest fear I *still* have is that by telling someone, I stop being Kat and start being "the one who was abused".
I am so much more than the sum of my traumas.
So when I am given opportunity, even if it's just to myself, to chuckle darkly and make a wry comment about grown men who want to marry teenagers, I take it and feel all the more golden for it. I can do it around my mom, and she'll laugh too, come back with something sharp and silly in return. I can do it around Alys, and we can both dissolve into giggles, because oh gods, how pathetic this piece of crap who didn't even know how to love someone without destroying them.
I can laugh because it makes me strong. Because I *am* strong, and this is how I show my strength, by taking all the little pains the world tries to throw my way and laughing in their face until they slink off, defeated. So yes, hell yes, I will make jokes about my abuse when it comes up. I will mock him for hurting me. Sarcastic comments about how blackmail always works out for the best, sneers that any mere boy could think himself more important than Veronica, snark at the movies when I hear the "and so now you have to fuck me" unspoken after the "I love you", and rampant mad cackling as I look around an event like faeriefest and realize that I'm surrounded by at least a dozen satyrs and yet not one of them is making me feel unsafe.
There aren't a lot of people who get this kind of humour. Usually, they've got their own traumas they're healing from, near-death, neglect, the trifecta of physical-sexual-emotional abuse, but like me, have decided that the coping mechanism they're gonna use is over-the-top sarcasm (<>). Because they know that method in themselves, they'll joke right back.
Those people are important to me. Again, I recognize that everyone deals with difficult stuff differently, and that my personal method is irreverent --not just seems irreverent, but actively and specifically *is*. I do not want to make anyone uncomfortable, not with my wounds and not with theirs.
But if you're the sort of person who'll give me a high-five for a sweet zinger, or sarcastic right back with me, or at the very least, aren't gonna be any more uncomfortable when I talk about this past than if I talked about any other...maybe drop me a line and let me know?
I can't be the only funny freak out here.
~Sor
MOOP!
PostScript: You may have noticed that I have pretty much given up entirely on masking my abuser. Because you know what? They were a fucking asshole to me, and they are almost entirely out of my life, and I don't have to protect them. Someone goes all "but I know who that is and he's my best friend and how dare you accuse" and decides that they don't wanna be friends with me and my "vile lying ways" anymore? Good.
I see no point of directly dragging their name through the mud (and using their wallet name could open me up to all sorts of legal funtimes that I'd rather avoid), but it's been four fucking years since I saw or heard from them last, and I just have no patience for hedging anymore.
So yeah. My stories don't work if I can't comment that they're satyr aligned, and above much else, I am a Storyteller. You want me to tell good stories about you? Don't fucking abuse me, mate.
1: I definitely look like my mom. Every once in a while a photo from Markland will surface where even *I* have that moment of "...but how are there pictures of me if I wasn't alive then?"
If this trend continues...honestly, I'm not particularly bothered. My mom is utterly adorable and has muscles like an ox and I'm all for it. 'bout the only bad is the idea of having bigger boobs2, and that may not even be a concern if I never get preggers.
2: I should make a post sometime about my relationship with my small breasts. It is overwhelmingly positive! I do enjoy admiring extensive cleavage, but not enough to ever want to swap.
3: Good things from NYFaeFest: The gentleman running grounds crew, who said at one point he wanted to take me home, and also routinely described me over the walkie as "anyone need help from someone smart and capable?" *melts*
4: *drops a bag of frozen bananas on the floor, is confused when no one else cracks the fuck up*
5: Well, lots of the family initials make words, like mom was R-A-P and her sister was S-A-P6 and their mom was R-E-P, which isn't really a word, but I guess it doesn't matter since now she's RIP.
6: There is a small chance I am forgetting my aunt's middle name and it's something else. 'sbeen a while since I heard this one.
7: Relationship as spoken was under 10 months (2/22 to 12/2). Uncomfortable grooming beforehand, and emotionally abusive blackmail/suicide threats afterwards extend the time I was directly entangled with his bullshit to about 2.5 years.
8: This is actually a really big thing, and has been pretty much since I got past telling the first four people or so. I don't talk about my abuse to make you uncomfortable. I talk about my abuse because it is a relevant part of my history and sometimes comes up because of the ways I interact with time and memory.
I find it seriously annoying when someone gets all solemn and serious and "I'm so sorry" and "you don't have to talk about it" at me. Intellectually, I recognize and appreciate that this is probably the right response to someone just setting out on their healing journey or talking about it for the first time. But the problem for me is that this is not the first time. This is not even the hundredth time. Believe me, I know I don't have to talk about it, I'm talking about it because I want to and because it shouldn't be a big deal that I have a trauma history.
Yes, on the one hand this is a serious part of my outlook on the world. But on the other? One. In. Fucking. Three. women are sexually assaulted in their lifetimes. If you think it's a big deal I have a trauma history then you damn well be treating just as tender at least a sixth of everyone you meet. Don't treat me as fragile just because I'm bold enough to state it plain.
9: . My abuse history already has an incredible power over me. Things which I cannot hear about without having memory-edges go off and remind me include (a non-comprehensive list): satyrs, Settlers of Catan, vegan food, naked smoothies, chainmail, toy swords, hybrid cars, the name "Beast", learning to waltz, learning to drive, the game set, valentine's day, the fourth of july, Doctor Who, "Blink and you're dead", Torchwood, House, British radio dramas, atheism, pacifism, and all dairy products. And, you know, discussions of sexual assault, consent, and rape.
Usually it's not much. Just a feather-edge of "right, that". But this is why I appreciate trigger warnings, because while there's no way to prevent me from ever thinking of my abuser, I can at least get warning of how deep down the rabbit hole I'm about to fall. Some of the memories are even happy. Please don't let me get blindsided by the ones that aren't.
10: No matter what happens between us, I will never stop caring for and about Magus because he was the First Person I Told. I owe him a debt that I don't think can be repaid, he gave me my humanity, my very Self at the moment I was most scared of losing it, and he did not take my bait and break up with "the stupid crazy chick" (my words, not his).
I am sad for all the ways that relationship eventually fell apart, but he remains one of the most genuinely good people I have ever had the blessing to know, and nothing can ever take away the fact that he was willing to lend me that goodness and his strength and help pull me through the first, and worst, of the healing.