[Therapy] November is a cursed month
Nov. 28th, 2018 10:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sorcyressTrigger Warning: Rape and emotional abuse. Excerpts from an 18 year old's diary (it's cool, I got their consent to post 'em)
I said to a friend "November is a crazy month for me" and haha, we're all crazy with work and politics and Arisia nonsense1 and trying to get our lives in order, but no. That's not it at all.
November is quite literally crazy-making for me. It is by _far_ my worst mental health month in the year, every year, and it has been getting harder the last few (or maybe I've just been paying better attention.)
Part of that is straight up seasonal. The light goes away, the weather gets cold, and it's before the soft joy of December lights shining out from every house2. It's often the first time in the year it snows. This year there's been multiple days of bitter-cold rain, which is awful to bike in.
Most of it is anniversary effect --there's a lot of really fucking bad things3 that have happened to me in Novembers. Obviously two years ago was shit for everyone, but there's other little sense-triggers that hit me "oh, it's the month where _that_ happened, of course." and so many of them are just _shit_. I still mourn the lost hard drive from my first semester of college.
And part of why I mourn that missing hard drive, even eleven years on, is because I desperately wish I still had access to the Behind the Walls file from August-November 2007. BtW is my version of a diary, an unfiltered, utterly private text file where I can say what I need and know that no one else is going to read it. It's been largely supplanted in my modern life by my use of 750words, but gods, from February 2005 to March 2010, it was a _critical tool_ for keeping my brain on straight4.
And from August to November, 2007, it was a detailed account of the sorts of things I was experiencing in my first semester away from home. Including the dissolution of the relationship I was in for most of 2007, which was a sexually and emotionally abusive relationship with a man eighteen years my senior. I call(ed) him kSatyr5, and it took me nearly four years6 to be able to say in public "I am a survivor of emotional and sexual abuse".
BUT, and here's a crucial thing. Right after my hard drive died, practically the very first thing I did on the replacement was start up BtW 2.17 and start writing again, because I'm not a complete idiot.
Which means when kSatyr raped me in a new and irrevocable way on the morning of December second, and we _finally_ fucking broke up, I was able to record some thoughts about it. And a few tumultuous weeks later, riding the confusion of two breakups8 in three weeks, I was able to make the post I'm going to excerpt from below.
Original post is in blockquote, my comments will be sprinkled throughout. Stuff I've modern-redacted is in bold.
It is very important to me that BtW entries include both the date and times of the entry. I close on the other end with another time block.
This is a sentence I'd already had concept of way before dating kSatyr --"if you love me, you'll sleep with me". I don't think I can get across the level of disdain 18!Sor would be feeling when she said this.
And yeah, the rest of that is absolutely a thing he said, and some of it would be repeated in IM conversations we would have later about it all. Somewhere I have the direct quote where he suggests I never let myself be naked around other people because they'll rape me, and "I hope that doesn't happen to you" (you absolute evil fuck.)
1: I find my dark sense of humor to be very funny, because it definitely amuses me to talk about an incredibly dark moment and use the word "hoo-hah" (which was definitely a deliberate word choice --usually it's my vagina or pussy, very rarely my cunt.)
2: And guess which kinkster has since completely avoided what is currently the fifth most popular fetish on fetlife? Like, there's plenty of YKINMK10 stuff out there, but it turns out waking up to be raped up the ass ruins both wake-up sex and ass-play, for *basically ever*.
A: In retrospect, I think it's very funny that I was referring to myself as a slut for wanking a lot. I have been very into masturbation for longer than I can actually remember, but yeah, it was much harder and weirder to be in touch with my body when my body had recent sense-memory of being violated.
B: If you're reading this in 2018 and being like "Kat, you have four boyfriends and have to actively resist sniggering when you think about how much rope your current hobby involves" it might interest you to know that I considered myself largely asexual until about the beginning of 2008. Clever readers will observe that the span of ace-ness covers _my entire relationship with my rapist_. I am what we call a "late bloomer".
I would like to be extremely explicit that 29!Kat does not believe that "men" as a monolithic group only want sex, and honestly, 18!Kat probably didn't believe that either, not really.
I would also like to be extremely explicit that I am queer, thankyouverymuch, and the fact that I tend to most often be attracted to and get involved with cis men does not have anything to do with anything except that's who my partners have been. I am definitely not 'straight as a fucking post', and doubly not when you take into account the fact that I haven't IDd as a girl in something like eight plus years.
I would *also* like to be extremely explicit about the fact that sex is not something that anyone should be shamed for, either the doing or not of it. 15!Sor was a fucking _nightmare_ about other people having sexytimes, and she would be actively appalled at most of my college-plus life. As it turns out, I *can* manage to stoink people on the regular and retain my self-respect.
It goes on for another 1500 words or so, but meanders into emo "I'm gonna be alone forever" and then through "faith and some kind of god??". About the only other really important piece is when I obliquely reference that the night before, kSatyr had attempted condomless intercourse with me. Intercourse was already a strict no-no, and this was a couple years before I got on birth control, so like, the _absolute_ fuck are you doing right there you unthinking assfool?
(The parallel self where I got pregnant and kept it and stayed with him to raise children like he wanted is the only parallel universe where I'm pretty sure I'm dead. Yes, I am implying exactly what you think. Sorry for a dark entry?)
***
This entry got way longer than I was necessarily expecting, which is _completely normal_ for me when writing about anything, and double-normal when writing about my rapist. If you wanna have more dark-humour coping-mechanism funtimes you can peep TherapyFilter for everything I've ever posted publicly on the subject11.
I feel better right now than I did an hour ago, which is important --writing is good for me.
But seriously, by far the most important takeaway from going back eleven years into my diary and reading the ramblings of an 18 year old madwoman, is that...it was rape. It was definitely rape, I said so with absolute conviction then because I knew it from the moment it happened. I didn't use the r-word again after that for almost eighteen months, until I saw the pretty coloured shirts on a clothesline and it broke back into my heart.
It drives me _fucking bonkers_ that this is still something that affects me. It's been over a decade! I have healthy [sexual] relationships with wonderful people! Why can't I get over it?! But then I remember that it was a big deal, and it was a _huge_ affect on my introduction to my own sexuality.
And the dying shards of a control-freak who couldn't stand the existence of my own independence are always going to echo at me hard at certain times of year. February 22nd is bad. December 2nd is bad. I do what I can to survive.
~Sor
MOOP!
1: Absolutely do not comment about Arisia in this post. Thank you.
2: I like Christmas Lights more than nearly any other holiday _thing_. It is so good and necessary for us to drive back the dark.
3: I don't have time to find it now, but I remember posting one year about how the last week of November/first week of December is a huge up-and-down of good and bad memories, which makes it even harder. I can't just shut the whole time out of my mind if I am also celebrating 11 years of dancing and the memory of the first time the city ever sang into my heart "you are home".
4: Hell, even this modern computer has a version (the first two lines read "Welcome, little child. Be not afraid." which I think is lovely.) I've got about six entries this time around, the most recent from mid-2017. It's a little strange what gets put _there_ specifically, but I'm glad I have it for when I need. (Lots of things that end with the line "I'm not actually going to post this" --dreamwidth entries that weren't.)
5: The k is silent. It's a pile of stupid in-jokes. The funniest (the darkest) one to me is that in retrospect, naming your partner after a particularly rapey kind of mythological figure means it shouldn't be a surprise...
6: It took me _much_ longer to name him --I think the first public post to do so was the ten year anniversary of us starting to date, so like, only a year and a half ago. I was protecting him or something? And eventually I just didn't care anymore? If he didn't want a narrative where I call him a rapist, he shouldn't have fucking raped me.
7: BtW 1.0 was on Dmitri, my teenage-years desktop. 2.0 was on Seren, my college laptop, 2.1 was on Vera, the replacement harddrive for aforementioned computer which lasted me until like 2013 before being replaced by my new and current box, Kela. Dang, the girl's been working for five years now, she's a good box.
8: Magus broke up with me before we started dating. No really! I got the "we're just friends" talk like...six weeks before I got the "so I keep finding moments where I want to kiss you" talk, and I think that's brilliant and hilarious. But it was...a weird emotional thing at the time. Don't be eighteen, kids. It's not good for anyone.
9: Technically speaking, kSatyr was my second sexual relationship. The first took place over the internet, and when things started to get too hot'n'heavy for me (somewhere around text-descriptions of touching each other's genitals) and I said "can we step back?" the answer was "of course, and I really hope you haven't been dwelling on this because holy shit yes." and they did and we did and it was great.
I am consider *that* person to be a friend. They were the second person in the world I ever told about what happened, after Magus.
10: "Your Kink Is Not My Kink" (Usually followed with "But Your Kink Is Okay")
11: Why is it called a filter when it's public posts? Because it started in August 2009 (about a year and a half after I broke up with kSatyr) with only four people allowed to see the posts. I've not bothered to un-filter the posts, but I've gotten a *lot* more liberal about putting people onto the filter --if you wanna see them and can't, go ahead and ask me.
If you're new here, you might not know that trigger warnings go both ways! The entry above has references to rape and emotional abuse, and the occasionally not-so-enlightened words of my 18 year old self.
I said to a friend "November is a crazy month for me" and haha, we're all crazy with work and politics and Arisia nonsense1 and trying to get our lives in order, but no. That's not it at all.
November is quite literally crazy-making for me. It is by _far_ my worst mental health month in the year, every year, and it has been getting harder the last few (or maybe I've just been paying better attention.)
Part of that is straight up seasonal. The light goes away, the weather gets cold, and it's before the soft joy of December lights shining out from every house2. It's often the first time in the year it snows. This year there's been multiple days of bitter-cold rain, which is awful to bike in.
Most of it is anniversary effect --there's a lot of really fucking bad things3 that have happened to me in Novembers. Obviously two years ago was shit for everyone, but there's other little sense-triggers that hit me "oh, it's the month where _that_ happened, of course." and so many of them are just _shit_. I still mourn the lost hard drive from my first semester of college.
And part of why I mourn that missing hard drive, even eleven years on, is because I desperately wish I still had access to the Behind the Walls file from August-November 2007. BtW is my version of a diary, an unfiltered, utterly private text file where I can say what I need and know that no one else is going to read it. It's been largely supplanted in my modern life by my use of 750words, but gods, from February 2005 to March 2010, it was a _critical tool_ for keeping my brain on straight4.
And from August to November, 2007, it was a detailed account of the sorts of things I was experiencing in my first semester away from home. Including the dissolution of the relationship I was in for most of 2007, which was a sexually and emotionally abusive relationship with a man eighteen years my senior. I call(ed) him kSatyr5, and it took me nearly four years6 to be able to say in public "I am a survivor of emotional and sexual abuse".
BUT, and here's a crucial thing. Right after my hard drive died, practically the very first thing I did on the replacement was start up BtW 2.17 and start writing again, because I'm not a complete idiot.
Which means when kSatyr raped me in a new and irrevocable way on the morning of December second, and we _finally_ fucking broke up, I was able to record some thoughts about it. And a few tumultuous weeks later, riding the confusion of two breakups8 in three weeks, I was able to make the post I'm going to excerpt from below.
Original post is in blockquote, my comments will be sprinkled throughout. Stuff I've modern-redacted is in bold.
21December2007
[0025]
It is very important to me that BtW entries include both the date and times of the entry. I close on the other end with another time block.
Ksatyr should not be able to have this power over me, still.
But he does. He says things, in that evil hateful passive aggressive voice that I've grown to know so well, and those words are just shoving the knife between my ribs and twisting that sucker harder then [REDACTED BECAUSE WOW THIS IS A SUPER DARK-HUMOUR METAPHOR, EVEN FOR ME]
To be honest, he kinda sorta ruined me a bit there. His words, when we broke up. He told me that I'll never get into a relationship, because I won't have sex. That no guy will ever love me. That I'm a tease, and that guys will all break up with me, or rape me, because I'm such a stupid unnatural prude. He told me that sex is natural and wonderful and that it's a true sign of love.
He told me, in essence, that if I loved him, I'd screw him. I guess I didn't love him.
This is a sentence I'd already had concept of way before dating kSatyr --"if you love me, you'll sleep with me". I don't think I can get across the level of disdain 18!Sor would be feeling when she said this.
And yeah, the rest of that is absolutely a thing he said, and some of it would be repeated in IM conversations we would have later about it all. Somewhere I have the direct quote where he suggests I never let myself be naked around other people because they'll rape me, and "I hope that doesn't happen to you" (you absolute evil fuck.)
And then he went ahead and shoved his finger up my ass anyways. While. I. Was. Sleeping. He raped me, plain and simple, he knew damn fucking well that I didn't want his penis in my hoo-hah and any bit of him up my arse, and he did it anyways.
1: I find my dark sense of humor to be very funny, because it definitely amuses me to talk about an incredibly dark moment and use the word "hoo-hah" (which was definitely a deliberate word choice --usually it's my vagina or pussy, very rarely my cunt.)
2: And guess which kinkster has since completely avoided what is currently the fifth most popular fetish on fetlife? Like, there's plenty of YKINMK10 stuff out there, but it turns out waking up to be raped up the ass ruins both wake-up sex and ass-play, for *basically ever*.
And I woke up all the way, and he cried for how stupid he was and how he had ruined his relationship and how dysfunctional he was, and goddamn if breaking up with him wasn't one of the most difficult things I've ever had to do. But I had to be free. I fucking *had* to.
Because he wanted me to have sex with him, and I just. Can't. Do. That. I am, apparently, not a sexual person, fuck, I went so goddamn far with him, and with [REDACTED, SEE FOOTNOTE 9], and wanna know something? I'm pretty much ruined for it now. I masturbate, half heartedly, on occasion, when I'm distractedly dreaming of something else. I don't fantasize anymore, not the elaborate sex-plays and pornos that used to sing me to sleep. I haven't brought myself to orgasm in months, and fuck, I used to do that every other goddamn week. I was a fucking *slut*
And then I went for it, with Ksatyr, and I actually was a fucking slut. I let him touch me and grope me and feel me and finger me and taste me and everything. Just fucking short of being fucked. I gave him handjobs, and even blow jobs on occasion, and hated it all.
A: In retrospect, I think it's very funny that I was referring to myself as a slut for wanking a lot. I have been very into masturbation for longer than I can actually remember, but yeah, it was much harder and weirder to be in touch with my body when my body had recent sense-memory of being violated.
B: If you're reading this in 2018 and being like "Kat, you have four boyfriends and have to actively resist sniggering when you think about how much rope your current hobby involves" it might interest you to know that I considered myself largely asexual until about the beginning of 2008. Clever readers will observe that the span of ace-ness covers _my entire relationship with my rapist_. I am what we call a "late bloomer".
I tried to untangle myself, and he wouldn't accept it. Scold me for not being the way I used to, for no longer enjoying the sexcapades. Unlike [REDACTED, SEE FOOTNOTE 9], who slowed the fuck down when I asked him to, Ksatyr only ever wanted more more MORE out of me. My entire relationship with him was based around being naked and him feeling me up.
It's a testament to how weak I really am that we lasted that long. I should've taken my own advice months and months and months ago, and dumped his sorry sexual ass on the pavement as soon as I realized that he wasn't going to go backwards in this relationship.
And the worst of it is that he's fucking *right*. Men want one thing out of a relationship, I'm not willing to provide that one thing, guess I'm fucking going to be single for the rest of my life. And lets face it, kat, I may be willing to oogle every tit in sight, but when it comes to the heart of the matter, I'm straight as a goddamn post. I can babble until I'm blue in the face about how willing I am to have a girlfriend, but nearly every major crush I've ever had was on a guy.
So yeah. I'm going to be single for the rest of my life, because I'm scared of intimacy, and I'm scared of sex. Because I'm not willing to just go ahead and do something that every other girl on the face of the planet has gone ahead and done. Because I honestly believe that I'll lose what little self respect I have if I go out and stoink someone, and I think that shred of self respect is the only thing I'm living for right now.
I would like to be extremely explicit that 29!Kat does not believe that "men" as a monolithic group only want sex, and honestly, 18!Kat probably didn't believe that either, not really.
I would also like to be extremely explicit that I am queer, thankyouverymuch, and the fact that I tend to most often be attracted to and get involved with cis men does not have anything to do with anything except that's who my partners have been. I am definitely not 'straight as a fucking post', and doubly not when you take into account the fact that I haven't IDd as a girl in something like eight plus years.
I would *also* like to be extremely explicit about the fact that sex is not something that anyone should be shamed for, either the doing or not of it. 15!Sor was a fucking _nightmare_ about other people having sexytimes, and she would be actively appalled at most of my college-plus life. As it turns out, I *can* manage to stoink people on the regular and retain my self-respect.
It goes on for another 1500 words or so, but meanders into emo "I'm gonna be alone forever" and then through "faith and some kind of god??". About the only other really important piece is when I obliquely reference that the night before, kSatyr had attempted condomless intercourse with me. Intercourse was already a strict no-no, and this was a couple years before I got on birth control, so like, the _absolute_ fuck are you doing right there you unthinking assfool?
(The parallel self where I got pregnant and kept it and stayed with him to raise children like he wanted is the only parallel universe where I'm pretty sure I'm dead. Yes, I am implying exactly what you think. Sorry for a dark entry?)
***
This entry got way longer than I was necessarily expecting, which is _completely normal_ for me when writing about anything, and double-normal when writing about my rapist. If you wanna have more dark-humour coping-mechanism funtimes you can peep TherapyFilter for everything I've ever posted publicly on the subject11.
I feel better right now than I did an hour ago, which is important --writing is good for me.
But seriously, by far the most important takeaway from going back eleven years into my diary and reading the ramblings of an 18 year old madwoman, is that...it was rape. It was definitely rape, I said so with absolute conviction then because I knew it from the moment it happened. I didn't use the r-word again after that for almost eighteen months, until I saw the pretty coloured shirts on a clothesline and it broke back into my heart.
It drives me _fucking bonkers_ that this is still something that affects me. It's been over a decade! I have healthy [sexual] relationships with wonderful people! Why can't I get over it?! But then I remember that it was a big deal, and it was a _huge_ affect on my introduction to my own sexuality.
And the dying shards of a control-freak who couldn't stand the existence of my own independence are always going to echo at me hard at certain times of year. February 22nd is bad. December 2nd is bad. I do what I can to survive.
~Sor
MOOP!
1: Absolutely do not comment about Arisia in this post. Thank you.
2: I like Christmas Lights more than nearly any other holiday _thing_. It is so good and necessary for us to drive back the dark.
3: I don't have time to find it now, but I remember posting one year about how the last week of November/first week of December is a huge up-and-down of good and bad memories, which makes it even harder. I can't just shut the whole time out of my mind if I am also celebrating 11 years of dancing and the memory of the first time the city ever sang into my heart "you are home".
4: Hell, even this modern computer has a version (the first two lines read "Welcome, little child. Be not afraid." which I think is lovely.) I've got about six entries this time around, the most recent from mid-2017. It's a little strange what gets put _there_ specifically, but I'm glad I have it for when I need. (Lots of things that end with the line "I'm not actually going to post this" --dreamwidth entries that weren't.)
5: The k is silent. It's a pile of stupid in-jokes. The funniest (the darkest) one to me is that in retrospect, naming your partner after a particularly rapey kind of mythological figure means it shouldn't be a surprise...
6: It took me _much_ longer to name him --I think the first public post to do so was the ten year anniversary of us starting to date, so like, only a year and a half ago. I was protecting him or something? And eventually I just didn't care anymore? If he didn't want a narrative where I call him a rapist, he shouldn't have fucking raped me.
7: BtW 1.0 was on Dmitri, my teenage-years desktop. 2.0 was on Seren, my college laptop, 2.1 was on Vera, the replacement harddrive for aforementioned computer which lasted me until like 2013 before being replaced by my new and current box, Kela. Dang, the girl's been working for five years now, she's a good box.
8: Magus broke up with me before we started dating. No really! I got the "we're just friends" talk like...six weeks before I got the "so I keep finding moments where I want to kiss you" talk, and I think that's brilliant and hilarious. But it was...a weird emotional thing at the time. Don't be eighteen, kids. It's not good for anyone.
9: Technically speaking, kSatyr was my second sexual relationship. The first took place over the internet, and when things started to get too hot'n'heavy for me (somewhere around text-descriptions of touching each other's genitals) and I said "can we step back?" the answer was "of course, and I really hope you haven't been dwelling on this because holy shit yes." and they did and we did and it was great.
I am consider *that* person to be a friend. They were the second person in the world I ever told about what happened, after Magus.
10: "Your Kink Is Not My Kink" (Usually followed with "But Your Kink Is Okay")
11: Why is it called a filter when it's public posts? Because it started in August 2009 (about a year and a half after I broke up with kSatyr) with only four people allowed to see the posts. I've not bothered to un-filter the posts, but I've gotten a *lot* more liberal about putting people onto the filter --if you wanna see them and can't, go ahead and ask me.
If you're new here, you might not know that trigger warnings go both ways! The entry above has references to rape and emotional abuse, and the occasionally not-so-enlightened words of my 18 year old self.
no subject
on 2018-11-29 02:44 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2018-11-29 08:54 pm (UTC)Hugs always appreciated!
~Sor
no subject
on 2018-11-30 02:25 am (UTC)Why can't I get over it?
Because being raped is a really traumatic experience, and it's really impressive that you've gotten past it as much as you have?
no subject
on 2018-11-29 04:18 pm (UTC)And yes, Christmas lights are pretty wonderful and I love them, too, and I don't even have SAD.
I am kind of envious of your being able to keep a journal continuously for so long: it's something I've wanted to do since elementary school and never managed to keep up for any length of time.
no subject
on 2018-11-29 09:00 pm (UTC)I appreciate the hugs. I have said enough on this that it no longer feels awkward or upsetting to me, not really. I am sorry and a little sad that it makes other people feel awkward and uncomfortable.
"continuous" feels very funny to me. I have had years where I've written on 750words damn near every day (my record is 361/365 days in a calendar year). I've also had years where I barely write at all. I am *much healthier* if I write on the regular. I'm pretty sure my blood is at least forty percent ink by volume.
~Sor
no subject
on 2018-11-29 09:04 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2018-11-29 05:07 pm (UTC)(and 18!Eliška wrote some things that read very similarly to what 18!Sor wrote, and I have similar feelings about both how little my 18-year-old self understood, and how right she was about some very important things.)
♥
no subject
on 2018-12-01 12:58 am (UTC)He told me that sex is natural and wonderful and that it's a true sign of love.
This hits rather close to home for me : \
There seems to be a lot of it in the circles I've moved in. Never been raped by a romantic partner, though. Thank god.
Hope things get better for you as you move into better months.
Also, I miss you.
no subject
on 2018-12-04 02:17 am (UTC)no subject
on 2020-09-09 03:01 am (UTC)He was, and probably still is, a profoundly broken man but that hasn't been my problem (except for the aftershocks) since 2007.
~Sor