I continue to resist and resent the idea that sexual assault has changed me. Part of me doesn't want to be that girl, who cuts her hair short and hates men and cries during sex and hides from the world crushed by the persistent fear that it will violate her again. People joke about how weak she is, about how obvious it is, about how you can smell the shattered self-esteem from miles away. Part of me reads these stories of women in other countries who face so much blatant, violent sexism and wonders how they cope in such dire circumstances if I can't seem to. Part of me will grudgingly admit, to only the kindest and most unassuming souls, that this experience has changed me. But I will forget the next day.
With some trigger--a stray touch, a misspoken word, a sexist joke--and I can feel the clench of anger in my fists, and the stubborn contrarian in me assumes the defensive position. After a few beats, I can feel the immensity of my response, and its clearly inappropriate magnitude. And all I can think is, What am I doing? Why does this stupid thing still hurt so much? Who are you now?
The sexual assault dean told me that my letter to him was so powerful that it moved even her--who has been dealing with this for years. And of course I let her use it in the ASAP workshop. (Strangely after all these alternately traumatic and cold emotions I have kept the writer's touch to yield when I need it.) But I almost don't believe her. I haven't shown the letter to almost anyone else. I have avoided seeing old friends so that I don't have to recount the story, and be judged for not telling it well enough, or be judged for telling it too well. Too strongly. Were those emotions really real? Were they legitimate? Were they appropriate? I still ask myself these pointless questions every time I think about it.
I know everyone wants to ignore what happens to women every day across the world, that it's too much to think about everyday. But the shock and the pain and the anger have already happened to me, and it's crushing to think that I will change nothing and convince almost no one by speaking out about it. So I haven't spoken out. I still never told all the people I was going to tell. I fear an overwhelming silence, confusion, and ignorance when I tell anyone.
And certainly very few people would understand my emotions, even if they nod dutifully and say, Oh god, that's horrible and what an asshole.
My counselor keeps repeating to me that I am strong for keeping so many spaces open, for not closing myself off and giving in to anger and bitterness. I almost don't believe her either. She emphasized that it was important for me to find validation in others because it is a helpful reality check. But my recent pattern of behavior has not followed the sage advice I know to be true. I should be opening up and letting people know at home, people I care about, who I know care about me. But how could I shatter the joy of graduation and newness and excitement in moving on with our lives by telling this stupid, wicked story? I have said nothing. I have holed up by myself, wondering why I cannot get up in the morning, why I have written nothing, why I have spent the day watching television, why I have not exercised as much as I fantasized I would, why I cannot be nice to my mother, why I cannot sleep, why I still seem just a little, though not entirely, broken.
If I would just admit to myself that this sexual violation has hurt me, I could start to heal in the right way. I have no trouble admitting the intellectual truth--that being the victim of sexual assault has made it astonishingly, starkly clear what kind of sexism still exists in the United States, and what work feminism still has yet to do. That it has reinformed my views of feminist activism, and that admitting the depth and the wrongness of these everyday violations against women has helped me cope with sexism I personally experience. But I still have work to do, on myself. I am having trouble identifying as a victim because of the passive implications in the word itself. I am having trouble admitting that such a stupid, careless, arrogant, thrilling (to him), drunken act could have changed not only my entire world, but my entire self. I don't want it to be true.
Yet, late at night, when I stare into the blank darkness wondering why I have been so angry, wondering who I have become, and what will happen when I move to New York, to deal with this all by myself--I have to admit that it's true. I'm not admitting weakness to him. I'm not submitting. I'm not passively allowing myself to be hurt without fighting back. I'm simply being honest with myself. Something unfortunate happened to me on October 30th, 2010. I was not prepared for it, and honestly, it's unclear how any naive human could be prepared. I was surprised by my own reaction, by my own sudden tears around an hour after it happened, by how I could not stop shivering, by how fear consumed my day-to-day life, by the sudden torrent of emotion that was unleashed upon me.
I know this is long, but I'm just going to keep writing because this is working.
I still don't understand why I have been so hurt. In times of crisis, I tend to turn to academia to see if it has any answers. Here, from Kress et al. 2003 as cited here:
The person is unable to effectively answer questions regarding how the event has for a person’s life.This disequilibrium causes the person to experience a sense of crisis that lasts as long as the needs to organize and develop a coherent meaning system in relation to the assault.
This is true of me. I am in disequilibrium.
Secondly, reading this document did make me think that I would react differently if I was assaulted in exactly the same way again. Obvious, it seems, but I had not thought about it in detail before. I would immediately have left the second he made me feel uncomfortable--just pulled my dancing partner to another part of the room. This also makes me think of a time I must now label as possible attempted rape. When I lived in Philadelphia, my house mate tried to get me to drink a lot, and acted quite drunk while he had only had one drink in his 200 lb. football player body. I sipped and felt undrunk. He then pinned me to the bed and actually bit my skin while repeatedly asking me if I would have sex with him, while I repeatedly said no. I think the only reason I was not actually raped or sexually violated was that someone else was in the room. Not that he necessarily would have stopped anything from happening--but I think the guy felt a little self-conscious. I pushed the whole event out of mind and dismissed it as something crazy, though I completely avoided him after that and unfriended him on Facebook.
Now? I would have blown up in his face and told him exactly what he was doing. It would have traumatized me. I am now sure that part of why I reacted so strongly to a non-rape sexual assault was that my prior experiences with assault and sexual harrassment were not labeled as such. They were not defined, and this helped me ignore them. When I finally put the label on what K did, my whole world came crashing down.
I guess that helps me put this whole experience into context.
The third realization I had while reading that document (so helpful to have someone who is not steeped in rape myths talking about this) was that I did experience some feeling of loss of control. I naturally resist feeling out of control--and that's why I powered through the first few months trying to take action, confront my feelings, and get this over with. After I realized that my feelings were sometimes overwhelmingly strong and annoyingly persistent, I began to feel depressed and realized that some things were not in my control. (The justice system, other people's reactions, etc.) I guess that's part of why I have been feeling a little depressed. Part of me doesn't want to fight anymore--at least, I don't want to fight cleanly. I want to get angry and spin a little out of control and act the fuck out so that my emotions don't have to be so bottled up inside and monitored all the time. (and it feels like all the time.)
That's a lot of thinking, and I am hungry now. Time to stop my ridiculous food restriction that always accompanies my bouts of depression.
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