that one might reveal more about one's own state of mind in the pictures they take of small children and domesticated animals

the things you remember over the course of a day. it piles up it piles up, see how it piles up? it seems, at times, you could build a civilization of full strangers with just those memories. there’s always more: i could fill this book and still keep going. i will fill this book because i do keep going. burn the stick through. that safety of melted paraffin and vanilla perfume. a soft huff of smoke from the braided cotton wick. in remembering, am I forgetting to build? in remembering, am i abandoning myself to forget?

*

i could probably buy a house with what i've spent on incense, but i can’t think about it like that.

somebody told me in every earnestness that i needed to write it all down. as soon as it happens, they meant, the first chance you get. they told me it's urgent, you'd be amazed at the things you forget and how quickly you will forget them.

i know it happened within the last 24 hours, this conversation. i just couldn't tell you what it pertained to: nor if it happened in the external universe or in a dream.

sometimes i catch glimpses.

then i blink, and am left wondering: a trick of the eye?

the way a stone drops onto a pile of stones and is utterly distinct
so long as you keep your eyes trained on it
so long as you don't blink:

but in reverse.

something becomes distinct where once there was only ambiguity.
something particular where before there was nothing in particular.

except, circumstances remaining what they are
a stone choosing to remain a stone on a pile,
a stone daring not to disturb the universe,
you still must keep your eyes trained on it
for as long as you possibly can
because



once you blink

When people talk about the necessity of closure in an abusive relationship, they aren't talking about giving closure to the abuser. They're talking about it for the abused, and it isn't a matter of tab-a-into-tab-b see the back of the book for further instructions please call abuser and say "all is well."

There's no method to it. A survivor doesn't know what their path to healing is going to be. Perhaps it will involve contacting the abuser again, but I've come to see that, for me, such thinking isn't so much a sure sign of full recovery as it is a continuation of the abuse dynamic. The abuser wants to believe they aren't 'really' abusive, say, and feel they can achieve this by being forgiven, and the person they've abused feels a genuine obligation to give that to them because of our conditioning.

We want to be accepted we want to be appreciated we want to be respected admired we want to be a good person we want to be loved, be loved, we need to be loved and somewhere a wire got crossed? And we forgot that placating an abuser's random whim is, in no way whatsoever, love. We fight back our guilt for our self-protective radio silence, all the while believing that offering closure to our abuser is the only thing that will result in True Recovery. You know what? Call it male privilege, call it emotional ableism, call it training people into accepting violence by using their spiritual principles against them. Call it whatever you want: I'm calling foul.

I have no obligations to the people who violated my body and my trust. They chose to create pain in my life. They did it, they get to live with that guilt. It's not up to me to make them feel better about it. It's between them and God, at this point, since I can no longer involve law enforcement, having been forced out the other side of limitation statutes by my fear and guilt.

If I do need to contact the abuser again, I don't know that the reasons are about peacemaking or reconciliation or pretending it's okay. For me, at least, it might result from a need for physical evidence that the abuse is over. That my life has moved on. That i can stop reliving and reliving and reliving and reliving and reliving and reliving and reliving and reliving.

The person who damaged you can't touch you any longer, that's what it is, for me.

No, I don't know what to say about situations where the abuser approaches you in full and vulnerable acknowledgment of their wrongful actions: humbling themselves, genuinely repentant, willing to work to make amends to you and everyone else in your life that they've damaged, even if it means legal repercussions. It hasn't happened, to me or to any of my fellow survivors. The closest I've heard was a dear friend getting told "Well, I left it in your hands, I wanted you to be able to choose where this went from here, not force you if you weren't ready." Nice thought. Too bad he used it to rationalize years of cowardice after conveying to my friend on no uncertain terms that the concept of her free will meant nothing to him. "You can hate me if that's what you need to do" is another dismissive little platitude equally sufficient in making your victims feel sub-human about refusing to take responsibility for your monstrous behavior.

Yeah, we're complicated and our desires seem utterly contradictory. Yeah, it's really difficult to relate to us and it might even be impossible to make those wrongs right. We're hard to understand, we're hard to do right by, we're confusing, we're really, really, really confusing. Guess who's responsible for that? Dear abusers: You don't get to fuck people up and subsequently blame the world for being full of fucked up people. The end.

I didn't chose to have pain in my life, but I live with it, and yes, that is an amazing thing, just like it is for everyone else out there living with it. I deal with it every day, if not with trauma related fear, if not with an immediate sense of distrust, if not with something in the pure moment, instead with the long-term results of that fear and distrust: the opportunities I couldn't see because of it, the opportunities I wouldn't take because of my irrational terror it would lead to further violence against me. You think that immediate sense of distrust, that deep seated trauma fear, you think that hasn't created long-term obstacles, neurotic behaviors, self-destructive compulsions, irrational fears? You think that hasn't made all the usual challenges a hundred times more challenging?

This was Done To Me. I did not want it. I tried to stop it, I tried to get away, but the first time I was small and, in every subsequent case, already conditioned for abuse. Are you going to blame a five year old for trusting an adult she's supposed to be able to trust? Sexual predators are apparently able to sense my conditioning as soon as I walk into a room and target me thusly, do you think that's something I'm proud of?

Now, I need help in recovering from what was Done To Me: I need time, I need patience, I need real support. So put your fucking bootstrap theory away: so long as this is being Done To People, we live in a society that needs to offer real and tangible support to survivors, not judgment and "deal with it."

It's funny, sometimes, how the people I've observed to demonstrate abusive tendencies seem to also be the most able to hold up the life yardstick against people who are trying to build their lives after having their very foundation ripped out from under them. Little snickers, nasty backstabs. Perhaps it's how they're negotiating the hurt in their own life, perhaps it's how they're avoiding fear around what could possibly happen to them or, perhaps, what they, themselves, might be capable of?

I'm not saying these things to make a pretty soft bed to waste away the rest of my miserable life upon with my wrist clasped to my forehead weeping long diamonds of tears, by the way, another abuser-affirming myth used to marginalize abuse survivors and invalidate our rightful anger. I'm saying these things because they are true. They are hard, ass hard, unbelievably fucking hard truths. They are truths I'm confronting, things I'm dealing with, I am choosing to live my life instead of wallowing in it, and I'm very fortunate that in the wake of my trauma I've had the kind of love and support that anyone who is abused needs to be able to make that decision.

I am saying, for the sake of myself and millions of other abuse survivors, that if we could put the kind of effort we put into surviving that trauma each and every day into a life without the pain, without the loss of self, without having completely cut ourselves off from ambition or desire or hope, without having to start from so far below sea level we can't say that we'll ever reach common ground, there's a strong chance that an even larger number of us would be millionaire rockstar world leaders. Famous writers, at least, not that I'm talking about anyone in particular. We're strong. We're damn strong. I can tell you this straight up: even if you can find a true blue weeping wrist-clasping life wallower in our ranks, I promise you, they're ten hundred times stronger than the loser who Did It. No exceptions.

Respect, is what i am saying. Respect. The kind of strength some of us need just to face the day, that's real and accountable strength. Respect it. Respect us. Stop criticizing us for having to put that strength toward cleaning some unimaginable trainwreck of a human being's mess instead of building an enviable life for ourselves.

Respect.

If you're sitting there steaming away, labeling me with words like "selfish," "marytr," "bitch" or the ilk, it's time--for you--to realize that these things are all variations of "she deserved it," and you are part of the problem. You don't respect, so please do me the favor of clicking me off your friendslist right now and forgetting this URL immediately.

We live in a world culture built on blaming the victim. We live in a world culture that celebrates abusive mentalities as "ambition" and "leadership" and "success." I don't know how to rebel against something that's become so subtly and completely ingrained, but i do know that, in my own life, I'm going to start with releasing my guilt over not giving the men who harassed, raped, stalked and abused me retroactive permission for having done so, nor am I going to give them the validation of thinking I want them anywhere in my life.

It's not "all okay." I don't owe you forgiveness for what you did to me.

I don't owe you an apology, either.


*

ETA @ 6PM: god, i forgot to screen comments on this post. since this is a public entry at present & about a sensitive matter, all comments from this point forward have been screened. please let me know if you are okay with having your comment unscreened, otherwise i will default to maintaining your privacy. unless you are a troll being trolly, in which case consider my keeping you screened an opportunity to contemplate how valuable meaningless antagonism really is in the absence of reactive outrage.

today stopped at a light on calvert cramped between the parallel parked and the double parked moving van a woman came out from the corner and walked across the street. she held a giant woven basket. she walked at a good clip. her hair veiled her back long past her shoulder blades: thick, straight, almostred. cream clear skin, a dancer's posture, so incredibly thin. dressed exquisitely in tailored dark colors, the definition of winsome, the hem of her sweater lifting behind her in the autumn crisp. of course she was young, but it wouldn't have mattered: when you've mastered form and movement to such an extent, your capacity for beauty stretches out for decades in countless variety. it didn't seem remotely strange that she dashed across calvert with this incongruous woven basket pressed to her chest, that's how astonished i was at her sight. i sat there slumped over the dashboard in my raggy velvet jacket with four buttons missing and misshapen chocolate wrapshirt with my overgrown graying out hair sticking out in odd directions with my crooked perpetually braised rose nose, watching her, watching her, my heart breaking with longing or regret or something. i felt envious, watching her. i felt sad.

hours later it struck me what didn't happen in that moment. i didn't think "well she looks like that, but anyone whose cultivated their appearance so thoroughly is probably pretty shallow," because i know that isn't true. i didn't think "i bet i'm a much better writer than her," because i've met far better writers who were also relentlessly more attractive. i didn't think "well but she probably doesn't have nearly so good a relationship as i have with ben," because it's a silly assumption.

in no way did i think "well she's prettier than me so her life or character must be sub par to mine in some way shape or form," because all of that is rationalization, all of that is some form of hiding from my own shortcomings: all of it is foolish. i simply admired her, even though i knew she proved the lesser quality of my physical manifestation. sure, i felt threatened by the beautiful woman crossing calvert, but i didn't need to secretly put her in her place. in fact, i've just come to assume that most people are more attractive than me, are more talented in a wider variety of mediums, are more intelligent, are much more practical and have far better life skills, got better grades in college, have mindblowing sex lives, have better relationships with their family, friends, coworkers and pets, have much better jobs, have better taste in music and films, have more discipline, eat healthier, exercise instead of wallowing around in guilt about not exercising--anyway, they aren't unemployed and living with their future in-laws in an increasingly bleak and optionless existence. they are generally more worthy of the oxygen i'm over here sucking up, frankly.

for a while i clung to the idea that i had more obstacles in my history, that my stoic lower middleclass roots my family plagued with handicaps my parents who didn't know how to teach me ambition my abuse history my entire lack of a fancy tea set when i was a six year old or a trust fund in my twenties had something to do with my present failures: but i've seen people come from far worse circumstances make far more progress in far less time. some people are just life artists: they do what ben can do with his camera with their lives. they know what to do with an empty evening and they have resources to do it. they can look at the good in a bad situation and take on most challenges with vitality and grace. me, i stagger around. i don't know what to do. i waste time. i waste more and more of it as i get older.

i'm trapped. i'm trapped because i've let myself become trapped, and i don't know what to do about that.

the idea that all things are created equal, just not necessarily in immediately apparent ways, it's a comfort, a safety net that became too riddled with holes to bear weight a long time ago. i don't know what this means: if it is a good thing, because i think these rationalizations people play out to protect them from their envy is a childish dead-end street that isn't really going to protect them from anything for very long anyway, or if it's just a sign that if i ever possessed any degree of self-worth it is, by now, entirely decimated.

apparently rationalization is a useless craft when it has no pride to protect.