Me Too

I've really been taking my time with writing this.  Mulling it over.  Wondering what to say.  How I share such a personal experience in a way that translates with any amount of truth for me.  I have no control of how my story is received, how I am received, and that's scary.  See, I've shared my "Me Too" story before and while so many showed an outpouring of love and support, there were others that did not.  Some of the people closest to me have chosen to ignore it or pretend it didn't happen.  Perhaps it's just too painful for them to come to terms with the truth.  I get it.  I really do.  Most days I wish I could just pretend it didn't happen too.  Only, I have no choice.  I live with it every day.  So, today I'm sharing my story like I've never shared it before.

If you feel this may be too much for you for now, this is a good time to close that screen because in the following paragraphs I share my story of heartache and how it has shaped the last 34 years of my life.  While I don't get overly graphic, I do share some painful details and I understand they may be too much for some to hear.  

I was only five years old when I was first violated.  I imagine only a few years older than I was in the picture above.  I was a carefree child full of vitality with a zest for life.  I spent my days playing with dolls, running outside, and catching lightning bugs.  I felt so much love.  It was palpable.  I still remember that.  I can feel it when I close my eyes and go back to the days before the rape.  I can feel how lighthearted I was.  Alive and free.  Then, in just a few short moments a switch flipped and everything changed.  It was like part of me died that day.

I was at my babysitter's daughter's trailer.  She and her husband lived just behind my babysitter and we had gone there to pick strawberries and enjoy the sunny day.  My babysitter's daughter's husband, David, was also there.  As an intuitive child I never really liked David.  I would hide behind my babysitter's legs when he would come around and despite her constant reassurance that "David was nice" I instinctively knew he was anything but.  His presence suffocated me from the inside out.  I was genuinely afraid to be near him.  I had never felt that feeling before him and only felt it when he was around.  Even at five years old, I knew that wasn't normal.  So, imagine my surprise when my babysitter and her daughter decided to run an errand leaving me alone with that monster.  I remember saying I wanted to go with them and Faye (my babysitter) telling me they would only be gone a few minutes.  Near tears, I pleaded with her to let me go.  She insisted it would be fine and told me I had to stay behind.  Little did she know, a lot could happen in a few minutes.  I remember watching them get in the car and drive off.  Standing there.  Frozen.  My body flooded with fear.  I didn't want to be alone with this creep.  Yet there I was.  Five.  Defenseless.  Afraid.  I never imagined what he would actually do to me if this moment came.  I had always been somewhat protected by the others that were around.  Still, I immediately knew I was in danger.  The next thing I remember he was luring me inside.  How I got there is blurry.  I presume he had been waiting for this moment for a very long time and knew he had to act quickly because his wife and mother-in-law wouldn't be gone long.  As I remember it, he took me straight to his bedroom, sitting me on the bed, him beside me.  He began to caress my neck with his hand under my long blonde hair.  He kissed me.  It felt different than when my father did.  He was kissing my neck now.  My cheek.  My lips.  I had seen people do this on TV.  He laid me back and began kissing me elsewhere.  He touched my non-existent breasts.  My belly.  Below.  He liked touching me.  I knew something was very wrong with this, yet parts of it felt good.  I was confused.  Scared.  Curious.  I remember David telling me I was bad.  I believed him.  I lay there.  Frozen.  Numb.  Dead.  At some point he flipped on some porn.  Then continued to put his hands and lips all over my little body.  Worse even.  I could vaguely see the TV, yet I had no comprehension as to what these people were doing.  I was an innocent five year old.  Naked women.  It’s the last thing I remember before blacking out.  The next thing I recall is his wife walking in.  I was lying on the bed.  Completely out of it.  I remember her asking him something to the effect of what was going on/what had he done.  Even if she didn't think he raped me, she had to have known something wasn't right.  She seemed angry.  Why wasn’t she helping me?

That’s the last memory I have of that day.  It took me almost 30 years to consciously process what I do remember.  I hid it somewhere inside to avoid the feelings of dirtiness, confusion, and pleasure.  I believe my mind simply couldn’t handle it all and went blank to avoid the trauma.  There’s no way my five year old self could have processed what I experienced.  So, on some level I chose to forget, until I couldn’t.  That moment came around the time my son turned five.  Looking into his five year old eyes.  Watching his long, blonde hair blow in the wind as he played.  It all came back.  He is my angel.  Without him I may have never opened this part of myself to heal.  My love for him, my innate need to protect him, stirred all this up for me once again.  I needed him so that I could be made whole. 

While the cognitive memories are few the sensory memories are abundant.  Both are vivid.  They just feel different.  In some ways, the sensations are far worse than the memories in my mind.  See, I have some control of where my mind goes and what I think about.  Meditation has helped with that.  My body is a different story.  The memories come back without notice.  Something as small as a touch and I’m frozen once again.  My body never forgot and I believe it wants to heal.  So, it keeps reminding me in an effort to help me release the pain.  It won’t let me forget, maybe until I’m whole, maybe ever.  I don’t know.  Can I do it? I’m not sure.  All I know is, I’m trying.  I’m on a spiritual quest to heal.  I’m giving it my all.  Sometimes it’s downright ugly, yet I’m in it and I want to transform.

Much of my transformation is wrapped up in the work I do with my partner, Kevin.  I need him to touch places that I can’t access alone.  Thank god he is incredibly patient, loving, and supportive.  I couldn’t do this work without him.  When I feel David’s lips on my body instead of his, he holds me.  When I feel afraid to trust, he reminds me of his commitment to me.  When I cry myself to sleep, his arms are holding me tight.  When I need to talk, he listens.  When I need protection, he’s got my back.  When I wonder if I’m good enough, he reassures me without judgment.  Given all of this I wish I could say his love overshadows what I experienced.  It’s just not true.  His love is a powerful force drawing me toward healing, but it can’t take away what that day did to me.  The unspoken violence of that rape became the undertow of my life.  It changed me as a person.  It took away my security – something a five year old desperately needs.  It made me feel bad about myself.  It left me wondering what was wrong with me, asking what I had done wrong.  It brought on shame.  It put a giant crack in my foundation, one that I’m still trying to repair at 39 years old.  That’s what these asshole perpetrators don’t think about.. how fucked up it leaves a person for years to come.  All the therapy, all the tears, broken relationships, broken hearts caused by one decision to violate another.  It’s more than wondering if I’m safe walking to my car alone at night (although that is part of it).  It’s wondering if I sound stupid when I speak.  It’s wondering if people actually like or care about me.  If anyone actually wants to be around me or if they only want me when it serves them. It’s wondering if I’m valuable.  If my friendships are real.  If I can trust ANYONE.  If anybody likes me.  If I’m good enough.  If I am worthy of a man that isn’t ashamed of me, a man that wants to see me shine.  It’s wondering if I can be taken care of.  Am I worth that? Can I trust it? It's not knowing if I'm doing enough to protect my child.  Is it okay to let him out of my sight? Can I trust that he'll be safe if I'm not around? How do I raise an empowered child if I don't give him the opportunity to practice courage by entering the world without me sometimes? How do I live myself if I allow him to go and something like this happens to him? I could go on.  The questions never stop, all rooted in insecurity and shame.  An experience like this alters every relationship, from the most intimate to the most superficial.

I often wonder if I had told someone, anyone, when this happened if my life would be different today.  I wonder if seeing this monster punished for what he did to me would have given me my security back.  I wonder if it’s even worth thinking about since I didn’t do it.  I didn’t speak up, not until I was 33 years old and my rapist was dead.  How I felt when I saw his obituary can’t be put into words.  I wanted to confront him, to make him look me in the face and feel the shame that he had unloaded on me.  I would never get that opportunity.  No, instead of speaking up as a child I asked my mom for a spanking because “I’d been bad” and you know what? She gave me one.  No questions asked.  She just believed I must have needed it.  Why else would I ask for one? Instead of telling my parents I lived with constant stomachaches.  To this day I have stomach issues.  Instead of sharing the darkness I experienced it came out in recurring nightmares.  Hell, I even chose fainting over speaking up.  As a matter of fact, those episodes became so frequent I was actually hospitalized for them not even a year after the rape.  Then, once Jagger turned five the fainting and tachycardia got out of control again, so much so that I decided to leave my job in order to care for myself physically.  Why had I been so afraid to speak up? And, why did nobody notice that something had suddenly shifted in me? Why didn’t they care enough to ask – to find out?

I think part of the reason I didn’t tell is interwoven in shame.  David got exactly what he wanted by telling me I was a bad girl.  It shut me up.  Looking back I can see that I was a radiant beam of sunshine and he was the “bad” one, but my five-year-old self couldn’t see that.  She thought she had done something wrong and wanted to avoid getting in trouble at all costs, which meant she would hold this darkness inside until it was absolutely impossible to do so.  She had been a brave little girl and in that moment, her self-assurance, self esteem, and self awareness all changed.  She no longer felt loved and protected, or worse, worthy of love and protection.  She was all alone in the world.  She was different.  She was a fraud, pretending to be good, pretending to be like all the other kids.  The fear of anyone knowing she was different was too great.  She would carry her dark, heavy secret forever if she could.  Then one day, wrapped in my 33-year-old self's love for her, holding the hand of another beautiful child (my son, Jagger), she was brave enough to speak up and share her story.  I thank her for that.  It took a lot of courage.

Over the years that five year old grew up and from the outside maybe it looked like she was a normal adolescent, blossoming young woman, and finally, a loving mother.  However, her dark truth was shaping every experience she had.  Her secret was making the navigation of life pretty difficult.  I won’t get into all the details of the last 34 years, that would require a book.  However, I do want to very briefly hit the milestones and how this experienced shaped the way I moved through the world.  I got married at 19 and had no idea how to truly connect with my husband.  I thought if I gave him good sex everything else would work itself out.  So we had lots of sex.  Good, bad, and in between.  When I felt insecure about my body or wasn’t sure if I was pleasing him I would secretly look at porn to see if I was doing it “right" and to compare myself to the women I imagined he fantasized about.  This made me feel even worse and more disconnected.  I was constantly comparing myself to a hurtful image of womanhood and sexiness.  Don't forget, porn was a vivid detail of my rape, an inseparable stamp on my soul.  Eventually I agreed to watch porn with Kevin a few times.  The experience was always the same: exhilaration, followed by numbness, and then tears.  It made me feel completely empty inside.  Come to think of it, sex often made me feel empty inside and left me in tears, porn or not.  I cried A LOT.  And not the good kind of cry.  The empty, something isn’t right, disconnected kind of cry.  All of this was triggering something deeper.  At the time I just couldn’t access what exactly that was. 

After my divorce, I finally started connecting to the men I slept with.  Even casual encounters felt spiritual.  I didn’t need the same commitments my girlfriends were requiring of their lovers.  I enjoyed being on my own and felt much safer in non-committed relationships than committed ones.  Somehow this enabled me to feel a deep-rooted connection with some of these men.  I'm guessing it's because I finally felt completely secure, having only myself to depend on.  I even found myself in love without a title or promise of monogamy.  I wasn’t trying to settle down so it was deeply honoring to have fluidity in my relationships.  I felt in control and that felt like security.  The men I was with were extremely honest with me and I with them.  Maybe for the first time ever, I felt safe.  Because of this I will always cherish the gift of those experiences. 

Then there was my time working for the United States Air Force.  In my experience, if you are an abused woman, this is not the place for you.  I have lost track of the number of sexual harassment claims I could have filed while working there.  Unfortunately I wasn’t strong or brave enough to fight at the time.  I tried after the first incident and it was made abundantly clear that this was not the place for women to speak up.  So, rather than facing it, I chose to cry alone, loathing my job and many of my colleagues.  Over time I learned it was more acceptable to join them, laughing at the crude jokes and ignoring the sexist comments in order to fit in and keep the peace.  One area where I did take no shit was in the work I produced.  I knew I was intelligent and was dedicated to doing a damn good job on any project I was assigned.  So, even though I had to endure being called a “skirt” and having my ideas belittled publicly, when my finished product came out, nobody could deny that I knew what I was talking about.  It was the one way I felt vindicated in all the years I spent working in that hellhole.  Nobody could take my intelligence from me.  Sure, I met some great people along the way.  Not all of my experiences were ones of harassment.  Unfortunately, those men and women weren't speaking out against the issue either.  It was (and I'm assuming still is) just an accepted culture.

In my experience, culture is a powerful thing. It shapes the container in which we interact.  It teaches us what is and isn’t permissible.  And, it often supports large groups of people in ignoring problems rather than putting in the work to deal with them.  I sometimes think about how at five years old I was already blaming myself for a man having his way with me.  What in the hell is wrong with our culture that I would have ever gotten the message that this could somehow be my fault? Are we so focused on having “perfect” children that we can’t intelligently speak with them about the difference between owning responsibility when it’s ours to own and recognizing when it’s not? Maybe at five I wouldn’t have quite understood the difference or maybe I would.  I don't know.  I do remember always feeling like I had to be a “good little girl."  I think I got that message through a lot of different avenues.  However, maybe if I hadn't felt so compelled to be "good" all the time I would have had the courage to tell my parents without the fear that I would “get in trouble.”  Maybe I wouldn’t have asked for a spanking because an adult man decided to show me parts of my sexuality that I wasn’t ready to see.  Maybe at 39 years old I wouldn’t wonder if I’m too smart or speak up too often when I notice it makes others uncomfortable.  Maybe when a colleague tried to physically pull me into his hotel room I would’ve felt more empowered to go to the union instead of accepting my boss’ way of handling it, which was to ask me what I had been wearing.  That's an absurd response! I wear bikinis on the beach.  It doesn't give a man the right to grab my body or expect sex.  My point here is that we, as a society, have got to change the dialogue with our children, our community, and ourselves.  We’ve got to teach our daughters to see themselves as valuable enough to speak up and take no shit.  We’ve got to teach our sons to value their voice and the voice of others, including that of the opposite sex.  We’ve got to demand more of coworkers, ministers, politicians, friends, and ourselves.  We’ve got to look out for one another and offer compassion to the hurting.

There is no room for a man to get away with crude remarks about a woman’s body (especially our President, yes I went there).  There’s no room for unwelcomed sexual comments and advances.  There’s no room for belittling and name calling.  We must expect more when it seems so many are settling for so little.  We must latch on to this “Me Too” movement and create tangible, noticeable change from it.  We must create a better world for our daughters and granddaughters than the world we are living in today.  We must acknowledge that by doing this we are also creating a better world for our sons and grandsons.  They too benefit when the feminine is honored.  We all do.

I’m not sure where this “Me Too” movement is taking us.  I just want to do my part and share my story, as painful as that may be.  I hope that one day I can say I no longer question whether or not I am safe in this world.  I hope I can say that I fully trust kindness to be shown to my son and all children everywhere.  I hope we can begin to heal our collective pain body by acknowledging our individual pain and embracing our neighbor in times of need.  I recently heard someone close to me say that it doesn't matter how we make people feel, it matters what we accomplish.  I must disagree.  How we make others feel does matter.  It is important.  Don’t forget it.  Love spreads love and hurt people hurt people.  This I know for sure.  So, maybe the next time you see a friend post “Me Too” call them up and ask if there’s anything you can do to lighten their load.  Think about what they have gone through when you go to vote or hear a sexist joke.  When you aren't sure if you should speak up, think about the courage it took for them to type those two simple words, "Me Too."  Gain strength from that.  Know, they are depending on you.  We are all depending on each other.  I also must say, if you are around children that genuinely don't feel comfortable around someone.  Listen.  Don't assume you know better than them.  Children are not blinded by niceties.  They are connected to their feelings and we need to pay attention to their wisdom.  

Finally, I couldn't end this post without saying something to my parents.  Mom, Dad, if you all are reading this please know that I love you.  I'm angry at so many things, but not at the two of you.  You have always given me love and I'm doing my best to learn how to receive it.

Peace and love.