29 years ago today, I was born.
My siblings loved me a lot- my parents even more. I loved Jesus, and I thought he loved me. My purpose in life was simple and my goals and meaning were eternal. Not much into college, I decided that it didn't make sense (this was a complicated process of giving up my beliefs, my whole purpose for living, and basically, my whole community of friends and support). I wanted to believe the Bible, but it felt like I was trying to convince myself that the grass was blue and the sky was green. I just couldn't do it anymore. It was hard to get over my break-up with the creator of the universe and my break-up with the belief that death is just a big perfect party with everyone you love. But, no matter how I fought with myself, I just couldn't accept the preconditions. It was the hardest thing I had been through until...
6 years ago today, I learned just how confusing and cruel the world can be.
When, on my 23rd birthday, after a normal day of happy birthdays and cake and presents just like today, I joined my friends for some celebratory drinks- and sometime between the celebration and the next morning was raped by at least two people. I was drugged by a bartender who shared me with the bouncer of a bar. I don't remember what happened (I could only piece together parts of what happened through DNA evidence and the grapevine of people who witnessed various parts of it in my small hometown). Instead of spending the next year grieving my body and the parts of my soul that had been damaged, I spent the next year fighting for justice and believing that it could help to right a world that had just been turned upside down on me. My 23rd year of life, I learned that the those who I always thought were there to "serve and protect" (investigator after investigator after investigator) are not only lazy and uninterested in serving the community in any way beyond that which is profitable- they also would only deepen my belief that I was unsafe in a world was full of abusers . Those who were supposed to be defending me made me defend my existence and right to safety. "I just hope after all of our work you have learned your lesson, Laura", one officer said as he congratulated himself for talking to one witness (after 2 months of me calling him everyday). "What lesson was I supposed to have learned?" I asked him through hot, angry tears. " We aren't going to pursue charges because it takes two to give a blow job, Laura" another said has he learned a witness at the bar that night saw me in the bathroom with the bouncer holding my head. "It is possible that he could just hold my head with no activity from me", I said as I pleaded with him to continue the investigation. I wish these were all of the examples, but there are many, many more. But the point is, I never grieved my loss. I didn't know how to. How do you grieve that which you don't remember? How to you grieve when you are fighting and only developing more trauma that needs to be grieved? The police stole my sadness- I was too busy being strong and powerful trying to defend myself to them and to the world to hear the quiet weeping of my own body. I couldn't imagine how it was grieving abuses that my mind completely missed.
4 years ago today, I decided to forget it all.
My birthday and (more importantly) my life can't be ruined by this, I thought. The cops won't help me no matter how much I beg at their doorstep and no matter how many times I hound them until they pass me on to another investigator (even moving from local to state police). Oprah won't answer my emails. The lawyers can't do anything. I can't remember it anyway. Maybe this is a "get out of jail free card" for me to just move on with my life. Since I can't remember it, I don't have to deal with PTSD like other rape victims. I put it in the past- only to be mentioned (with my close friends) like a news-clipping recounting the life of someone else. Occasionally I would remember it, but only in my hatred for the police. I thought that made me strong.
6 weeks ago today, when I started trying to be more present in the moment and more aware of everything, I noticed a strange and constant disconnected feeling between my mind and my body. It's really impossible to describe it, but when I tried, my counselor had a name for it. Depersonalization. Sounded like psychobabble to me.
3 weeks ago today, I started to feel sick. Nauseous. As my birthday drew closer, I felt like I was going to throw up at the thought of it.
2 weeks ago today, my counselor told me that my body remembers things that I can't.
1 week and 6 days ago today, I decided to try to reconnect with my body. To take care of it. To quit ignoring what it had been through. To try to delve into the mystery that is creating this strange disconnect between by mind and my body- both of which are essential parts of me despite all of the my ignorance (the state of ignoring). To start to chip away at the protective wall I built between the part of me that remembered and the part of me that couldn't and didn't want to. To realize that horrifying story I had been telling my friends. Was actually my life. And was actually suffered by my body.
1 week and 6 days ago today, I decided that strength involves a lot more pain and crying than I originally thought.
Today, I'm crying every day.
Which is a relief, honestly. Six years later, I'm taking my first step in actually facing what happened to me. Not what the cops did or didn't do. Not the justice that didn't happen. Not the ignorance in the world. Just grieving with my body. Feeling sadness because damage has happened which cannot be undone.
One year from today, I'll still be building a slow reconnection to my body. I can't undo the abuse I have done to it (with a wide array of eating issues and body hatred) and I can't undo the confusing abuse that has been inflicted upon it. But I can't keep ignoring it, either. That's why I am here, inching my way slowly into the pain and staying with it long enough to realize it isn't going to kill me. This is my body and this is my story. There is no escaping, so I will sink into my own skin and learn to be comfortable here. Hopefully (eventually) I'll find gratitude, peace, and compassion here, too.
Note: happy birthdays and presents are still nice. I'm accepting all the feelings around my birthday and it's still nice that people care.
One person's journey to living in the present moment (I realize that perhaps you can't journey to live in the present moment and perhaps making any goal is self-defeating in the world of zen, but I still have to try, no?)
Allaholic?
We're all ___aholics.
Addiction has been defined as “a state of being dependent on a certain substance, which is harmful or dangerous for the physical or mental health of the person, for his social well-being and economical functioning of the subject”. When you type the word ‘addiction’ into popular search engines, you find links for various substance dependence sites. When I sift through these sites, I find little information that is helpful to me; yet, almost daily I find myself making decisions that are bad for me- decisions that are harmful for my physical or mental health for my social well-being and economical functioning. I am not taking hits of crack or lighting any pipes. My drugs are not nearly so obvious to pinpoint. They do not come in powder nor plant form. My drugs are daily decisions that I make. Decisions to which I keep running back. I know they are bad for me, but they are so beautiful in the moment, and I am irresistibly compelled toward these decisions. Since no one is over my shoulder telling me that what I have is an addiction that is may be akin to a drug addiction, and that the cycles in which I find myself are not much different than the cycles of many other addicts, I find myself going around the same mountain over and over again.
Addiction has been defined as “a state of being dependent on a certain substance, which is harmful or dangerous for the physical or mental health of the person, for his social well-being and economical functioning of the subject”. When you type the word ‘addiction’ into popular search engines, you find links for various substance dependence sites. When I sift through these sites, I find little information that is helpful to me; yet, almost daily I find myself making decisions that are bad for me- decisions that are harmful for my physical or mental health for my social well-being and economical functioning. I am not taking hits of crack or lighting any pipes. My drugs are not nearly so obvious to pinpoint. They do not come in powder nor plant form. My drugs are daily decisions that I make. Decisions to which I keep running back. I know they are bad for me, but they are so beautiful in the moment, and I am irresistibly compelled toward these decisions. Since no one is over my shoulder telling me that what I have is an addiction that is may be akin to a drug addiction, and that the cycles in which I find myself are not much different than the cycles of many other addicts, I find myself going around the same mountain over and over again.
Let me give you an example. When I was 21, I was dating this guy named Alan. When Alan introduced himself, he said, “I work with computers”. I think, “Oh, a computer programmer! That’s a good job!” Turns out, Alan was a receptionist who happened to work in front of a computer. I should have gone running in the other direction from this obvious lying loser, but, unfortunately I did not. The first night we hung out was a blast. He was buying my friends and I rounds of drinks, we were hitting the dance floor hard, and he was telling me how excited he was to meet such an obviously smart and beautiful girl. He got my digits. “I’ll call you tomorrow” he promised at the end of the night. I did not hear from him the next day. I felt a little sad, but I accepted the rejection with dignity. This time. You see, I was not yet hooked. Alan eventually called with some excuse about how his dad had stopped by, and he had gotten in a fight with him and just could not talk afterward, but he added that he hoped I would please give him another chance. I did. This interchange pretty much made up our whole relationship. Sometimes the excuses were better than others. One time he actually told me he could not hang out with me because he had to help his friend clean a deer. But we went round and round this cycle for over a year. When we had a good time, it was so good. So fun. He was so attentive to me, so nice to my friends, so good at conversation and affection. But I could not have him. It would not last. And he kept me coming back and back for more. Each time I came back I had less dignity. I sacrificed more of myself. I planned my life around trying to “run” into him. I thought about him all the time. Drama from the relationship made my work suffer. Looking back there was so little real substance to our “relationship”. I was an addict seeking the next high. The next escape from my life. My reality. But I am getting ahead of myself.
I need to make sure you understand something right away. I am not an expert on addiction, and this blog is not intended to cover addiction research or literature. It will be a personal exploration of my addicitions which is intended to make you smile at points, to make you think at points, and to propose a view on life decisions that may help shape yours. As a natural observer and introspector, I have observed my repeated bad decisions (and those of my friends) and wondered why we continue to make the decisions that we do. I hope that you benefit from this blog as I know that these thoughts have greatly improved my decision making, and allowed me to be a good friend to others to help them make better decisions. I hope to be a friend to you as well. Because everyone needs a friend sometime to smack some sense in to them about their addictive habits.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Wonderful post! Your best yet.
ReplyDeleteI agree-wonderful post Laura. First and foremost, you deserve a happy, enjoyable, peaceful birthday. Second, it is great to hear you are confronting the past and feeling your pain. Sometimes you just have to let yourself truly feel, no matter how painful or sad those feelings may be. I hope the crying (and writing) is cathartic and that one day soon you have no more tears left to cry. Wishing you self-acceptance, gratitude, and peace of mind on this birthday and all the rest.
ReplyDeleteBecky
Thanks for your comments, ladies. Encouragement is definitely reaching me right now :)
ReplyDeleteActually the first anonymous comment might not be a lady. So thank you lady or gentleman!
ReplyDelete