part 68 - with a picture included!

We have had regular cable for a couple of months now and I have noticed a lot of the programming centers on death and near-death experiences.

I grew up with a lot of violence. I have not spoken or written about a lot of it outside of just trying to put into words what happened to me. I think maybe it is implied in what I have spoken and written about, but I can never be sure what impressions are drawn from how I present myself or my story to anyone else.

I feel like I have written a lot about my dad’s sexual abuse, some of the torture, and being raped and assaulted by other people. I don’t think I have written about my own inclusion in the sick things my dad did.

It is hard for me to imagine “inclusion” as being the right word to use. I mean, everything he did to me and coerced me to do and tricked me into doing and taught me how to do can be attributed to his evil. It is difficult, though, to think of the things I was directly exposed to and coerced to do as being something I can fully separate myself from, or extricate from the idea of having used my own free will.

I know he is responsible for it, but it is also just the way I was programmed to believe.

My dad was really, really fucked up. Sometimes it is hard for me to think about it directly – it is like looking into the sun.

Sadism was the foundation of who my dad was.

sa·dism

   [sey-diz-uhm, sad-iz-]  Show IPA

–noun

1.

Psychiatry . sexual gratification gained throughcausing pain or degradation to others.Compare masochism.

2.

any enjoyment in being cruel.

3.

extreme cruelty.

Origin: 
1885–90;  < French sadisme; see Sade, -ism

—Related forms

sa·dist, noun, adjective

sa·dis·tic  [suh-dis-tik, sey-, sa-]  Show IPA, adjective

sa·dis·ti·cal·ly, adverb

un·sa·dis·tic, adjective

un·sa·dis·ti·cal·ly, adverb

Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House,Inc. 2011. 

Word Origin & History

sadism 

"love of cruelty," 1888, from Fr. sadisme , fromCount Donatien A.F. de Sade  (1740-1815). Not amarquis, though usually now called one, he wasnotorious for cruel sexual practices he described in his novels.

Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper 

Sidenote: I just copied and pasted those definitions, so however the formatting ends up in this post is how it was copied.

“Love of cruelty.” That was my dad.

I was raised to believe I am the daughter of cruelty, the offspring of cruelty, the spawn of cruelty, the birthright of cruelty – a daddy’s girl.

When I was in the hospital for PTSD a few years ago, I did an art project – I don’t even remember what it was called or how it was described or what it was a part of. I just remember that I used oil pastels and a piece of construction paper.

I didn’t think about what I was drawing before I drew it, and I didn’t think of what I had drawn until I was done, which is not something I do anymore – there is no telling what is going to come out of my brain when I am not paying attention.

I drew a big heart that is pretty and colorful with a smaller heart with a black crack in the middle moving away from the big heart. The small heart is still a part of the big heart, though.

The big heart represented who I know logically I am and who I can be. The smaller heart with the crack in the middle is who I was taught I was and would always be.

For so long, I was taught to believe that the very core of me was a black mass of evil. In my mind the black mass looks like the sticky black resin that is left over after smoking pot (I think that is what hash comes from). I don’t know if that is an analogy many people can relate to, but that’s what I have in my mind.

At the time that I drew that heart picture, I was feeling more and more like maybe I am not so evil – maybe I can be independent of the evil that was my dad – maybe the blood in my body that came from the blood in his body is not poison. It has been so, so difficult to separate myself from him – such a huge part of my relationship with him was rooted in how we were the same, and how only I could understand him, and how only he could understand me.

He even convinced me that I could not understand me – only he could.

I feel very strong about my good heart now. I don’t believe the core of me is evil anymore. I don’t believe my blood is poisoned because I am my father’s daughter. Even more, I don’t FEEL like I am evil or like my blood is poison. I don’t have to convince myself that the evil is my dad and not me – I KNOW that now.

There is still a big crack in my heart, though. It is not so much a crevasse anymore, but more of a healing scar. It’s a whole heart with some pretty bad scars on it.

Those scars from those wounds still hurt. When I see on television how death and near-death and murder and crime and evil is so fascinating to people, it makes me think of how much it all has been a part of my life and experiences. I used to really love those shows – I guess I could relate.

But now, being able to see that evil as separate from who I really am makes it so much harder for me to watch death and dying and murder on television, or to see violence in movies or on video games, or even to see animals being harmed or eaten (I haven’t eaten meat in a long time). Sometimes it hurts me if I see someone pick a leaf off a tree or a flower out of the ground.

It all reminds me of the pain and the evil that exists in our world – and that I know it exists from personal experience.

I like to think those shows about death and murder are fascinating to other people because they can’t fathom that kind of pain and evil. It would hurt me a lot more if I thought everyone has to experience that kind of pain as a part of life. I don’t know – maybe everyone does experience that pain in their own way.

I am really happy with having DVR now though so I can record and watch What Not to Wear and Say Yes to the Dress and Extreme Makeover: Home Edition and things of that nature. I will admit that I do also enjoy It Only Hurts When I Laugh, which does involve people getting hurt, but hey – they aren’t dying so that’s a step up from the shows I used to love, right?

part 67

It has been awhile since my last post. I have missed writing things that I can put all out there. There have been a lot of things happening with me that concern some other shit that I have not felt comfortable posting to the public yet. Those things have been overwhelming the things that I do feel comfortable posting to the public.

Well, not “comfortable,” per se, but you know what I mean.

Fortunately, something happened concerning all of the shit I do write about on this blog, and so now I have something to write. Yay! No, really – I have missed this. It means so much to me to be able to get all of this shit out there.

I was talking to a friend about what it means to me to have this blog. It has been such a blessing in ways I had not anticipated. It is so liberating to give up control over what people think of me and of what happened to me. It feels really, really good to be able to be strong enough and confident enough in the truth to expose it this way.

I know what happened to me and I can write it down in this blog and people from all over the world can read it and think whatever they want to think about it, and it will never change that I know what happened to me, and that what happened to me was wrong.

I do not like being judged, and it is scary making myself so open and vulnerable. However, I am very much at peace with the knowledge that I do the best that I can do every day, and that there is no shame in that. I feel like I know who I am and that other peoples’ views can hurt me or can me feel really good, but none of it changes who I am at face value at any given time.

Anyway!

The thing that happened regarding the shit I feel okay writing about is that I saw a news segment about this woman whose daughter was molested by a neighbor. The woman – the mom of the little girl - made a big sign that says, “A child molester lives close,” or something to that effect.

She put the sign (it may have been even more than one sign) out in her yard for everyone who happens by to see.

She did not name any names, or give any other indication of who exactly this child molester was, just that there was a child molester nearby.

These signs have really sparked quite a heated debate on the right or wrong of doing such a thing. Neighbors are complaining that it makes them all look bad and reduces their property values. Other people are tremendously supportive of the mom and family and champion her actions.

I think what she is doing is super-awesome and brave.

However, when this story was being aired, a comment came in saying that what the woman was doing was wrong, because you can’t say things like that about anyone unless and until they have been convicted and proven guilty.

That comment stirred me up a bit, I think for several different reasons. One of the reasons it bothered me so much is that it is an accepted point of view in our society. I am a big advocate for due process of law, and the philosophy of innocence until proven guilty, but the person being accused in this instance is not being formally charged with any crimes and the mom putting the signs out is not a law enforcement entity.

The sign in that woman’s yard is her way of speaking out as a victim, and as the mother of an innocent child who was abused by someone in the neighborhood, and a way to warn other people. Someone close to her own home hurt her daughter in a way that will affect her and her daughter for their entire lives. Putting that sign out is what she has the power to do, and she is doing it.

The notion that a victim of any crime should not be allowed to publically accuse anyone of anything without enough evidence to convict that person of that crime is ridiculous, which leads me to another thing that bothers me about this statement.

I have really and truly believed that as a victim I could not speak up and say what was done to me unless I had irrefutable evidence to back it up. The demand for proof when anyone is accused of anything renders their victims powerless to speak out and to be heard as rational human beings. The person who was assaulted, or stolen from, or cheated must be ready to prove to the world that what they are saying is true, or their voices mean nothing.

When I look back and think of how afraid I was that I would somehow unjustly ruin someone’s life by telling what they did to me, I feel nauseous. When I hear people saying things about not accusing anyone of the crime of child molestation in any venue or medium until the accuser can prove that it is true, I feel nauseous and angry.

Why do I believe – like so many others in our society – that the risk to a person’s reputation is more of a priority than the healing of a hurt child? Probably I believe that because that is what I have been taught.

But learning that everything I was taught could be questioned and challenged led me to question and challenge what I have been taught, and I have come to the conclusion that what I was taught about keeping my mouth shut was wrong.

It was wrong for those people to do those things to me, and it was wrong to scare me to such depths that I actually believed I could not say the deeds out loud without fear of some real and systemic consequence befalling me.

It is a pretty big accusation to lay against anyone – that they sexually abused or otherwise violated an innocent person. It is also disgusting to hide behind the weight of such an accusation and what it may mean for an abuser when no consideration is given to the abused.

The phrase from that comment on that news story, “you can’t say that,” makes me mad. Of course I can say that. Of course a mother of a child who has been sexually abused can say that her child was sexually abused by someone who lives close to them. She can say in public or private or wherever she wants to.

It is the truth. There is nothing more real or more pure.

According to Gandhi, the truth is the only thing that can really be worshipped. That makes a lot of sense to me.

I used to have a sticker on my car that said, “speak your mind, even if your voice shakes.” I loved that sticker and I have thought of it many times over the years since I first read that quote and used it to bolster myself up to defend what I feel is right. It reminds me that fear – even physical, quaking and shaking fear – is not a hopeless obstacle to going ahead and doing whatever it is I fear doing.

I am scared to say some things out loud. I am definitely scared to say some things out loud that will piss off people who will want very literally to kill me for saying it. But that does not mean I “can’t” say it.

As long as it is the truth, I can say whatever I want to say. I do it all the time.

"Stand before the people you fear and speak your mind - even if your voice shakes."~ Maggie Kuhn

part 66

I’m feeling a bit in limbo, but not in a bad way. There has not been much drama and I have the opportunity to just rest for days and weeks at a time. Sometimes I go for walks, and sometimes I sit out on the deck, and I sleep in as much as possible and take naps when I am tired. That is what “resting” is for me.

I don’t go out much, and I don’t feel bad about it. I am used to being really distressed when I stop going out, like I am doing something wrong or unhealthy or that will lead to mind-shredding insanity. I am finding that the more I rest, though, the better I feel. I feel more solid, safer, saner – that kind of thing, and then when I eventually do want to go out it is so much easier.

I’ve started reading again (I’m on Russell Brand’s Booky Wooky 2 – I think he is fantastic), and I’ve started knitting some, again, too.

I’ve been having a lot of physical symptoms like I did when I first stopped drinking and started living life. I’ve been getting headaches a couple times a week – they can be bad, but it reminds me of when I was getting headaches all day every day, and I try to be grateful for the opportunity to recognize my progress. I used to have constant headaches – I had more headaches than I did non-headaches.

I used to work in a research lab, and a part of my job was screening potential participants for research studies. One of the questions I asked the potential participants was how many headaches they had in a week – most of them said none.

I didn’t believe them. I mean, I did, but not really.

One of the things I started to do when I began to figure out and acknowledge how fucked up my experiences have been and how they have affected me is looking for ways other people’s lives are fucked up and how they have been affected. I have always been fascinated with human behavior and the way it can be predicted a lot of times, but there is really no way of knowing how anyone is going to act in any situation at any time until after it happens.

I really love looking at behaviors and then learning – or just trying to figure out – what life experiences may have contributed to a person acting any certain way. It is a bit tricky because of how easy it is to slip into the mind-frame that I am able to know what people are going to do before they do it. As I said before, there is a certain predictability about human behavior, but there is never EVER anything completely certain about those predictions.

Also, I do not have superhuman mind powers to see the future – sometimes I forget, though. I can’t deny that having a sense of being able to know what is going to happen is comforting. It isn’t real, but it is comforting.

I like learning about people’s pasts, about their childhoods. The way people are raised and the experiences they have affect and shape everything they do, from tying their shoes to choosing a career. I used to be very concerned with being able to look at behaviors and believe I knew with absolute certainty what a person had experienced in their lives, and then letting them know what I knew about them, which is actually quite obnoxious of me, so I’m glad I have reined that in a bit.

When I began to remember my experiences and make all of the maddening “connections” to how they have shaped my actions and decisions and feelings without my previous awareness of this influence, I decided that all people must do this – it’s called “denial.” I suppose all people actually do this, but I wanted everyone around me to examine their lives and find what exactly it was that happened or didn’t happen to fuck them up, how they were previously not aware of this relationship between past and present, and then to acknowledge it and have their knowledge contribute to a change in behavior (and then acknowledge what an insightful genius I am and express their gratitude to me for making their lives better, an expectation I have found is also obnoxious of me).

I really believed this was all I had to do for myself, too. It turns out that knowing every single little thing that happened to me and being able to explain why I do certain things as a result does not necessarily mean that behavior will automatically change. I have experienced a lot of internal conflict about this.

I recognize something I feel is negative about myself, and then I figure out what it was that most likely contributed to this negative thing. If I can connect it to any of my past experiences – good or bad or neither – I feel like I have unlocked a secret, and now that I know what the secret is, the negative things I do regarding that secret will stop happening.

I had a certain expectation that everyone else should be able to do this, too.

I have found out in a very painful manner that being able to intellectualize my experiences and tie them to things I see as negative about myself is not going to change – all by itself – what I think is negative about myself. I especially felt this was true of abusive or harmful or traumatic past experiences. I really believed that any current behavior associated with traumatic experiences somehow made that behavior bad and gross and wrong.

This has been especially true about sex. All of my sexual experiences originated in trauma, in pain, in confusion and betrayal. I have learned to separate a lot of those feelings so that I can have my own voluntary and intimate and special sexual experiences, but sometimes I find that something I enjoy sexually now has been something I was sexually traumatized by in the past, and that can be quite distressing.

But that’s what therapy is for.

Anyway.

A big part of accepting myself and accepting other people is figuring out that it doesn’t matter how much I try to separate what hurt me from who I am now – I’m always going to be me. Those things that hurt me will always be a part of me. Nothing is going to change that.

Using the intellectualization of my experiences and attributing that to my current behaviors does not change what happened to me.

Figuring out exactly why I am agoraphobic does not make me less afraid to leave my house. Knowing that I am not ever going to be a helpless child again does not make me feel like a strong and capable adult. Being aware of what dissociation is does not mean I have stopped dissociating.

Finding out about myself and the ways my experiences have shaped who I am has helped me to grow and recover A LOT. But I have to do something with those realizations – the realization in itself is not sufficient to make my life easier or better.

That has been difficult to accept because coming to learn and know and accept what has happened to me has been horrendously painful all in itself. Having to then take that and make it work for me now feels like insult added to injury. I have a certain sense of entitlement I suppose.

But it is what it is. That is such a pat and irritating phrase, but there is no better way to describe the past and how it affects me now. The past is the past and I am not going to be able to change it.

Expecting myself to change and become different and literally and figuratively become someone who has not had the past I have had is what suffering is all about.

Figuring out that I don’t have to have an explanation for everything I do has been pretty liberating. Figuring out that just because I can see a cause and effect between traumatic experiences and how I behave or feel now does not mean I must change how I behave or feel now has been liberating.

It has allowed me to accept myself. It is difficult for me to not question my acceptance of myself as being somehow complicit or approving of what happened to me in the past, but it is getting easier for me to remember that all of that is not necessarily relevant to me being a good and happy person.

Have I mentioned the Dalai Lama yet? That dude is brilliant. He is all about peace and love and serenity for your own self, and he has figured out that the only way to have that is to have peace and love and serenity for those around you. The only way to have peace and love and serenity for those around you is to have it for yourself.

Simple yet maddening – how exactly is all of this peace and love and serenity supposed to happen if one is dependent upon the other? It doesn’t matter. Seriously. It’s just something for me to recognize as true, and when I face a situation in which I can change my way of thinking in order to tolerate myself, that is what I try to do. When I face a situation in which I can change my way of thinking in order to tolerate someone else, I try to do that, too.

This is difficult to continuously do – I actually do not think it is possible to continuously do. However, I am getting a lot of practice doing it while I am getting all of this rest. Also, I follow the Dalai Lama on twitter so I am reminded almost daily of how to do it.

Between the peace I get from the Dalai Lama’s tweets and the laughter and joy I get from Conan O’Brien’s tweets, I can really put together quite a nice day.

Okay, I am going to go rest some more.

part 65

I cannot express just how much it means to have support from people. When I first began this process of recovering memories and dealing with things that happened to me and all of that other bullshit, I had a kind of expectation of support. I knew that people who experience the things I have experienced are treated carefully and kindly by mental health professionals and by the people who love and support them.

For the most part, that is what actually happened with me. There was an initial reaction of shock, and then sympathy, and then compassion from all of the appropriate people.

There are many different levels of “knowing” what happened to me, and of accepting it and processing it and blah blah blah. I know this very well as it applies to me, but the last year has also allowed me to get strong enough and healthy enough to see just how deeply my experiences have affected others.

I initially did not have the capacity to be able to have anyone lean on me with their grief or anger. I was mostly a puddle and completely overwhelmed by my own pain. After awhile, I was definitely able to recognize the pain of my abuse and how it affected people who love me, but I was not able to – or maybe not even willing to – empathize with any of them.

This whole process has been terrifying and exhausting and I really held tight to the notion that I needed to focus all of my energy on me and my own healing. I don’t think there was anything wrong with that – I believe it has been integral to my progress. I initially relied so much on the support of others to validate that what happened to me was real and was wrong, and that was necessary for me to be able to even stand at all.

I used to feel hurt and shame at supportive gestures made by other people, because even though they were so important and welcome, they reminded me that something so bad happened to me that people would react this way and be this supportive.

The support and reactions I got from other people allowed me to put my experiences into perspective, and that has not been easy to do. I don’t want to be a victim. I don’t want to be broken. I don’t want to be rejected and hurt and wrenched to pieces by people I have no other choice but to love and trust my own life with.

But that is what was real. I have been a victim. I have been torn to shreds in almost every literal and figurative sense. I have been hurt. I can’t heal from all of that if I don’t acknowledge that it happened to begin with.

I spent so much time and energy growing up convincing myself that what happened to me was not that bad, and was not that serious, and that I was only being selfish and feeling sorry for myself in those times I could not deny how bad it actually was. I believed I made those things bigger in my mind so that I could manufacture attention for myself.

I really felt like a bad person when I became confident about being angry and indignant about what was being done to me. I didn’t feel I had enough of a right to defend myself, to accuse other people, or to even trust my own perception of what is real.

I believed that calling any attention to what was happening to me was wrong or sick in some way. I believed I only wanted to feel important or to get away with things I shouldn’t have done or to get more than I deserved or to stand higher than I really was. The disdain I had for myself was completely consuming.

So when I did start talking about it all, the support I got reminded me that I was not bad or just trying to get attention or to stand higher than I really was. That support, as I said, validated my pain.

Lately I have been experiencing support in a different way – I have been reacting to it differently. When someone says something supportive to me, I can look them in the eye and know that what they are saying is okay to be said about me. I can acknowledge the evil I was exposed to and recognize that I was not evil. I can stand as high as I really am and appreciate that other people can see how wrong all that shit that happened to me was.

I don’t feel like I am obligated or responsible for making myself available to other people so they can lean on me now. I don’t feel like I owe it to society or god or anyone else to reach out and take some of the burden of other people’s pain over what happened to me, and I have not felt strong enough to do that without giving away the energy I needed for myself.

But I do feel strong enough to do that now – or at least strong enough to start letting that happen. My capacity for compassion and empathy for people who are hurt by what happened to me is becoming a concrete and viable part of my consciousness.

Recognizing that other peoples’ support for me is their way of expressing their own hurt and anger at what happened to me has allowed me to feel more compassionate for my own self. Acknowledging the hurt in someone else’s eyes and knowing that it is because of what I experienced is tremendously humbling.

It is a gift.

There are so many different ways that is a gift, and I don’t even want to bother trying to analyze and put it all into words right now (or maybe ever), but I am recognizing that I am not simply getting validation from other peoples’ support. I am getting power and strength and confidence.

It makes me want to support other people for whatever reason. It makes me feel good to know I can help someone else – really empower them- by expressing my support for them, by acknowledging that I might not know exactly what they are experiencing, but that I can see how difficult it is to experience it.

Having compassion and tolerance for other people, and being able to support them, is, for me, the meaning of life. I get more peace and serenity from it than anything else.

And I would not be aware of how strong it is or even how to do this if other people had not done it for me first.

Support means almost everything, and it comes in all different sizes and shapes. Simply smiling at someone is support, building a house for someone is support – whatever anyone has to give to another and gives them that is support.

It is overwhelming to feel all of the support I have from people, and it is amazing how much it means to me to be able to support other people, too.

Thank you with the utmost sincerity for your love and support – it is what healing is all about.

part 64

I have begun to notice that the perspective of the victim of rape and/or other sexual assault and abuse is constantly nudged to the side when it comes to addressing what happened to them.

Obviously, the person who committed the assault would almost certainly dismiss the victim’s perspective, if that person even considered that the victim had a perspective to begin with. People who are close to the person who committed the assault would also naturally align themselves against the perspective of the victim.

But what about everyone else? The abuser and people close to the abuser are not the only ones detrimentally affected when a victim tells on them. The victim’s own family often considers how this accusation might impact them personally, and this deters them from supporting their victimized loved one.

People do not want this kind of thing to be true, especially when it applies to someone close to them. It is yucky and uncomfortable and awkward to deal with. Mentioning it to any third-hand party culls gasps and instant scrutiny of the person spreading the information. Who wants that kind of attention?

The first thing most people hearing this information from the victim do is to question 1) is there a reason the victim would be making this sort of accusation up; and 2) is this victim mentally sound enough to know if something like that really happened to them. There are no black and white answers to these questions, so a denial is automatically easier than a consideration of credibility for the victim.

One of the things I personally heard when I was telling people about the neighbors is that I shouldn’t say anything unless I was 150% positive it really happened, because once this type of label gets applied to someone, it never goes away regardless of their guilt or innocence.

Another consideration when the revelation of sexual abuse occurs is what impact it might have on relationships if the accusations are considered genuine. When a child tells their parent that the parent’s husband or wife sexually abused them, how is that going to impact the relationship the parent has with his or her spouse?

It is not socially acceptable to acknowledge that your spouse has abused your children in any way, but especially sexually, and then stay with that spouse. The only thing short of a denial would be accusatory, and accusing a spouse of doing such things is a pretty big relationship problem, and so the search for ways to discredit your child begin immediately.

Is it fair to the accused’s family and friends and reputation? If word gets out that this person is even in any way associated with an accusation of child molestation or rape, it does tend to stick in peoples’ minds regardless of guilt or innocence.

Is it fair to come out and accuse someone of sexual abuse and risk that person’s lifestyle and reputation and standing in the community if you don’t have hard evidence to back it up? What if your memories are not reliable? What if your memories are of something else you have seen and then mistakenly applied to your own past experience?

Does a victim need to have irrefutable evidence of not only the assault, but of the exact person who committed the assault, and a clean bill of health from a psychiatrist in order to responsibly and fairly put anyone else’s name out into the public eye in such a negative and permanent way?

No.

My answer is no. Why is my answer no? Because the effect any of it may have on the accused is completely irrelevant to the victim’s rights to express what happened.

I have really struggled with all of these questions A LOT. Will I be hurting others in telling what happened to me? Will I be irrefutably damaging and ending relationships as a result of doing something I feel is very important for me? Is what is important for me significant enough to risk putting anyone’s reputation on display? Am I only being selfish? Vindictive? Histirionic?

Who gives a shit?

My next door neighbor did not consider my reputation and my ability to have relationships and my very existence in the world when he molested me – why would I have any concern for his reputation now?

The neighbor across the street did not have any concerns for my reputation when he raped me, so why should I have any concern for him in any way at all now?

The neighbor on the corner had no consideration with how I might be able to just function in life when he molested and raped me, so why should I care what trouble I might bring his way now?

It is easy to forget the perspective of the victim when the fallout is so awkward and damaging and uncomfortable for everyone else. It is what drives us to deny that these things can happen. It is what every parent fears will happen to their child, but also what most parents would refuse to believe happened to their child. There must be some way it could be presented as to not be true so that everyone can go on living their lives the way they always have been.

After all, false accusations are believed to be at the heart of most – if not all – of alleged instances of rape and child molestation. Instead of a perpetrator being investigated, a victim is scrutinized for any signs that she or he might be anything other than virginal and sinless.

The victim is already on the losing end of things because the person who raped her took care of any questions of virginity, and the social scrutiny took care of any sense of innocence. In telling on the abuser, the victim has made a case against herself merely by saying it happened in the first place.

I am going to try to not be afraid that people won’t believe me when I say what happened to me. I know what happened to me, I know who did it, and the people who did it know it, too. I am going to really try to keep my perspective in perspective. It is really difficult, though, because my perspective as a victim is about something that happened in the past and the consequences for the abusers are happening now.

But it is getting easier every day to keep my perspective aligned with the truth, because I don’t have to prove the truth to anyone – it does it all by itself. It’s the truth.

part 63

I wrote an addendum to my last post clarifying that I have no plans or intentions to randomly go around with posters yelling at people in my old neighborhood. The idea of me doing this has apparently ruffled some feathers.

I’m not playing any games.

Sometimes it feels like I am playing games with what I write – I know there are certain people who are aware of my blog, and may even read it themselves. What I really do not want is for this to be a place for me to put out all of my feelings and emotions and pain and hope, and then hear how I may have pissed someone off, and then get back on here writing what I think whoever is pissed can do with themselves.

There is nothing I have ever written here or will ever write here that I would not be willing to discuss with anyone face-to-face. I mean ANYONE.

I’m not fucking around. I write based on what I am feeling and then I post it on the internet for the whole world to see. I try to accept whatever emotions I am having as I write, and to be okay with however that comes out in words, because IT IS ALL REAL.

The people who abused me have been claiming that I am only writing about all of this because I want to get attention for my book, that I am making it up as part of some sort of completely twisted marketing strategy to sell my novel.

I don’t understand the logic behind this theory, but I also don’t understand the logic of molesting small children in a guest bathroom, and I don’t understand the logic of raping the best friend of one’s own children in a basement, and I don’t understand the logic of paying money to someone in order to have access to a child and rape and molest her again and again.

So I guess if these men want to pretend that I am saying these things about them in order to get attention so people will buy my novel, that is fine. I can accept that.

I’m not going to lie – it would be super-awesome if someone who reads my blog found out about my book and wanted to pay me money for it and market it all over the world. I would not be terribly downtrodden if someone reads my blog and sees marketable value in it and wants to use it to make a lot of money for themselves and for me.

I’m not ashamed of thinking that it would be great to make a living from writing. Sometimes I am motivated to write another blog post just to see how my stats go up with the number of people reading it. Sometimes I think about the fact that people from all over the entire world look at my blog on a regular basis (I know because that’s also in the stats), and it makes me excited to write some more just so I can put it out there and imagine all of those people reading it.

Writing this is NOT easy, and it is not particularly enjoyable. I have been writing this blog for over a year and I have not made a single dime from it.

I write this blog because it is what I HAVE. I do this because I CAN. I do it because it makes me feel better about myself and about the world.

I do this because at this point in my life it is the best I can do with my horrendously shitty past.

I have my past and I can write.

So that is what I do.

I am not stupid. I know that what has happened to me is something other people want to know about, and that if enough people want to know about it, I might find some way to support myself and my family by continuing to write about it. I also know the shit that happened to me is still happening to women and kids right this very second all over the world – and that very definitely includes this town I grew up in.

It is still happening. It is still happening!!!

So if my vapid former-neighbors want to say I am making it all up as a marketing ploy, let them say it. They can say it all they want and it does not change one fucking thing about making all of it stop.

I believe I CAN do something to make it stop. Maybe not all of it all by myself, but I can definitely make one other person feel less like a freak, and I can definitely make one other person look twice at the people around them and spot a predator, and I can definitely make one other person as pissed off as I am about all of it.

I know all of these things definitely because they have already happened. People tell me, they share with me – perfect strangers, and long-lost childhood friends, and other people I don’t know anything about because they choose to remain anonymous. They have shared with me evidence that I can make a difference in the world – in a good way!

How easy is it to hurt a child? How easy is it to attack someone who cannot defend themselves? How easy is it to make up lies about any of it ever happening so people don’t think bad things about them?

It is EASY to tear down the world. It takes hardly any effort at all.

It takes COURAGE AND STRENGTH AND TENACITY AND HOPE AND LOVE to build the world up, and those things are very difficult to come by and to hold on to and to share and to perpetuate in life.

But I know without a doubt that I have them, and I have the peace and knowledge that I am building the world up.

I am not going to go off randomly and half-cocked and hold up posters and scream and yell in front of anyone’s house, but even if I did, my concern for the discomfort it might cause those people and the people around them would be very, very, very low on my list of priorities.