There was a viral post going around the internet today encouraging women to speak up and claim, "Me Too", in regards to being a victim of sexual assault. If millions of women stood up at the same time around the world and held their fist up in the sky, would it darken the sun? I sure hope not, but sadly that image seems possible.
I didn't learn what feminism really was until I was 21. I didn't have language for what had happened to me over and over again until I read my friend's Women's Studies books while I was hiding out on their college couch at UCLA having just escaped an abusive situation. I didn't have any way to relate what I had experienced and believed that indeed I was a piece of garbage and that man was the best I was going to get.
Years later, I have made so many strides in other areas of my mental health, self-esteem, and self-confidence that I couldn't escape the continuing pattern of inappropriate men I have chosen to date. The abuse hasn't continued but I still can't seem to shake this idea that I should just take what I can get. That isn't to say these men aren't appropriate for someone else, but rather that I seem to settle for that which I really do not want.
When I was 15 and 17, I was raped by two different men. There have been countless sexual harassment episodes since; too many to even remember or count. I am probably sexually harassed at least once a week. I've become so numb to it that I can't internalize it anymore. I actually get annoyed at women who claim that every room has misogynists in it and cannot deal. I get annoyed at women who are angry all the time and fight against every holler, every comment, every slander and every compliment. I also recognize that by my ignoring it all and allowing it, and flirting and waving off the boys will be boys, I am only enabling and encouraging and failing to recognize the ongoing damage. I am failing to deal with my own trauma. Perhaps my own trauma has been too much for me to bear until now.
All these years I have just owned the incidents as my fault. It seemed easier at the time to lay claim to the surrounding circumstances than to announce to the world that I had entered into a sexual situation and was then violated. It turns out that being a victim of circumstance might have been a shorter healing process than being held prisoner by my own guilt. Perhaps my experience will help another woman have the courage to come out and say what happened to her regardless of the immediate consequences.
The first time I was raped at 15, I was also drunk for the first time. It turns out that later I would be an alcoholic, and that night I found my first solution to my first consequence to my solution. In other words, alcohol made me feel alive and confident, which also landed me in the lap of a cute boy, who ended up raping me, but at least I was drunk and didn't really feel any of it or know what was happening entirely. I did not feel I was able to tell my parents at the time that a) I lost my virginity (but did I?) and b) I was wasted at a party with no parental supervision. My father yelled at me when I called and asked him to pick me up because it was 2 a.m. and I was supposed to be at a friend's house. I couldn't deal with any of it. So I got angry. I stomped around high school with my hood over my head, combat boots and a hippie skirt and just played Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young's album "So Far" on repeat through my sophomore and junior year. I protected my best friends from boys who harassed them. I yelled at women at concerts who blocked my view and screamed obscenities at them. I did drugs. This was what coping looked like.
Later I dated meth addicts and hardened criminals who cheated on me repeatedly and gave me double kidney infections. I dated emotionally unavailable men. I dated alcoholics with no jobs or cars or homes. I am so tired of feeling like I am not worthy of someone worthy because I never end up with someone worthy.
Slowly, over the last few years, I have begun to learn that I am worthy because I am alive. I am learning that my worth does not lie in the man I am with, but from within. It is through spiritual healing and growth, that I am able to walk this path without drinking or using drugs. I suppose my coping strategies got me through the years without completely losing it. My coping tools today are to look at it squarely in the face and say, ok, what happened here and how can I unravel this messaging I've acquired from society, my parents and myself?
It's not my fault. It's not your fault. I believe you.
