Tag Archives: therapy

Silence. (TW: rape)

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It’s an amazing thing to be able to put a burden down. When you carry something for so many years, it’s like white noise in the background. You don’t even realize it affects you, or that you’re carrying it around. Then all of a sudden, the noise stops…you hear the refrigerator NOT running. You hear empty space.

I have a thing I’ve been carrying around for over 30 years. I’ve been in therapy about it (and several other things. Have you met me?) for more than a dozen. It’s the rape.

Rape has this weird set of consequences to it. First, there’s the event itself, which has various forms of trauma attached that are varied and unique. Was it violent? Was it a stranger? Was it a family member? A boyfriend? Did you love them? Hate them? Did anyone see? What did you do? What if there was, Gods forbid, a pleasurable moment? (it happens. an orgasm is like a sneeze…if you apply the proper stimuli, it’s pretty hard to stifle, even if you hate, even if you are frightened, even if you are nauseous.) How did you handle it in that moment? Did you scream, fight, cry? Did you pretend if was enjoyable to make it over faster? What part of your psyche did you chop off so the rest of you could survive the event? Each of those things has different consequences, different levels of betrayal; betrayal by someone you trusted or didn’t know, betrayal by your own body, betrayal by society, betrayal by what you were always told growing up, that surely, you are a good and kind person and this does not happen to good and kind people, that your goodness should be a shield against the world because SOMEONE will protect you.

Each of those things does damage. It’s like fractures in a hundred, a THOUSAND, places.

Then there’s what comes after. Did you speak? Did you ask for help? Did you press charges? Did you tell anyone? Anyone at all? Did you break up with them? How did it affect you socially? Did the perpetrator tell anyone you know? Did it have social repercussions?

…Other than the fear, of course. The fear of walking down the street, or being alone, or that someone else you love will betray you, or that you no longer see the true face of anyone you know because you’ve seen someone transform into something terrible that hurt you. The fear of your own judgment, that you trust other people who do not deserve to be trusted…

Forgetting all the fear, there’s still actions being taken. You’re absorbing what has happened to you. You’re watching the reflection of it in the face of other people as you tell them. Some of them are sympathetic. Some of them blame you. Some of them want you to just be quiet so they don’t have to confront the perpetrator. Some of them feel they weren’t there, so they don’t want to get involved. And in all of this are ripples of damage, more betrayals, things that generate more fear of who you can trust and who you cannot.

There’s also sex, of course, depending on where you were before the event. Were you a casual sex kind of person? A one-person deep-commitment kind of person? What choices did you make afterward? Some of us rush into sex, figuring if we could have it, then we could rush healing in some way. Some of us avoid it because it causes flashbacks. Some of us are lucky enough to have someone patient in their lives to work through it. Some of us are UNlucky enough to have someone who tries but can’t understand, can’t understand how they can cause fear when they have never done anything, how they can suddenly NOT be a source of comfort, or worse, unable to understand how their desires need to be put on hold until this damage is dealt with, which can lead to more pressure, more rape, or abandonment.

There’s physical reminders too, sometimes, bruises and scars. Or emotional scars…there’s many of those. Each shower is spent trying to parse it all out, trying to wash away physically what has happened to you mentally. The immediate trauma is over, but it’s not over. In your mind it’s still happening. It’s always happening. Sometimes for years.

It has been many years.

It’s white noise in my life. I feel like it affects me rarely nowadays, but that’s not true. It demonstrates itself every time I set a boundary and someone crosses it, like I become a vicious animal defending my territory. I’ve told myself it’s because it’s my right to protect myself, because I was clear and they deserve what they get. To a certain degree that’s true. But the level of anger is huge, the fury is…..it swallows me. I can destroy friendships, destroy PEOPLE, in the blink of an eye.

So years later, it still affects you. It affects how you choose where you’re going when. How you react to being pressured to do anything. How you evaluate other people. Who you choose to call friend.

Imagine that, imagine all of that. And then imagine that you could put that down. That it was done. That suddenly, there was no white noise, and there was silence.

Right now, I’m just waiting in silence. I’m waiting to be sure that it’s really done, really and truly. I don’t know how long I will take to be sure there isn’t another shoe to drop. I don’t think it will be much longer. A couple of months maybe. Then done, for realz.

I have so much dancing to do in this silence. So much to do. I’m just waiting to be sure.

But I’m waiting in silence now. And that’s so much different than before.

Solstice 2015 – Do more than See in the Dark. See the Darkness.

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I’ve been thinking about Darkness.

See, the Solstice which is coming is the darkest night of the year. As Pagans, one of the reasons we celebrate it (and there are many) is that one can safely say that, from this point forward, things can only get better. Things are looking up. Solstice is Rock-Bottom as it were…there is no place else to go.

But darkness, you see, is a consequence of light.

We don’t really think about it that way, but everything we see in the world we only see because of the juxtaposition of light and darkness. That lamp on your table has a different shade of color than the wall behind it because one is darker than the other. One is lighter than the other. Nothing can be seen without darkness. Nothing can be seen without light. They are, by their nature, completely and irrevocably intertwined.

I’ve been thinking about my personal darkness. I have PTSD from living with my family. I have an *extreme* need to feel safe. That doesn’t mean I’m afraid walking down the street. It means I hold my friends to this insane level of friendship….to be fair, I offer that in return. I offer truth, even uncomfortable truth, loyalty, dependability in times of need, just as I offer that I take care of myself as often as possible because that is really *my* job, and not theirs. Their job is to care for me when I cannot. My job is to trust them enough to do that job. I try not to waste their time with trivia.

Conversely, I make myself available to them when they need. For some people, sharing trivia is not a lighthearted need…it’s part of the bonding process. It’s not for me, really…I can share trivia with anyone. But my needs, my wants, my thoughts, my life….I only share that with the people I feel safe with. I try to spread it around so no one person gets hit too often…I’m intense, I know that. Not everyone wants that intensity all the time. I don’t blame them. But I know in my heart, that if I *really* need them and tell them so, they will find a way to deal, or they will let me know that they cannot and will help me find someone who can. But they will not, WILL NOT, leave me stranded with no one. It’s invaluable.

So…Darkness….

We live in this country where we are told to look at all things as a duality. Democrat/Republican, Good/Evil, Darkness/Light, Man/Woman, Coke/Pepsi. But there are SO MANY MORE CHOICES in between. There’s a line in Wicked that says, “There are precious few at ease/ with moral ambiguities/ so we act as if they don’t exist.” It’s actually a shortcut our brain uses so we can process things more quickly. Stereotypes are things we use so we don’t have to evaluate each person that we meet. But each person is a PERSON, each person is a smattering of color, with many shades of greys and reds and blues and greens, each color varying in light and darkness. Only by really examining them do we see who they really are.

It’s work for us to do that. We don’t want to work. We are almost all lazy creatures. In psychology we are not taught to refer to someone by their disorder.  If we say, “The Borderline in the corner is having an issue with the PTSD in the third chair,” we have stripped away their humanity, and we have ignored the fact that there may be other reasons, other symptoms, bad days, good days, personal experiences, all the shades of light and darkness in that person. Each patient must be treated as an individual. So, too, should each Teacher, Waiter, Cop, Banker, Soccer Mom, Other Driver on the Highway…with our quick processing we miss the details and make assumptions that may not apply. (Yeah, I know they cut you off….but what if they’re not an asshole? What if they just got a call that their child is in the hospital? What if they’re driving to the emergency room right now? You just don’t know do you?)

But it’s easier not to think. Part of our darkness is our laziness. It’s okay to have it. Pretending we have no darkness is the problem. Part of our darkness is our envy, our jealousy, our anger, our fear, our weakness, our shame, our privilege…all of those things we don’t want other people to see. We tuck them in the corners so other people won’t look at them and pretend we don’t have them.

People tell me I am brave to share myself like this. That I inspire, or whatever. That’s not really what I’m doing. That’s the shortcut. That’s the stereotype. Part of this is darkness…part of this is knowing that, if I expose myself and show my weakness, no one can sneak up on me and hit me in the back of the head with it. By laying it out on the table like this, I take it away from the list of weapons that can be used against me. I hate fear. It makes me angry, so angry so fast I can’t explain it, it’s like a sudden fury that takes me over. It’s not a pretty sight. This is me killing fear. I don’t really care much if you watch. It just something that IS.

For Solstice Blessing this year, (And by the way, every time I do these blessings, part of the work is that you receive it by reading it, the more you pay attention, the more you focus and absorb, the more you understand, the more of the blessing you get. If you skim, that’s not my problem) I hope you see, really see, your darkness.

I hope you see that the only power it has over you is that you try to keep it in the dark. Secrets only have power because they are secret. That power thrives in darkness. Look at what I’m doing here, I shove it into daylight, and suddenly you believe me to be strong, but it’s not true, it’s just Darkness and Light. It’s just me dragging it from one place to another. It’s taking it from the dark place, where it only has power over Me, and dragging it to the light place, where it loses all power it ever had on me.

Your Darkness. May you own it and put it on the table before you in the light. May you forgive it and love yourself whole. See it. Honor it. Let it go. Forgive it. Move on. Believe me. Other people are too busy hiding their flaws to care if you expose yours.

We are approaching rock-bottom, y’all. Look at it and see it for what it is. Because very soon, there will be no place to go but up.

You were made to glow in the dark. With this I thank my sparks in the darkness.

So mote it be.