So, know that I don’t want her.  She’s too child-minded.  I don’t want to teach her how to survive, nor about herself.  She deserves better than that from a partner.  Besides, I’m not so experienced I deserve to condescend, and she’s not so inexperienced she deserves to be patronized.  It wouldn’t work.

And I don’t want her, anyway.  She’s still hiding from herself.  She still doesn’t accept who she is.  It’s true that I don’t accept myself either, but I at least know who I am.   I’ve negotiated my time, even my body, to gain the answers from my rapists I felt I needed to get, and when that didn’t stop the flashbacks and the anxiety and the sexual dysfunction, I suffered the mental anguish an obsessive endures when a problem comes to our attention.  Meanwhile, she’s texting the man who victimized her.  I can hear her inside voices, insistent like creditors, chanting “I need to know.  I need to know.”  I know her heartbeat felt irregular to her, and her hands probably shook a little, making typing on her iPhone difficult.  And I know he had no healing for her.

It’s unfair of me to wonder amidst her piquing suffering, what happens to me while she discovers herself.  I try not to notice how much I want to kiss her lips.  I kiss her cheek instead.  No one ever told me a woman could feel emasculated.  As it is, I don’t feel comfortable anymore calling her with my problems, as overwhelming as they feel now.  I don’t want to upset her or seem weak.  I’m torn between protecting her and snatching her neck for my lips.

It wouldn’t work.  I’m a five-foot Dominican girl with a big puff of curls who wants to be a male sex symbol.

Related posts:

1. Butterfly: An Introduction
2. Fractured
3. Freewriting Panic Attack: Waking Nightmares
4. My Boyfriend Hates Women
5. Questions and Answers

Related posts:

1. Torture and Time
2. Stop it! Shut up! It’s too ugly!
3. Fractured
4. Upswing: Just Keep Breathing
5. A Few Thoughts: Innocence, Sexuality, Feminism, Non-Rapists, Writing, and Comfort

It wasn’t even an issue until Andy from the dorms– I dream of taking a bat to his legs, shattering his hip when he’s down, thereby crippling him for life.  But that wouldn’t make me feel better.  Only when I know he’s dead, incapable of hurting another person again, will I feel better.  Only when everyone stops cautiously whispering about mental illness and sexual assault will I feel better.

Another reason to lash myself: I haven’t yet yelled above a whisper.  I need to practice screaming for a while.

Tomorrow.

Related posts:

1. Freewriting Panic Attack: Waking Nightmares
2. This Is My Ugly Side
3. Fractured
4. Torture and Time
5. Indulgence Is For Survivors

I need help, but no one can help me but me—or so they say.  I argue, it’s hard enough for me to just ask for help; why can’t it be easy to receive that help?  You don’t tell a paraplegic he has to crawl before he can get into rehab.  Yet, there on the border of Normality, stands this army of Manifest Destiny indoctrinates puppeted by Bootstrap Bill Americano, high on justice for us.

I’m scared of what people who interact with me daily at work must think of me.  I’m sure they know I’m weird and maybe dumb.

Dumb isn’t the right word.  I’m awkward because I’m always fighting through a fog to say what I’m thinking.  Very often, midway through my first sentence, I’ve forgotten my intended topic.  I’m sick.  There’s something that makes focusing way too difficult to do.  I almost wish it were a tumor.  At least then, there’d be visible proof, something people can understand, wrong with me.  Instead, I’m traumatized and anxious and affective and it involves chemicals that you’ve never before heard of and will not bother remembering.  As the cliché goes, they’re scared of what they don’t understand.  All they know is Sling Blade and I Am Sam, neither of which was absent depictions of dangerous lunacy, nor are they even about the mentally ill, but the mentally handicapped.  Distinctions are not often clearly drawn in the media, so distinctions are sometimes seen as ignorable…

I’m going off on a rant.  The point is, I’m in pain.  I never know where my mind is going to take me.  After I’m done here, I need to meditate.  It’s getting harder to pretend everything is alright.

Fuck, I’m wallowing!  I want to hit something.  I want to cry.  I want, I want, I want.  I’m like a child.  I’m disgusted with myself.  I’ve been childish.  What’s wrong with me?  That isn’t me.  I’m responsible.  I’m punctual.  I’m diligent.  But right now, lately, even before Sang, I’ve been feeling absurd for dedicating myself to anything.  Everything has felt ethereal for months.  Sang’s death was merely the exclamation mark at the end of a long-thought-out statement: nothing lasts!

I feel clubbed by that exclamation mark.  My twitches have returned with violence.  My nausea has reduced my calorie-intake to somewhere around 1,000 calories.  My memory is non-existent, and my social anxiety is strangling.

If this is grief, it feels a lot like a continuous string of panic attacks.

Related posts:

1. Freewriting Panic Attack: There’s Never Enough to Cry About
2. Freewriting Panic Attack: The Building. Shaken. Up.
3. Freewriting Panic Attack: Waking Nightmares
4. Freewriting Panic Attack: A Masturbatory Act, A Big Step
5. Another Night.

So Hollywood gives us this action-packed film full of familiar things like salvation, duty to society; the empowerment of the poor, and watered-down lipstick feminism in the form of a hot young girl who took some kickboxing lessons.  It’s about everything the first decade of the twenty-first century has been about.

This movie is a reflective product of this culture, but I still don’t know whether Hollywood is trying to promote a revolution or if they’re giving me a controlling substance, a Media pill to render me passive by satisfying my impulse to rebel against the dominant party to the right of me.  Somehow, it’s hard to believe commercialists have my best interests at heart.

Then again, movies like The Women make me feel like a more assertive model for women is represented in mainstream media: we can have it all, but do we want it?  Is it even healthy?  And do we really want to reach our goals if it means betraying other women, and therefore ourselves?  The movie says “no” to all three questions.  Instead, it argues women need women friends to help them do what they cannot possibly do on their own: survive this life in one emotional piece.

I knew what kind of woman I wanted to be by watching my sister Maggie’s successes and failures, my mother’s philosophies at work, and my girl friends’ misconceptions revealed for what they are.  And all of them had one thing in common: they weren’t hot, young girls who had taken kickboxing lessons nor knew how to hotwire a car.  They were stupid when they were young, ignorant through most of their 20s, and sometime after they turn 30, they’re trying to fix the mess they’d made the last few years.  I want to see more movies about women going through all that, and being okay with it, even as they try to prevent it.  I want a heroine as barely in control as I am.  Except, this woman, unlike me at my worst, is trying to be okay with it all–the fuck-ups, the wrinkles, and the betrayal.  I want movies to be made about that kind of woman.  I want movies to be made about that kind of woman, because I don’t have any real life examples.

What I mean to say is, there’s also a crisis of womanhood.  Most of our mothers didn’t survive the war.  They’re victims of the patriarchy with Stockholm Syndrome.  Isn’t it worth considering whether it’s healthy to even engage with these women we call Mom , if only for those times when we are most vulnerable to judgment?  Maybe rather than fight an obstacle, we should sometimes focus on avoiding it, at least until we’re ready to confront it?

Of course, the risk is becoming addicted to avoiding.

I spend at least some time every day writing for self-improvement.  But last week, during therapy, I realized I’ve been avoiding  people.  I realized I’ve been avoiding interacting them because it’s painful, because I fear them looking at me and judging me.  I realized I’ve been avoiding my social anxiety.

Related posts:

1. A Few Thoughts: Innocence, Sexuality, Feminism, Non-Rapists, Writing, and Comfort
2. I Want to Stop Writing About What Happened to Me.
3. Stop it! Shut up! It’s too ugly!
4. My Boyfriend Hates Women
5. Fractured

To her credit, my anxiety has stayed away for two days now.  As that’s two days more than when I’m not on the medication, I keep taking the pills.

But friends and family keep telling me to “just” do and be whatever way they believe is ideal.  The old me would have been very stressed out by all this.  But somehow, this past weekend, between hearing my sister is mad at me because I didn’t call her on her birthday while she was out of the country and telling my possessive mother I didn’t plan on living the rest of my life in the United States, I stopped letting life literally sicken me.  I’ve felt fairly liberated from my mental prison these last two days.  I’m not catastrophizing; I feel confident in the future, as uncertain as it seems right now; I’m even allowing myself to make mistakes without self-disgust and mortification consuming me with depression and psychosomatic symptoms of anxiety.

It seems almost silly to want only peace, as if there’s something more valuable out there, but I’m too small-minded to think about it.  It’s such a basic human desire.  Yet I literally feel pressured by my society to want a big house with white furniture, as if that’s the higher aspiration.

There are so many battles to wage with the world in this war against myself.  I often feel like I’ve been awake for five years, and I still can’t fall asleep.  There’s no falling asleep.  I’ve got these two enemies, them and this screaming part of me.  When the difference between them and me becomes vague, I have to be alert, ready to analyze and execute action.

—I realized just now, those are the words of a person who’s been traumatized.  I’m tempted to say, see what I mean?  I must always be alert—or the sardonic tricks of my mental illness will digest me.

But I won’t say that.  Instead, I’m going to bed.  I need sleep, and any problems I have will be here when I wake.

Related posts:

1. Am I Really In That Much Pain?
2. Upswing: Just Keep Breathing
3. Today Was A Good Day
4. Torture and Time
5. I Want to Stop Writing About What Happened to Me.

Every day, I struggle to see men as fellow victims. Intellectually, I know they are. I know the patriarchy has claimed them as it’s claimed us.

But then the two men I respect most in the world tease me for the aches and pains my constant anxiety have caused. “It was all harmless kidding,” I tell myself, “and it is kind of comical. I’m always whining.”

A long list of self-deprecations are proven true by their laughter.

I—I hate to admit it, but I feel very much like you do. I still sometimes think, “aw, look at that guy with his kid.” That, however, is quickly subsumed by images of him molesting her.

I’m probably naive, but I just can’t embrace that image, yet. I can’t think of all men that way. I feel that, for me, and I only speak for myself, I would be giving into the trauma and condemning myself to this fractured reality.

I know. I’m a fool for hoping. They keep beating me, and I keep licking their hand. But, as I see it, if I give up on men, I give up on women, too. It’s the nature of a binary. To that point, I’ve dated women. Their good intentions are equally worthless. Even the ones you don’t so much as kiss will caress your soul as they lead you toward their parapet.

No. Forget what I said. My argument is flawed. None of those women damaged me for years: stole into my mind, ripped apart my anatomy, and irrevocably harmed my sexuality.

You caught me, bradamant. I’m having some difficulty accepting my feelings against men. I know it doesn’t end. I want to say there are exceptions, but every man I’ve thought was an exception has proven to actually be damaging in a way so subtle, his damage is more perverse than the last one’s.

But I’m afraid to hate men, bradamant. I’m afraid to leave them forever. I fear I would be letting the Andys win.

Not letting them win is the only thing that drives me.

Oh, God! That’s an ugly realization! They’re at the essence of my every motivation. They define me.

Have they already won?

Related posts:

1. Torture and Time
2. Questions and Answers
3. Freewriting Panic Attack: Waking Nightmares
4. The War with Ourselves: I Hate Men
5. I Want to Stop Writing About What Happened to Me.

Don’t know anything about the drugs but I do know that I’ve been beaten, raped, punched and abused sexually, emotionally, financially by a variety of men from all walks of life. The last guy I dated tried to kill me. So I decided a few years back that they were more trouble than its worth. I decided that I was better off alone and couldn’t risk another relationship. Now men around me complain that I’m bitter, angry, psycho etc. etc. which I’m not. I just want to be left out of their picture, at least on the sexual/emotional side of life.

So my question is: Why don’t these men who do these terrible things take all of those calm-me-down drugs? Why are we forced to deal with their aggression and then have to medicate ourselves in order to face life? Why are we medicating ourselves so that we are all Nice and Calm and Submissive instead of just releasing our justifiable anger on to the perpetrators of these crimes?

I don’t know, but it’s another form of victimization our society makes us undergo.  These people rape us, we become “sick,” and they keep on living their lives—able to forget us, able to enjoy the things we only hope we’ll one day be able to endure.  How dare they, I scream.  How can they do this to us, as human beings?

Our lives are not just full of sadness.  They’re sad.  We’re sad.  And instead of receiving support, instead of our communities gathering around us, we get drugs and therapy.  We see people’s eyes shift, hear the timber of their voice rise.  They don’t want to know.  They don’t want to know us.  Our experiences define us.  Rapists’ actions seem to be something they once did, a sad reality we just have to deal with.  If we can’t cope—can’t suppress, rather—we’re wallowing, “bitter, angry, psycho etc. etc.,” or we can’t “leave the past where it belongs, get on with life.”

So society encourages “treatment.”  They tell us again and again that we’re sick and out of control.  We feel out of control, so we believe them.  We take their pills.  We undergo their therapy.  We drain our bank accounts, and we drain our energy, because the world doesn’t accommodate “broken” people.  We—we accommodate the rapists.

The rape never stops for us.

The rapists?  They’re free, the lot of them.  So many Andys, so many more victims.  Do you know of one who only hurt one of us, saw the error of his ways, and then stopped?  And yet the wise woman judge told me, “he sounded apologetic in the voicemail.”  All the restraining order asked was that he stay away from me and that he be forced to undergo a psychological evaluation.  Instead, I was denied the restraining order and told, “I hope you get some help.”

Why don’t our societies tell them the same?  Because our social structure is built by the same people who are committing these heinous acts?  Because people don’t like to think about the sick things people do?  Because people are afraid to face their own experiences as victims?  Because of ignorance or just plain stupidity?  All of the above, and so much more.

I want to make it stop—as badly as I wanted Andy to stop.

But the therapist and the drugs and so many, too many people tell us to stop thinking about these things and these reasons.  They scream, Stop it!  Shut up!  It’s too ugly!  Why would you want people to know this about you?

So, again, why?  What do all the collective reasons reduce to?

Society is more scared of the rape victim than it is of the rapist.

Related posts:

1. I Want to Stop Writing About What Happened to Me.
2. Torture and Time
3. Rape and Mothers and Altruism — Oh My!
4. Fractured
5. Freewriting Panic Attack: Waking Nightmares

I wish I wasn’t like this. I wish…

Ugh. But that’s so passive. I’m not passive anymore. You want to know why I get out of bed every day?

Hope. Hope, and the knowledge that comes only from experience: if I don’t get up now, it’s going to be harder to get up later.

Like a drug addict: each relapse brings an increasingly torturous recovery.

I don’t know how I get through each day.

No. Lie. I do: self-awareness.

I can say, I’m just happy I’ve made it this far, and if I’ve made it this far, I believe I can make it the rest. The worst is over, I think. I’ve gotten the right meds. I’ve rid myself of the noxious people that surrounded me. The ones I couldn’t—my immediate family—I’ve halted in their path of deprecation. And I’ve gotten rid of my worst habits. I just have to keep working at it. That way, one day, it won’t hurt. I’ll be normal and happy, and everything will be perfect.

Or I can be honest with myself. The worst is constant. The worst will never be over. The therapists avoid the point: will I ever be okay? “It takes time,” they say. “We have a lot of work to do,” they say. They aren’t lying, but our idea of okay and their’s are very different. We’re thinking, One day and forever after, but maybe for the rare occasion, it won’t be so hard to get out of bed, to be around people, to be me. They’re thinking, You’ll be functional and, possibly but not probably, be able to live your days without medication. I know this is what they’re thinking, because I’ve asked them point-blank, “will I ever be able to function normally off meds?” That was uniformly their response.

Or am I wrong? Are my experiences rare and bias? Has anyone ever met anyone who has been “cured” of “real” mental illness, what amounts to a chemical imbalance with environmental factors? I’m not talking about, “my mother died and I’m depressed because of that.” While that suffering is valid and not to be minimized, I’m talking about those of us who find ourselves in repeated patterns of abuse, day in and day out, no matter what we do. Or those of us who self-hate to the point of self-harm. I’m talking about real, I wish I could stop and I’m trying, but I can’t or don’t know how to control this mental illness. Those are the people I’m talking about and to: it gets better. I know it does. I’m here, and I’m better. But don’t go into recovery thinking, “I’m going to be normal one day.” No, darling. The point is there is no normal. I recently had the man I thought was so well-put together, had never suffered any abuse, I thought he was so normal, tell me he suffers from horrible self-doubt, to the point where he feels sexually inferior compared to most other men. I had a girl earlier in the year go from telling me she had the perfect life and the perfect family, that she had never been traumatized or objectified, to telling me she had been forced to give her brother oral sex at the age of seven.

Thankfully, no one is normal—at least, not the way most of us have been taught to think of “normal.” Thankfully, this also means you’re not a freak, as perhaps you’ve always feared you are. There’s some good news amidst all this exposure: it makes room for self-love.

But don’t go straight for that. First, you have to learn to survive. For instance, disown the brother that molested you. Quit the job that keeps your ex around. Of course, preperations will have to be made. Of course, people will be mad. And yeah, you might suffer a lot more before things get better. But you’ve made it this far. You’re strong.

Once you know that, understand that, you can learn to thrive. But the Peak of Normality you envision, where most of the human race is rumored to be congregated, is really a valley of denial and self-delusion.

Healing starts with self-awareness. Banish the “normal.” Banish the people who purport to be normal. Banish the media’s lies about normality. Hell, banish the mainstream media as a whole. Turn to yourself for some answers. Don’t worry if you don’t have any. No one does. Even me, here: you see I’m still figuring it all out. But I can tell you this much, and no mental health advocate will argue with me: Forget Normal; forget others’ words and opinions. You’re the authority on yourself. Trust that. Easier said, than done? Yes. But you can’t tell me what you’re going through now is easy, either.

…

Okay. Go. What’s stopping you? Fear? Yes. I know. I’m sorry about that. It’s inevitable. At best, it may subside with time. But it’s not like you’re living fearlessly now. I know I’m not. I’m scared every day. I’m scared every time I post. Yet the more scared I am, the more important I know it must be for me to go through with it.

So, come. Hold my hand. We’ve banished Normal. It’ll try to weasel it’s way back in, but we’re okay with that. We’re strong. There’s bound to be some suffering, but we accept that, even if we don’t like it. Instead, we’re going to close our eyes and imagine “stability.” It may look a little like normal at first, but you’ll see that stability is more centered around you, not others.

Related posts:

1. The Mental Healing Starter's Guide: Because Some of You Have Asked, "Where Do I Begin?"
2. Torture and Time
3. Another Night.
4. Upswing: Just Keep Breathing
5. The War with Yourself: Medication Fears

I wish I wasn’t like this. I wish…

Ugh. But that’s so passive. I’m not passive anymore. You want to know why I get out of bed every day?

Hope. Hope, and the knowledge that comes only from experience: if I don’t get up now, it’s going to be harder to get up later.

Like a drug addict: each relapse brings an increasingly torturous recovery.

I don’t know how I get through each day.

No. Lie. I do: self-awareness.

I can say, I’m just happy I’ve made it this far, and if I’ve made it this far, I believe I can make it the rest. The worst is over, I think. I’ve gotten the right meds. I’ve rid myself of the noxious people that surrounded me. The ones I couldn’t—my immediate family—I’ve halted in their path of deprecation. And I’ve gotten rid of my worst habits. I just have to keep working at it. That way, one day, it won’t hurt. I’ll be normal and happy, and everything will be perfect.

Or I can be honest with myself. The worst is constant. The worst will never be over. The therapists avoid the point: will I ever be okay? “It takes time,” they say. “We have a lot of work to do,” they say. They aren’t lying, but our idea of okay and their’s are very different. We’re thinking, One day and forever after, but maybe for the rare occasion, it won’t be so hard to get out of bed, to be around people, to be me. They’re thinking, You’ll be functional and, possibly but not probably, be able to live your days without medication. I know this is what they’re thinking, because I’ve asked them point-blank, “will I ever be able to function normally off meds?” That was uniformly their response.

Or am I wrong? Are my experiences rare and bias? Has anyone ever met anyone who has been “cured” of “real” mental illness, what amounts to a chemical imbalance with environmental factors? I’m not talking about, “my mother died and I’m depressed because of that.” While that suffering is valid and not to be minimized, I’m talking about those of us who find ourselves in repeated patterns of abuse, day in and day out, no matter what we do. Or those of us who self-hate to the point of self-harm. I’m talking about real, I wish I could stop and I’m trying, but I can’t or don’t know how to control this mental illness. Those are the people I’m talking about and to: it gets better. I know it does. I’m here, and I’m better. But don’t go into recovery thinking, “I’m going to be normal one day.” No, darling. The point is there is no normal. I recently had the man I thought was so well-put together, had never suffered any abuse, I thought he was so normal, tell me he suffers from horrible self-doubt, to the point where he feels sexually inferior compared to most other men. I had a girl earlier in the year go from telling me she had the perfect life and the perfect family, that she had never been traumatized or objectified, to telling me she had been forced to give her brother oral sex at the age of seven.

Thankfully, no one is normal—at least, not the way most of us have been taught to think of “normal.” Thankfully, this also means you’re not a freak, as perhaps you’ve always feared you are. There’s some good news amidst all this exposure: it makes room for self-love.

But don’t go straight for that. First, you have to learn to survive. For instance, disown the brother that molested you. Quit the job that keeps your ex around. Of course, preperations will have to be made. Of course, people will be mad. And yeah, you might suffer a lot more before things get better. But you’ve made it this far. You’re strong.

Once you know that, understand that, you can learn to thrive. But the Peak of Normality you envision, where most of the human race is rumored to be congregated, is really a valley of denial and self-delusion.

Healing starts with self-awareness. Banish the “normal.” Banish the people who purport to be normal. Banish the media’s lies about normality. Hell, banish the mainstream media as a whole. Turn to yourself for some answers. Don’t worry if you don’t have any. No one does. Even me, here: you see I’m still figuring it all out. But I can tell you this much, and no mental health advocate will argue with me: Forget Normal; forget others’ words and opinions. You’re the authority on yourself. Trust that. Easier said, than done? Yes. But you can’t tell me what you’re going through now is easy, either.

…

Okay. Go. What’s stopping you? Fear? Yes. I know. I’m sorry about that. It’s inevitable. At best, it may subside with time. But it’s not like you’re living fearlessly now. I know I’m not. I’m scared every day. I’m scared every time I post. Yet the more scared I am, the more important I know it must be for me to go through with it.

So, come. Hold my hand. We’ve banished Normal. It’ll try to weasel it’s way back in, but we’re okay with that. We’re strong. There’s bound to be some suffering, but we accept that, even if we don’t like it. Instead, we’re going to close our eyes and imagine “stability.” It may look a little like normal at first, but you’ll see that stability is more centered around you, not others.

Related posts:

1. The Mental Healing Starter’s Guide: Because Some of You Have Asked, “Where Do I Begin?”
2. Torture and Time
3. Another Night.
4. Upswing: Just Keep Breathing
5. The War with Yourself: Medication Fears