I don’t want to be killed by this disease, this reality. I just want to survive.
“Just.” As if it’s simple. It’s not. Survival has been my life. I suppose it’s everyone’s, but I think some people spend less time thinking about it than others.
Or perhaps, their survival isn’t as precarious as mine.
No. It’s vanity to think that. I know it because I can’t help but watch the suffering everyday people and think, “why don’t you have to be on medication? Why do you get through the day without the sense of impending doom striking your heart with palpitations and your mind with thoughts of death? Why do you get through it without crying and wishing you could die?” And I think, “Are you stronger than me? Is that what it is?”
But when I talk to them, I know the truth. They’re in denial. They’re so scared, they can’t even admit it. They can’t face it. I’ve learned that what I envy is willful self-ignorance and fear. I can’t envy that any longer. I’d rather be on medication. I’d rather know myself, know why it hurts, and know the steps I need to take to deal with that pain more efficiently, most healthily.
My survival is no more precarious than theirs. I just face it, and that’s a harder thing to do intellectually, emotionally. Just because they don’t cry, doesn’t mean they suffer less. So everyday, I face it. And every day, I get better at dealing with it.
True, I don’t have a choice. My genetic make-up and my experiences have turned my mind in on itself. But I address it. Instead of trying to minimize it or deny it, I embrace it. What else can I do? Repeat the same mistakes over and over again? Commit myself to a life of errors and loneliness, surrounded by people who don’t know me and don’t know themselves? That sounds like hell to me.
That’s the suffering I see on the faces of the people in grocery stores and malls: the realization of having built their own hell strikes them behind the eyes, and there it lingers for a lifetime. They’re forever shocked and appalled, barely making it through the day. At least when I barely make it, I grow stronger, braver, smarter, more intellectually agile and emotionally capable. They grow dumber, more ignorant, more traumatized. They victimize themselves. I’m a survivor. And there’s nothing “just” about that. I need to start giving myself credit.
Bradamant comments on yesterday’s post,
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.