There is a remarkable amount of pain in acknowledging that some of the greatest strengths in my children are a result of the hell they’ve been through. Something told me to go back and read Heather’s last post that she published before ending her life.
From what she writes in her last published post, where she eloquently describes her reckoning with the pain and grief associated with everything she had been through on her 6-month sobriety date, October 8, 2021. At the end of the post, she mentions 18 months of sobriety, which would have been October 2022. The post wasn’t published until April, two days before her second sobriety anniversary and 27 days before she died by suicide.
I outlined the similarities between Heather and myself after her death and right around my one-year sobriety date. Going back to read her words at three years sober feels completely different. The words and awe she has for her oldest daughter are beautiful, but I can’t help but make up the level of self-loathing that exists just below the surface. The “You’re remarkable, but part of your greatness is because I hurt you so bad,and I’m trying to figure out how to live with that.”
I am immesurably thankful for her life and its direct and indirect effect on mine and where I have ended up and for this history she has left behind for the rest of us doing our best to face the world like a clam without a shell. To look at her archives, 872 posts in 2007, eight hundred and seventy two. 499 in 2014, 20 in 2016, 1 in 2023. Little stops and starts throughout the years but nothing like what it was in the early aughts.
Sobriety, actual healing (proactively going into the shit and figuring it out even when it’s awful), are fucking exhausting, lonely, and underappreciated.
And also worth it.
I think so, anyway.
I’m thankful to every shining example who is able to live their life out loud creating roadmaps and spaces for the rest of us who struggle to fit in to a world that feels so immesurably cruel and uncomfortable right now.
This morning, I looked at what it would take to buy a gun in Indiana. A few hundred bucks and my driver’s license that matches my mailing address, and I could have a gun by noon and be dead by one*.
I wonder how well I could hold it together. How well could I “act” like I’m simply a concerned citizen looking to “defend their property from someone who would try to take it from them” and not as a psychology student overrun with SI who is well aware of the statistics around successful suicide (guns = success.)
I’d do it in the shower with the water running because, logically, it would be easier to clean up, it would keep the cats away, and it would lessen the chance of one of the kids finding me.
Chances are you’re either horrified or “…huh…makes sense.”
I know I’d pass a background check because I know my record and have a current one on file with the school system, so I can volunteer at band events.
I’m facing this bout of suicidal ideation with the recently made connection between midcentury French philosophy that life is meaningless and Buddhist teachings that life is suffering, and the answer to overcoming both is actively *not* killing oneself.
Creatively devising a means of suicide and putting in all the steps and effort to be successful is ironic because in killing myself, I’m also killing the creativity that developed such a creative multistep plan in the first place. Philosopher Albert Camus suggests revolt as the antithesis to suicide, and what’s more rebellious than staring down one’s own demons, speaking them aloud, and turning them into art?
Using the same brain that simultaneously wants me dead while finding reasons to live while also making a grocery list and meal plan and writing a final paper for my social psychology class on the impact of Andrew Tate’s social media presence on young white males in America is a pretty strange place to be.
Yes, kids in this nation are in crisis, but we can’t help them until we help their parents and caregivers first.
I know I want to live. I also know I just want a fucking break, and no one is coming to save me except for myself. My track record is both 100% because I’m still here and pretty sloppy since I’m right back to self-harm being the dominating thought of the day.
But it’s improving.
So what to do?
*First of all, I’m okay. There’s no need to call CPS or sound the alarm bells. I am safe, have support, and know when and how to seek it out. If you are confused by suicidal ideation, either in yourself or someone you love, I strongly recommend the book How Not to Kill Yourself by Clancy Martin.
If you’re baffled by how sensitive you are and why things seem to affect you so much more than they appear to influence others, I strongly suggest the book How We Break: Navigating the Wear and Tear of Living by Vincent Deary.
Lastly, if any part of you is creative, especially if that part has been silenced, create. Create shapes with your body, sounds with your voice or an instrument, or art with whatever you have available. It doesn’t have to be good; it just needs to come out of you.
This moment requires an unprecedented amount of faith in myself and the universe that things will work out, and it’s scary as hell. At times, the urge and desire to retreat and lick my wounds (or inflict them) are overwhelming. But oddly enough, this is what I’ve been preparing for, so I’d best get to it.
Well, *slaps knees* here we are. This is a long one, but it’s the start of something big.
How are you? Like, really? How are you? Close your eyes and imagine me sitting across from you, asking you this question. Take a deep breath in through your nose and out through your mouth—how are you?
Could you answer? Do you have a canned and scripted response ready to go? Do you even know how you are? Have you ever had the privilege of knowing how you are? Because if I’ve learned anything over the past 42 years, authentically feeling your feelings is a privilege afforded to very few. Babies are the only humans on earth who get to feel whatever comes to them, and from birth, our reactions and responses to their authentic feelings begin to shape and mold their beliefs about the world and whether it’s safe or unsafe.
Right now, the world doesn’t feel safe, and I dare say most of us are ill-equipped to handle this level of everything. When I look back at my life, I can trace a single thread of events and synchronicities to where I am now, but again, I recognize this is an immense privilege that has come with years of practice and consistent work.
Three years ago, I looked at the raw materials of my life and, from ruin, began to see how everything I had experienced up to that point was bringing me to what was next and all the ways I was sabotaging myself and standing in my own way.
My sabotage manifested as addiction and everything that comes with being unable to face *gestures* all of this. What I’ve learned is the substance doesn’t matter, whether it’s in a needle, a cup, a pipe, a bottle, or a screen…addiction is an attempt to not feel something painful, and the smarter you are, the more painful this life can be. For many of us, it can be traced back to when we were itty bitty babies, and our caregivers were unable to meet our needs because, for whatever reason, they were in the position we’re in now…sick, scared, angry, or lonely. I suffered debilitating antenatal and postpartum depression with my first baby, and what a shame-fueled experience that is. I was ready with my second baby and took preventative measures to offset the possibility of antenatal and postpartum depression, and I was successful.
However, I was not prepared for what happened when my youngest was three and I was sexually assaulted in a foreign country. I never anticipated the church I attended to blame me for the assault; I wasn’t prepared for the amount of anger and self-loathing that would overcome me. I wasn’t prepared for members of my family to tell me to get over it, I wasn’t prepared for strangers on the internet to tear me apart, wasn’t ready to lose my entire career, to push my friends away, to push my family away, to even walk away from them for a time. Addiction came in a dozen different forms to fill the holes bleeding out from trauma, leaving me defeated and everyone around me covered in blood.
I went to treatment for the first time in 2018. I learned enough and found enough stability to begin again. I found a part-time job and worked on repairing the relationships I had ruptured. But under everything good remained a well of anger. I was angry that someone could upend my life and come away unaffected. I was furious the options for support were so lacking while also being expensive and stigmatized.
Then 2020 happened. You were there. You know.
I had just enough reserves and resilience to stay home for the greater good with relative ease. I had projects, I had my friends, I had hope. However, the stability I gained in 2018 was exhausted over the next two years, with minimal opportunity to move forward with proper recovery; I merely survived.
In 2021, I began working with a nonprofit that worked to educate parents and educators about the effects of childhood trauma, a job I was qualified for after spending years navigating social media as a mommy blogger. The women I came across were remarkable in every sense of the word. They had overcome unimaginable heartache and turned it into something beautiful to help and support others. I started to see the flaws in the systems we’re immersed in, how simple the solutions can be, and how stacked the odds are against implementing simple solutions into systems that are no longer focused on individuals, only obedience and results.
In 2022, things fell apart again through a series of systemic challenges we were not prepared to face, nor did we have the support to navigate them, and my survival crumbled back into addiction. Knowing the only way out was through, I returned to treatment again, only to come into a program that was more harmful than it was helpful. I was essentially held hostage for insurance money, my friends and family were gaslit about my behavior within the program, and I was unable to say or do anything about it as all communications with the outside world were controlled, monitored, and recorded. I ended up stealing a phone at an offsite recovery meeting and called Cody, begging him to get me out.
The program has since closed down, but the damage was done.
But, as usual, everything happens for a reason, and sometimes it takes a while to understand why.
I entered treatment for the second time exactly 1,000 days ago.
624 days ago, I attended my first-ever college class.
In 194 days, I will finish my first degree at the local community college before transferring to Indiana University to continue with my next degree.
305 days ago, I declared I’m not stopping until I have my doctorate in psychology.
I love learning. I love taking everything I’ve experienced in life and emboldening it with knowledge, science, and wisdom to leave everyone I come across better than I found them and the world just a little bit better, which, if you’ve been in the world lately, you’ll either think I’m delusional or admirable.
Maybe both.
If I’m lucky, I’ll still have 10 to 20 years of practice after I graduate to make a difference.
A lot can happen in 10-20 years.
I’ve worked part-time while attending school and volunteering with a therapeutic equine program. Addie is about to graduate with her first degree, Vivi is about to go into high school as an established member of a championship band program, and Cody continues to do everything he can to support the people he comes across in his career, helping them overcome insurmountable odds to become contributing members of their families and communities.
888 days ago, I took my last anti-depressant, my last anti-psychotic, and my last mood stabilizer,and I haven’t taken anything since.
But wait, how…
908 days ago, on an air mattress under the stars in the desert of Southern Utah, Ayahuasca saved my life.
The view from my mat on the evening of my first Ayahuasca ceremony in Southern Utah.
Perhaps you have a vague idea of psychedelics and plant medicine; it’s possible you know absolutely nothing, or maybe you only know the stereotypes.
Psychedelics aren’t a cure-all or a magic fix for what’s wrong with the world, but when used responsibly, they’re a powerful tool that can serve as a breakthrough when every other resource has been exhausted.
There was a host of promising research before fear and propaganda landed them on the Schedule I drug list in 1970. There has been promising research since the 70s, and there are people and organizations committed to continuing it.
Given the current state of everything, I don’t know what’s going to happen with research around psychedelics or science, health, and medicine in general. But I know I’m not giving up; for the first time in my life, I feel my purpose is clear, and while I don’t know how I know I will.
I know that last year, SB 139 was passed, which “Establishes the therapeutic psilocybin research fund, administered by the Indiana Department of Health (state department), to provide financial assistance to research institutions in Indiana to study the use of psilocybin to treat mental health and other medical conditions.”
I know plant medicine has been used by Indigenous cultures for as long as humanity has been documented.
I know there was my life before Ayahuasca and after, and perhaps if you’ve been around long enough, you’ve noticed the difference but couldn’t quite put your finger on where the change came from.
I know we’re a country of sick, hurting, and sad people who are doing the best they can with what they have available and what’s available isn’t cutting it.
I have been accepted into an international practitioner program seeking to prepare the medical and mental health community for psychedelic facilitation and integration taking place this spring. Regardless of legalization, people are going to continue to utilize psychedelics, and they will need professional support to understand their experiences. To have this opportunity right now is the culmination of a hundred synchronicities and events that have come together over the last decade, and it’s still only the beginning.
I’m legitimizing my lifetime of experience with education, and I need your help to keep moving forward.
What’s remarkable is that by simply having this opportunity to share my psychedelic coming out, I’m able to unlock a whole new level of authenticity. I’m so excited to bring you along while filling you in on what’s happened behind the scenes.
I’ve wanted to talk about this for years, but it was never the time.
I have qualified for a scholarship covering half of the program but need help with the rest, including travel to the Netherlands. Chances are, if you’re reading this, you’ve known me a long time, so to finally bring you in, thank you for being with me this far and having your support, whether financially or energetically, moving forward, is a blessing.
It’s been a dark few weeks, and I have allowed myself the space and time to feel all of it. I keep coming back with this boundless optimism that I have survived every terrible thing I thought would end me up to this point, so why should this be any different? It may look different than I had anticipated, it may take a little longer, but if I know one thing, it’s worth it to keep going.
I’ve spent the last several years developing resilience, and for the next few, I will be cultivating pluckiness. My name literally means brave.
Three years ago, I looked at the raw materials of my life and, from ruin, began to see how everything I had experienced up to that point was bringing me to what was next and all the ways I was sabotaging myself and standing in my own way.
In 2022, psychedelics saved my life; may I never take this second chance for granted.
…
If you have the capacity to assist with program and travel costs, thank you, it will not be wasted and it will be payed forward in a million other ways: Venmo: @mooshinindy (last four – 2089) Paypal or Zelle: mooshinindy at gee mail dot com
I’ve also covered crummier stuff: secondary infertility, antenatal depression, regular ol’ depression, endometriosis, and a marriage attempting to survive graduate school.
However sexual assault, rape, PTSD, multi-diagnosed mental illnesses, sociopathy, triggers, shock…well those are things I’m still navigating. I can’t say a whole lot about them with certainty because I have yet to come out of the other side of them, and while I’ve made it awfully far, I still have a very long way to go.
Good news? I have a therapist who can sit across from me every week and give a name to what I’m experiencing. I never considered my experience worthy of being called PTSD. PTSD is what happens to people who have been in war. Shot at. Lost limbs. Watched friends die.
Not for girls who got raped. Girls who got raped did something to deserve it, right?
Wrong.
Someday when I’m strong enough there will be many, many words on rape culture and raising girls in this mess we’re currently in.
There have been several instances in the last year that have left me in shock. Literal shock, not just figurative shock. Have you ever experienced something that wasn’t quite traumatic, but was incredibly upsetting? For me, I am able go about my daily tasks feeling as though I am floating above myself, “Clearly this can’t be real. Maybe it isn’t that big of a deal? This feels like it should be a big deal. But look at me functioning! (Kind of? I think?)” only to completely and unexpectedly fall apart several days or weeks later. That’s shock! It’s not very elegant or obvious, it’s simply a clever way our brains protect ourselves until we’re able to deal with whatever happened. Knowing that at some point I’m going to fall apart after something really stressful happens makes it much easier to be patient with myself when it does happen. (And much easier for those around me to understand. I also try to stay out of public because my let down from stress generally comes in the form of the ugliest, loudest, most guttural sobbing requiring no less than half a roll of double ply toilet paper or one small box of tissues.
So far nothing I’ve been through has been completely solo. Someone has been able to relate to every part, just not all of them collectively.
Blech. This has been really hard to write and it’s getting harder. So I’m just going to stop right here.
Grace.
In the meantime, someday I will do something like this.
For decades my mom has said I grew up in an entirely different world than everyone else and she was never quite sure what to do with me.
I spent most of my childhood and well into my adulthood wondering what was wrong with me, why was I so different from my family? Why was I so odd and why didn’t they seem to like me very much? I often felt like the heart-shaped, hulked out strawberry with three humps on the bottom that makes all the other strawberries look dainty and normal.
Earlier this year my therapist asked me if anyone had ever talked to me about being a highly sensitive person (HSP.) Sensitivity has such a negative connotation anymore, so to be highly sensitive sounded awful. But as she asked me questions about my childhood and current reality it became very clear that I most certainly fall into the category of highly sensitive. It turns out my mom wasn’t completely wrong, while my sister and I grew up in the same house with the same experiences — the way I experienced the world was, and continues to be, entirely different than those closest to me.
Perhaps the easiest way to explain is with a football game.
Cody at a football game: Watches the players play the game. Is happy when his team scores, is unhappy when something bad happens.
Me at a football game: LOOK AT ALL THE PEOPLE! LOOK AT THE SEA OF COLORS AND ALL THE DIFFERENT SHIRTS PEOPLE ARE WEARING. Look at all the relationships and friendships and interactions! THEY LOOK SO HAPPY TOGETHER! OH! The must be in a fight. LOOK STRONG PEOPLE ON THE FIELD PLAYING A GAME! Wait, what are all those lines for? What is that guy doing over there in the corner with that stick? CHEERLEADERS! I smell popcorn! SOMEONE IS SMOKING BY ME I WILL END THEM. I wonder where the cameras are. These benches really do make your rear go numb. Wait, where did we park? Look at the shadows on the field! I hope it will be a good sunset. When is my next dentist appointment? THEY SCORED! EVERYONE IS SO HAPPY AND LOUD! Look at that cute baby coming up the stairs, I wouldn’t bring a baby to a football game. When was my last period anyway? Is Cody having a good time? I really like that girl’s hair. Did I go to high school with that kid? OMG COTTON CANDY! I always forget which is offense and which is defense. I wish football season lasted longer, it’s so much more entertaining than baseball. Do I correct the people behind me who think the stadium was built in 1998 or do I keep listening to the couple in front of me talking about where they’re going to eat after the show? OH! That guy over there brought a flask! I CAUGHT YOU! I wonder what it would be like in a suite. I wonder if we’ll ever be in a suite. Is football the same everywhere you go? That player has nice arms. WAIT WHERE DID THE BALL GO? Why is it called ‘seeding’ or is it ‘seating?’ Neither one makes much sense. OOH BAND! AND CHEERLEADERS! Wait, who’s that guy with the flag? He looks out of place. How much longer? I do love how cozy this sweatshirt is, I’m glad I brought it. Cody smells good. Whoops, forgot to watch the actual game again and now everyone is cheering so I’ll just go along with it. FOCUS ON THE GAME! Oooh, but look at her hot dog, I could go for a hot dog. I wonder if they have dill relish. Sweet relish is the pits. Should I go to the restroom now or wait until halftime when everyone else goes? Maybe I don’t even need to go? What if there was an earthquake? Would we make it? If there were a stampede where would I go? How would I find Cody? *check pockets for ID and cash just in case* IT’S SO LOUD. THERE’S SO MANY SOUNDS. A CACOPHONY OF FOOTBALL NOISES! But wait, wow, it’s getting really loud. I’m kind of overwhelmed. Whoa, I’m exhausted.
And that’s just the first five minutes.
So take this example and apply it to any number of situations. Concerts, holiday shopping, church, backyard BBQs, road trips, the DMV, watching TV or even getting a pap smear. All five senses are on all the time, which is rich and wondrous in many settings, but absolutely exhausting in others. Sometimes even scary.
You see, up until a few years ago I didn’t see the worst case scenario in every situation. PTSD will really eff with you in that regard, anxiety will turn up the volume, and sensitivity will have a person completely and constantly on edge and high alert. Fight or flight all. the. time.
I’ve never known anything else.
I’ve only found two others in my orbit who score higher than me on the HSP test, and both of them practice reiki. So I’m just sensitive enough to know when you’re having a shitty day, but not sensitive enough to heal your life energy. It’s probably a good thing too, as I’m the only extroverted HSP I’ve come across as well. If you give an extrovert the power to heal through energy they’ll likely crumble in a heap in an attempt to save the world. (Or at least that seems like what would happen.)
Most of the time I like being the giant strawberry. Means I can show the other strawberries what they’re missing out on (when I feel like sharing, that is.)
tl;dr: If you’ve always felt like a hacky sack in a world full of tennis balls, you may be highly sensitive. And if you are? Cool. Me too.
Here’s what I’ve learned about mental illness over the last eight months:
1. If you really want to get better, mental illness needs to be treated aggressively and constantly maintained. If you know anyone who has been diagnosed with cancer you know there’s no “casual” way to treat cancer. Treatment is fast, aggressive, and constantly monitored. I’ve had therapy in the past, I’ve been on medication under the care of my regular doctor for ages, but the truth is I had slipped so far these treatments could barely be considered bandages on a shark bite. Since January I have been relentless in trying to get better. I have added, changed, and upped different medications more than a half dozen times under the care of a psychiatrist. I have appointments scheduled with both my psych and therapist through the end of the year with a treatment plan that ends no sooner than next summer. It’s been a holy damn marathon, and I’m exhausted — but I can finally start to feel the pieces falling back into the places they’re supposed to be.
2. Healthy coping mechanisms can be pretty boring. However, after awhile, the unhealthy ones have become less and less appealing. For the first year or so after the terrible thing happened, I drank. And drank and drank and drank and drank. Today I told Cody that over the last three years I had felt so uncomfortable with my own existence that anything that changed my state of mind was a welcome escape, dumb and drunk was better than sitting in my own emotional mess. One of the first things my doctors and therapists told me to do was stop drinking and stop sleeping my life away, there was a time I would cry and cry every night because I had no immediate escape from how miserable I was — I just had to sit in it — and it was awful. Little by little I recognized little things I could do that made me feel better. There were still times I drank, or crawled back into bed when no one was looking. I learned to give myself some grace in these situations, and as I’ve become stronger the ability to resist feels less like a burden and more like a conscious choice to take care of myself.
3. The brain has a magnificent way of protecting itself from things that hurt. Mine has developed emotional and mental cushioning around the really hurty parts that has kept me going (albeit not very well.) When I read about my diagnosis now, I don’t feel overwhelmed and broken. I realize my brain has done exactly what a million brains before mine has done in an attempt to survive. Unfortunately, to really heal I’ve had to go back into those tender places and poke until the blisters pop and take very good care of myself while it heals properly. Only two of my diagnoses are actual chemical imbalances. the others are a result of trauma — they have all done this magnificent little dance together in a desperate attempt to protect me from getting hurt again. Final count is major depressive disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, complex post traumatic stress disorder, and borderline personality disorder.
4. When I first started receiving treatment, a therapist told me that there would come a day when the terrible thing wasn’t my story, it was only part of my story. Over the last several weeks I can finally feel this becoming a reality. I could have come here plenty of times and declared “I’M BETTER!” and I hesitate to even claim I’m doing better now because I have fallen back down a dozen times throughout this entire process, but I’ve gotten up at least one more time than I’ve ever fallen down — and that’s a big deal. Back in January I gave myself a year to notice a difference, and now that I’m coming up on 8 months I don’t have a problem adding another 6 months to that year to really make sure I’ve given myself sufficient grace to not only get better, but also stronger.
5. If I could pick one thing for people to realize from what I’ve been through it’s that trauma of any sort sucks and there’s no way to know how it will affect you, and there’s no one way or even a timeline for getting better. It doesn’t matter what your trauma was, trauma is trauma and trying to compare them is useless. My life fell apart in 2014, it may have not been obvious to anyone watching from the outside, but the evidence is there. The pattern is present.
I don’t know what’s next. There are so many options, places where I could attempt to pick up the pieces of my old life and begin building upon them again. New opportunities that never existed or occurred to me before. The scariest part is simply getting started.
It’s a pretty solid sign of the times when your once thriving little corner of the Internet displays ‘ACCOUNT SUSPENDED’ because you have successfully (albeit accidentally) avoided adding auto-pay to your account for over a year.
Since you’re reading this rather than ‘ACCOUNT SUSPENDED’ I’ve clearly accomplished something today.
I’m starting out this year 40 pounds heavier than my clothes are used to. I’m not terribly upset about it, I know how I got here, I know how to get out, I know obsessing about my weight in the past has never done me a darn bit of good and I also know from looking back at old photos of myself that I had/have some serious body dysmorphia issues and missed out on a lot because I thought the size of my thighs mattered.
When talking about safety weight* with a friend she told me a therapist once told her “Sometimes the vessel has to be big enough to carry the burden.”
These extra inches and pounds have been through a lot with me, and I like the visual of tucking my pain and sorrows into the extra soft bits I’ve accumulated, then sweating and pounding them out of me in various and assorted ways. Some days I will need to be nicer to myself with a leisurely walk and guacamole, while other days will begin with kale and burpees. (Kidding! Kale is disgusting.)
2016 was the year Cody and I finally figured out how to be really good at being married. That doesn’t mean we didn’t fight (we did) or that we won’t fight again (we will.) It means we still have a whole lifetime ahead of us, and it only took 15 years of practice to finally feel as though things are humming along. (Please note this does not take into account all the other grown-up stuff grown-ups are expected to do, it merely means that I really like the guy I get to (have to?) do all those grown-up things with, like raise kids and schedule appliance repairs.)
2016 was also the year I learned I had very unhealthy boundaries so I got myself some much healthier ones and said peace out to the people and things that didn’t respect them. I also stopped apologizing for things that weren’t my fault.
2016 also proved to me that vulnerability is both my greatest strength and most exposed weakness — and of all the strengths and weaknesses to have, vulnerability suits me.
Here’s to new beginnings.
*Safety Weight: The weight gained after a traumatic event (see: sexual assault) to make one feel less noticeable and desirable.
What I’ve realized is that someday, maybe even today, my girls are going to ask me what I did the day I found out Donald Trump was to become president.
“You want to know what I did? I cleaned the oven door. I looked over a few pins, made my own little door-scrubbing-cocktail and got to work.”
You see, taking control of something small and manageable is a coping mechanism for me. Dealing with the weight of the world? Detail your vacuum! Can’t trust anyone anymore? Give yourself a pedicure! Worried about the future of everyone who isn’t het-cis-white-male in America? PULL OUT THE MAGIC ERASERS IT’S TIME TO GO TO WORK.
And so I scrubbed. I calmed myself down and reminded myself that no president is going to be directly involved in raising my girls. But *I* will be directly responsible for raising the next generation of female leaders, thinkers, and voters. So I’m going to do just that.
I’m going to teach them that when they go low, we go high.
I’m going to teach them that women have been pushing for years on the glass ceiling and it was other nasty women like me who made sure that we were all pushing together for the same thing.
There’s still so much more to this, but for right now, when I found out how wrong things went November 9, 2016, I got to work.
I just came from two hours of a very emotionally intense sexual assault support group I’ve been attending for the last six weeks and I’ve learned two things:
1. Don’t get raped. Now I realize it’s not a choice, that assault and rape are about taking away the control of another person. But if you find yourself in a situation where you think “Huh, this isn’t what I want…” but either the voices in your head or the voice of your attacker says “You asked for this/this is your fault/you owe this to him/me.”
fuck.
that.
shit.
You imagine me right now, full of impassioned anger with my hands on your shoulders and you FIGHT LIKE HELL. I wish I would have fought. The worst that would have happened is he would have gotten angry and hurt me. But hey, he did hurt me. And he did knock me unconscious — and I’ve been working through a thousand layers of guilt, shame, and blame ever since.
“Don’t get raped” may be the stupidest thing I’ve ever said in my almost 10 years of doing this, but if ONE person reads this and finds themselves in an assault situation I hope they know that fighting is an option. Yes, you may get hurt, but I would hope any physical wounds that may occur would heal faster that the emotional and mental pain of a consent violation crossing over into a sexual assault.
I’d take broken bones and a black eye over what I’ve been through the last couple years.
I may know you, I may not…but I do know this — I don’t want to see the magnificence of any more of you dimmed by the selfishness of another. You are so magnificent in a way that is unique to you, and I hope you believe that that magic only you possess is worth physically fighting for if it ever comes to that.
2. If you have already been hurt, or for whatever reason you aren’t able to fight back if something does happen to you: GET HELP. Cody left work today to drive me to therapy because there was no other way I was going to go. Therapy sucks. Individual, group, all of it. It sucks and I hate it. It hurts and it’s raw and it’s vulnerable and I freak out a little bit every time I have to go.
But I am getting better.
I am so. much. stronger.
I never could have imagined I’d be where I am now with everything in less than 4 months. When I first met with someone they told me there’s no possible way of knowing when things would get better, but if I did my work things would eventually improve.
I saw improvement as an impossibility.
I was convinced my only option was to learn how to cope with this entirely new and uncomfortable life.
If you’re here in Indianapolis the place I’ve been going to is called Prevail, it’s completely free for victims of domestic or sexual abuse and the advocates there have changed my life. I’ll never be able to repay them for the life they’ve helped me reclaim, but someday I will be able to do something. All I can do now is be an example that the work they are doing is working and that it is worth it. To the donors and foundations that keep Prevail free for everyone, thank you.
This post won’t mean much to many of you, but to one of you it may be everything. The thing that keeps you safe, or convinces you to get help.
making unbreakable - formerly moosh in indy. 