abuse

The weekend was a whirlwind of drunk days and drunker nights, people I dont know sleeping on the floor of our apartment, someone I know even less sleeping next to me in my bed. At the time it was all a fantastic idea, who doesnt love a weekend where they can just let loose and party day and night? But come monday I was not proud of myself. I had not been sober for seventy two hours and the reality of that hit me, hard, harder than a headache and a shakey morning. I do this to myself more than I should. Its easier for me to be drunk then sober, a lot of the time, and that is something I am not proud of, but its the truth.

I've been meaning to post some of my poetry here. I don't exactly have any poems that deal directly with feminist issues, but I do have quite a few that deal with my struggle to work through the abuse I've suffered, and I suppose those are relevant to the AGA.

The first one (though not one of my faves) is a good metaphor of the way my past makes me feel at times. The second one is an imaginary conversation with an abuser that was sparked by a therapy session.

1. Haunted House
Walk on into this splendid mansion,
barefoot on plush carpets
in spacious rooms,
and rest on silken sheets.

Burglary. Kidnapping. Embezzlement. Arson. These and other crimes. What do they all have in common?

When people come forward to report them, those reports are believed until evidence suggests otherwise.

So why is it that rape or sexual assault and charges related to domestic abuse are so suspected regardless of the geographic area where they are reported? What is it that they have in common?

Women are by far the victims and reporters of these crimes. The distrust of women, the malevolence of the female, the demonization of femininity are motifs through out the world and through out history. Are these the traditions that cause women around the globe to be undervalued and untrusted? Is it the fear of the status quo (read: old men in their respective cultures) that these allegations will lead to their hierarchical unseating?

One of my closest friend grew up in UAE and now studies medicine in India. She grew up in a traditional household in a culture that is as far from mine as it gets. From the start of our friendship, we have continually shocked and challenged each other with our observations of how our cultures work, especially in regards to women.

The other day, she missed one of our regular MSN gab fests and the next time I caught her online, she apologized telling me that she'd had to be present for a surprise autopsy, "another dowry death". She said the body of the woman was covered in severe burns, allegedly she had been cooking in the kitchen at 1 in the morning when the stove spontaneously exploded. "We can always tell dowry deaths by the ridiculous excuses" she explained, "if a young woman dies within weeks after her marriage because of completely outrageous circumstances, we know it's a dowry death".

"Law and justice are not always the same." -Gloria Steinem

No doubt you have all heard about the young lady who was put in jail right after her rape and denied EC because the medical worker at the jail claimed the pill to be “against her religion”. When I spoke with a family member about this case, I received a very disturbing narrative.

I debated with myself whether it was appropriate to share this highly personal information. But then I realized… Her anonymity is not just protected by my refusal to mention her name, but by the sheer commonness of her experience. The brutal mistreatment she received is something endured by women the world-over every day, and no doubt there are others with similar (if not the same) stories, possibly by the same persecutors.

...that we live in a country where injustice is documented.

UCLA's Mostafa Tabatabainejad was Tasered at least 4 times by the police. For what? Did the student have a weapon, was threatening the police or an innocent person, or in a physical fight?

No, he didn't have his student ID. And while he did refuse to show that ID, thinking that he was being racially profiled, and did initially refuse to leave the library, it did not have to blow up into the huge event that followed. A college kid being annoying does not warrant multiple Taser shocks.

A library patron managed to document the event and submitted it to YouTube (It can still be seen here though it is extremely disturbing), thus making the incident national news.

We were not together for a long time, only a few months, but I loved him. And, I thought he loved me I guess. Nick and I were a good team in the beginning, we both loved many of the same things, he was supportive of me with my health problems and of my sometimes insane family. But it didn't last as long as I thought, and hoped it would. Nick changed the moment I told him I was a survivor; he thought it was something that meant I was ill, or damaged, or sick. I know these things are tough on the people we love, so I gave it as much time as he needed, but the Nick I knew never came back. He started to get really violent, and hit me, and keep me from going out with other people, my friends, because he said I was not well. But for whatever reason I still loved him even when he hurt me.

I've been having a rough week. Over the years, I have learned how to cope with the after-effects of sexual abuse, but some days are harder than others and occasionally the triggers just pile up. Last week, I had a particularly nasty nightmare and I've just not felt like myself since.

One coping-method that I developed very early in the game is dissociation. I've gotten so good at it that sometimes my mind does it spontaneously, when there is nothing to dissociate from, and I end up feeling -literally- completely beside myself for hours at a time.

On top of that, I am incredibly jumpy. The other day, my mother came up from behind me and touched my arm before I saw her and I lashed out at her. She was upset and I was annoyed with myself for being such a freak. I am never a big fan of being touched, but it doesn't usually turn me into such a basket case.

Those of you who know me know that I am a survivor of long term sexual abuse. But for those that do not, I was abused from childhood until just recently by a good friend of my family. For years I was numb about it all, and not willing to deal with it at all. I finally did get myself together enough to get into counselling not too long ago, and was able to work up the courage to go to the police and report this man.

Now that it is over, and I have been through that, it has not all left my mind like I had hoped it would. Stupidly, I was hoping that I would wake up the next day and feel that huge weight lift off of my heart and no longer have to deal with the images that have been in my mind since the first time he hurt me. I was wrong. In fact, since it all stopped I feel like the images have been much clearer and I have been having flash backs much more frequently. And, to be honest I am just not dealing with that well, particularly not at night time, when I have anxiety attacks and can’t sleep at all because I feel like he is watching me again.

I got a volunteer job at a kitty rescue place up the street! Not even a block. There are lots of kitties, five new ones today!

Kim, our boss, is really nice. She was telling us about our kitties, who were rescued from shelters shortly before they were put to sleep, or from the street. In order to promote kitty life, they have a spay/neuter policy, where a cat leaves spayed or neutered and aborts preggies.

Makes sense. She's really nice, and she wants lots of good PR. Her kitties are all so cute, and she told me stories that made me angry. About abuse and streets and crap. I'm volunteering there, so I get to play with Kitties! (Who I love).

Urgh. This is the second day of school for me-and how I can't look forward to it. My teacher's really nice, I have a very good friend in my class who's new (from England!) and...

Jesse. This girl who was my arch nemesis two years ago at the school whose name will not be spoken out of hatred. We had BIIIIGGGG diss fights, and got very close to fist fights over her rumours.

Jesse. The reason-one of them-I refused to go to Glen Ames, where she was last year.

Jesse. The first words out of my mouth upon seeing her. "That is Jesse, right?" Other person: "Yeah." Me: "#%&@$!"

Let's just say we DON'T get along. It was pool when we had our first arguement in two years, because she's stupid and thinks that I'm a satanist, and that the triple moon symbol is some sort of satanic symbol and blah blah blah blah.

A few months after I had finally managed to remove myself from the reach of the man who had abused me, I started to intentionally hurt myself. At the time, I didn't notice the connection or why it helped me to begin with. All I knew was that, when I was feeling sad, cutting made me feel better. I was 14 at the time.

Six years later, I finally recognized the meaning of it all. A counselor at a shelter for raped and abused women helped me understand my self-destructive behavour and why its roots lay in my first experience with abuse.

At a very early age, I learned what would become of my sexuality. Frustration, the inability to comfortably orgasm, and constant guilt is the only thing I know of sex. Most of my life has been spent hiding my sexual energy, while the last three years of my first and only relationship has been spent trying to hide my pain with lies. As I closed my eyes to the pain, I forced myself to have wild crazy sex, dead to my own feelings of angst.

I wanted to be the girl he couldn’t keep his hands off of, even though it was his hands that terrified me the most. His hands tortured me with pain and pleasure. One moment I’m completely under the spell of his pleasure and the next, I’m back at age four, being violated again and again, by those whom I was supposed to be able to trust. I’m so lucky to have him, another man might continue without a care or bolt when I start to sob, but he just holds me… protecting, loving and comforting.

Violence is a big part of our culture. Violent films, music, video games. Violence is anything but new. Our country was founded on violence, on war, on slavery. Our country went through a very bloody civil war, the bloodest battle of all occured about a half an hour from where I am sitting now. Gettysburg, war, men killing each other always makes a good film. It doesn't make a good home or environment to grow up in however.

My brother's hand gripped firmly around my neck. A million thoughts whipped through my head. Was I still breathing? What did I do now? How was I going to get out of this one?

When I was seventeen years old, my life changed. It was not a gradual change and not a decision I’d made. It was just something that happened to me. It was spring, late May. I had a free period at school and decided, on a whim, to leave the stuffy building and go to the park to study. It was a typical Milan spring day – warm enough to wear shorts and a t-shirt. Nothing too terribly showy or flashy, but nevertheless bare arms and bare legs. I’d always felt safe in that city and the thought that I should worry about my safety had never occurred to me. So that morning, I packed up my things and walked across the street to Parco Sempione, intending to follow the path past the Arena to Castello Sforzesca. Like any other day, the area was full of tourists and I was just one of many young women walking through the park. Why he picked out me, from all of them, I don’t know. But he did.