I Need Some Advice!

I have a memory like a steel trap.

In fact those are the exact words that I said in an email earlier this week to Mr. Attorney Man and I said them because they are true. If you say something to me, if we go somewhere, if we see something, I'm going to remember it. I'm going to remember it down to the way your head was tilted and the shirt that you were wearing. I'm going to remember it by the way the room felt or the glances from the people walking by. I don't simply just remember things, I re-live the memory.

I've often wondered about this memory of mine because I am keenly aware that it is not the norm. I remember things that no one else does and I remember it in such detail that I literally feel like I've pulled it out of a filing cabinet and am watching the memory on film in my brain. Because I am a nerd I have spent quite a bit of time wondering why my memory is the way that it is and the conclusion that I've come to is that I am simply more present in the moment than most people. I mean sure, I could be some kind of super genius or something, but the more likely answer is that after years of abuse (and several years of stalking) I have learned to be hyper aware of my surroundings. When you spend your life living like a prey animal, you learn to take note of the details. Have you ever watched a rabbit outside? Sure they are eating, munching on some grass, but you can tell that they are vitally aware of every. single. thing. that is going on around them because they know that they are milliseconds away from being snatched up by a hawk.

That's kind of how I feel.

Yesterday I Flipped The F**k Out

*Warning, there is a lot of swearing in this post* Please also note, my children were at daycare. Thought that was important to throw in there....

I flipped out yesterday. No, I didn't just flip out, I FLIPPED THE FUCK OUT.

I can honestly say that I have never felt so angry in my entire life. This was the first time I have ever gotten truly angry over something that had put me in the "victim" category. I don't usually get angry. I am usually able to look and feel past the anger and admit to whatever feeling caused me to feel angry in the first place (remember the post about anger being a powerful secondary defensive emotion to a primary feeling?). I usually have no problem admitting to whatever vulnerable and hurt feeling I am experiencing, and therefore avoiding the feeling of anger altogether.

I think the last time I reacted in anger was when I finally put my ex mother in law in her place, and it had taken me twelve years to finally get to that point.  Other than that, I can't even remember the last time I have really gotten angry. I can't even remember the last time I've raised my voice, not even in the typical "mom is frustrated and angry at her misbehaving children" kind of way.

I made it through my hellish childhood into adulthood without killing either of my parents. Be proud. I managed to respectfully disown them without flipping out. My husband walked away from me and nonchalantly cast my children out of his life, and still I never raised my voice at him. I pretty much just cowered away from him court. Hell I even nicely packed up all his belongings when he left, and put them outside when he asked me too. I made it through the torment that my brothers rained down upon me when I disowned my parents without freaking out. When one brother told me to go drown (kill) myself  and do the family a favor, I decided that the last words I would ever speak to him would come from a place of love.

Note the date, its been almost exactly a year since I lost my siblings. And yes, I used the wrong "your."

When the man after my ex, the man that I thought I would be with forever, told me that my kids and I had been thrown out like trash and he wasn't going to be the garbage man that picked us up, and then proceeded to moved out of my house the night before my 30th birthday, I freaked out and made some crazy phone call to my attorney trying to figure out what to do as he moved his, and my, belongings out of my house, yet I never raised my voice towards this man. Heck, even after the two nutcase neighbors threatened to run me over with their car when I had the audacity to ask them about the money they owe me, I still shoveled their driveway. I have a very long history of being able to control my temper, probably because I really don't have a temper. Until yesterday that is. Yesterday, I lost it. I lost my fucking mind.

Facing The Silencers

Ok, so, this post has been a little hard for me to write. I love this blog, I love that survivors are coming together in the comments section, I love that people are feeling comfortable sharing their stories, and I love that the stigma of abuse survivor shame is finally being broken.

Coming on here week after week and bearing my feelings in front of you all, it has not been easy. Writing comes easily to me, but the reflections I get while I'm writing, the memories that are dragged out of the darkness from the back of my closet where I have buried them away, they aren't easy to face. But I can't keep everything hidden away in the corner of a closet with the three year old me anymore. The closet is full. I can no longer close the doors on my past trauma's. Just like all the wrong sized clothes that hang around in a closet and do no good to anyone, someone else could use them if you are just willing to pull them out and give them away. I wouldn't have been in the closet if someone had seen me. I wouldn't have spent years piling more, and more, into that closet and locking it away if I had known that it was ok to pull it all out. If I had known it was ok to tell someone what was going on and if someone had listened, I might have been saved from years of trauma.

When Society Rapes You

Statistically, rape is the #1 crime to not be reported and one of the major crimes where women drop the charges. %60 of women do not report being raped and of the women that do, only %3 of the rapists will ever serve a day in jail. In this day and age of fighting for equal rights and gender equality, we are seriously failing our women.

Every day you hear politicians and college administrators talking about the ways that we can prevent rape. “Don’t dress provocatively. Don’t drink too much. Stay with a group. Don’t invite a guy into your room. Don’t walk alone at night.” That is ridiculous. You know why I was raped? Because someone fucking raped me. Not because of what I was wearing or what I was drinking. When people hear of a girl getting raped, so much focus is placed on what she was doing that led up to it. Let’s all dissect exactly where she went wrong. Let’s figure out how many rules she broke that led her to such a tragedy. Let’s figure out exactly where she went wrong so that we can teach other girls not to make the same mistakes.

Well ok then, let’s talk about me. Let’s talk about the two rapes that were committed by a stranger guy that stalked me. The first one took place in a grocery store parking lot, in the backseat of my car, where I had been trying to tighten a car seat restraint (kids were not there), in the middle of the day. I was wearing yoga pants and a tank top, not exactly risqué clothing. I had not been drinking. The second time, the same stranger guy forced his way past me and into my home when I opened the front door after the doorbell rang. I was wearing sweatpants and a t-shirt, I was not drinking, and I was on the phone with my attorney of all people when I opened the front door and yet I still blamed myself. Oddly enough, the neighbors did too, and even more so, I’m pretty sure the police did as well. The questions they asked me were completely absurd. “What clothing do you normally wear? Could he have seen you in skimpy clothing? Do you normally wear that (red lace) bra? What medications are you taking or have you been drinking? How many people have you slept with in the past?” How on earth is any of that relevant to the fact that a STRANGER forced his way into my house and forced himself on me?