Emotional Scars and the Trauma We Carry

Yesterday and today, my facebook feed has been flooded with "Me Too" and the stories of our assaults. I said me too and I watched the people in my life, mostly women, without surprise. No surprise from me because I know. I know we all feel it. We all know what it's like. We all know this world we navigate in fear.

I also saw those of you who didn't post, who hold the knowledge within, who can't tell your stories. I see you too. I know your pain. I relate to it.

I saw a few thoughtful posts from men, men who had no idea. Men who are just now seeing the vast magnitude of what we endure. And, yes, I think the sexual assault statistic for men is something like 1 in 33 men (who report? is that right?), but it's 1 in 4 women who report. It's all women that it happens to. It's trans women. It's non-binary people. It's anyone who doesn't conform to the gender normative and are assaulted simply because they exist.

And while men get assaulted too (usually by other men), that doesn't change that, as a society, we just don't believe women. Well do you believe us now? What does it take to get you to believe what we fucking say?

I myself carry a lot of emotional and physical trauma around with me. And despite the years of therapy and the grieving process and the healing and how "well-adjusted" I am, those scars will always be there. They are part of me. They are the very fabric of who I am.

I have a pretty good life right now. Outside of the climate of America (which blows), I have a good job, a good partner, good friends, a warm house, a good car, and two fat cats who know just when I need a cuddle. But goodness doesn't erase the trauma of my past.

So today, I want to talk about the trauma. I want to talk about the pain that scars my psyche, and not just the trauma of being a woman in a culture of rape, but all the traumas and abuses. I share to both show others they aren't alone and to, in the telling of it, lighten my load a bit.

Lately, the load seems heavier than ever. With the world burning around us, my scars flame hot. Old resentments bubble up and my anger overflows. I see the pain and hurt of those around me and my heart aches. It aches because I can't help them really, for I can barely help myself. I have anger toward myself for not being able to do enough, never enough. Being an empath blows sometimes.

 I don't know what to do with all my anger. I've called all over the city looking for a therapist that is taking new patients, but I think I'll be left trying to find other outlets. And, friends, it is not your job to be your friends' therapists. You're not professionals and you're not trained to not absorb someone else's trauma.

My physical and emotional assaults started young. My mom (my adoptive mom) abused me. She tortured me with her unpredictability, her violence, her rage, her manipulations. She exploited my adoption to make me behave and ensured my home was both a scary place, but also one I couldn't depend on. And she set the stage for my readiness to accept a life of abuse and gaslighting from men.

Doesn't our society do that to all of us? Gaslights us and preps us to be used up and tossed aside without a peep. How else does the patriarchy persist?

It's harassment. It's kisses we never consented to. It's hands grabbing us in bars and subways. It's yelling at us from sidewalks and blocking our paths and pacing us whispering obscenities as we walk as fast as we can, trying not to react. It's walking, holding our keys so they can be a weapon if necessary. It's a car following us as we jog after work. It's not believing us when we come out, when we try to exist, being told we're crazy or just going through a phase. It's men taking up as much space as possible, not letting us sit or walk down the sidewalk or through a doorway or on the road. It's condescending remarks and mansplaining over us. It's bosses telling us nobody wants to hear what we have to say. It's doctors not trusting us to know our own minds when it comes to our reporductive choices. It's boyfriends telling us we're boring because we won't follow them like puppies and feed into their addictions. It's never ever believing anything we say, from our expertise on a subject to our own fucking experiences to reporting harassment and assaults. Our entire culture is trained to believe that we, as women, are not to be believed.

I'm officially changing the title of this photo to "The Assault"

And when we yell, to just be heard, we're told we're shrill, we're crazy, it's not that bad. We must have misunderstood. We must have been asking for it. We're overreacting. It all chips away at our spirits until we acquiesce or we explode.

I never told anyone, even myself, about my childhood abuse, abuse that persisted until, at the age of 27, I cut my mother off for good. I quite literally blocked it out until, during therapy, the memories came flooding back in a torrent of pain. I then had to tell people, had to tell my dad (who didn't believe me for a long time), my relatives, and friends, (mixed reactions here, but thank you to those who believed me straight off). The telling is another trauma, as you relive it in the telling, but you're retraumatized in trying to prove your story.

I had also blocked out my sexual assault, to an extent. It lived in the back of my mind, ever-present, popping up whenever a man thought that restraining me was sexy, that pushing me down was romance, that ignoring boundaries and consent for any act was simply how it's done. I think I knew, back at 16, that no one would believe me, but I also thought it was my fault, because he was my boyfriend, because I'd consented to other things, because I had willingly taken off my clothes. The fact that he hit me was just normal, having been hit by my mother so many times previously.

I only started telling people a few years ago. I told my therapist and best friends and my now-fiance. I've been pretty quiet about it. It seems so small compared to the lifetime of abuse I suffered at the hands of a woman. It didn't occur to me until recently that it's a big scar, but a scar that connects to many many many smaller scars, much like fault lines in the earth. They all connect, they all rumble. At what point does a heart just shake apart completely?

I'll never know the trauma of living as a Person of Color in America, or as a Jewish person, or a trans person. I may never know what it's truly like to be disabled. I don't know, yet, what it's like to live in a place that is under constant threat of bombing (though that may change soon, thanks to Kim Jong Trump). I may not know those traumas. But I do know how it feels to be under constant violence and fear and uncertainty. I know the distrust of the people around you. I know what the ache is, the ache deep inside that threatens to break you. 

I know. Me too.