lucky*

this is my "sarah's upset about rape" post. if you think i'm being whiny, you are probably male, and no matter your gender identity, you are kindly invited to fuck off.

rape is everywhere right now: on the boards, in the book i'm reading, in my mind. i'm preoccupied.

having sarah here has reminded me. we have that whole aaron/adam history. (i liked aaron, he and i had a relationship of sorts, he sexually assaulted sarah. sarah had a relationship, a serious one, with adam, he sexually assaulted me. i hated adam but didn't feel free to make that known because he and sarah were still dating at the time. sarah had no qualms about hating aaron right out loud and subsequently i removed him from my life with a jolt. maybe it's not as resolved as i thought it was. i never dealt with the adam thing; i think it wasn't that big of a deal. i don't know. tangled webs and all that.)

sometimes i feel like i'm living on borrowed time. rape is a reality that haunts me. i put so much energy into being safe, into paying attention. how can i not? it happens here. it happens everywhere. it happens to women i know. i don't want to be among their number and i'm not sure i can keep myself from it.

i'm reading alice sebold's Lucky* right now, which is a memoir of a rape survivor, and i can't not take it into myself. this is a quality i have. i cannot process information without taking it into my brain, inside myself. i cannot stay distant from most situations about which i learn, i cannot stay distant from the emotional states of my friends. it's really hard for me to draw those lines. and with rape, it's even blurrier.

i don't feel like i can walk into the hall and say, hey guys can you keep it down in here, i'm steeped in sadness over the fact that the world is not a safe place for any of the females in my life. that sounds crazy. it is crazy.

my mother insists this "sensitivity" is a good thing. i'm not convinced. i was telling her, i'm scared, mom, that it's not a matter of if but when. and she started lecturing me on fighting back, on protecting myself, and i said, OF COURSE that's what i focus on usually and that's what i think about and that's what i want, but alice sebold fought back, she fought and it didn't work. i have no guarantee. i have no assurance. every day is sorta a roll of the dice. all i have is the hope that i AM "lucky." but i know better than to count on that.

i just wrote a really long post elsewhere about "if ____ ended tomorrow" - the ways my life would be different if rape ended tomorrow, or had never existed, and homophobia, etc. the list that came out was really long, especially considering i'm not a survivor. but then i got even more pissed, realizing that if i have this much to say and i'm not even a survivor - rape isn't even my lived reality, "just" a threat - how pervasive it must be. how common. how unimportant and unnoticed. it's just an expected part of our culture.

this is something men can never understand, and they need to own up to it - you will never know what it is like to walk around in a woman's skin in this culture, in this country. and don't you dare blather to me about how common rape is, or how it has always existed. that does not change a simple fact: you do not have the skin of a woman. therefore, you do not know what it is to simply wear your skin and have that mark you as a potential victim to everyone who sees you. this is so common, in fact, that we don't even see it. we don't consciously think "that woman could be a victim" because we know it already, the same way we already know she has red hair. men cannot imagine this reality. i can barely grasp it, and it's been there my whole life, and certainly ever since you could tell i had breasts.



*the book is called lucky as an ironic comment: the police later tell her, in the same tunnel where she was raped, a girl was killed and dismembered. alice, by comparison, was "lucky."

the one who won't go away

nutshell.
me: what turns you on?
boy: can i just say "you"?

you most certainly may, good sir.

it was partially out of laziness, as i tend to exhaust him with my endless questions, but that's a great sentence.

(unlike, *ahem*, "if i'm going to be sexual at all it won't be with you." BAD SENTENCE.)

five years and we still make each other crazy. five years and he'll finally be vulnerable, at least in some ways. going on six. soon to be six years of me being as insane as i want and him loving it, six years of me worshipping this boy who never deserved it. six years of exasperating each other.

i make it sound like we're in love. we aren't. i was, at one point, he never. i don't understand it either, not sure i understand how you can go through so much with someone . . . there's a difference between loving each other and being in love with one another. and yeah, ultimate cliche, i might always be in love with the *idea* of him.

i don't know what binds us. but i do feel bound. it's such a strange relationship, and i've never encountered anything like it, never known anyone else who had the same thing with someone. for two people who love definites, our relationship lives in this eternal, infernal gray area between dating, fucking, and friendship.

it's always this boy vs. every other.

what it is

okay, so here's what's really bothering me.

(for those of you who don't know, i've been hemming and hawing over whether to spend money i *really* don't have to go to chicago for thanksgiving. now that you're all caught up . . . )

one of jonathan's last myspace blogger posts was "the joys of poordom." and i keep thinking about that. and it keeps reminding me that money is not important. even if i had an extra grand in my pockets going to central america, i don't think it would vastly alter my experience there.

and, and. look where money got jonathan, a part of me argues. part of me is terrified that i won't see *this* boy again, at least certainly not for a long, long time. like, all of 2006 and probably beyond. i'm going to have to start living my own life sometime, right? my family is scattered, this year, more than ever before, and it's only going to get worse with sean graduating and various people interning and graduating and whatnot and sarah moving. and once mana and sarah and em are flung to the far reaches of the globe, chicago will not be high on my priority list. and i don't want to lose this kid. i didn't get to say enough of a goodbye in august. that's what it is. i'm scared, and the rollercoaster is just starting to crest the first peak, just about to take off.

according to me, this is how we live, my friends. no money, ever, but happy. jonathan spent two whole paychecks on those goddamn skis.

and part of me, always, is terrified. what if i don't go and regret it? don't tell me it's farfetched, because obviously it isn't. if it's buying a cute shirt in guatemala versus regret for the rest of my life for not going, the choice is obvious.

dreams

my dreams generally fall into one of four categories:

1. brutally violent. i cannot shake them off the next day because there is the image of a corpse - or two - in my head, and i watched them die. sometimes they don't even die. one dream involved an electrified grate on the roof of a house during a rainstorm, and worse.

2. sex with someone i would never have sex with, like sean or my SFCC english teacher.

3. people dying - but usually not in a horribly sad or violent way. just funerals. or dreams of dead people, where the dead appear. whenever i tell my mom about dreams like that, she asks if they speak in my dreams. sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. oddly enough, this scares me far less than your average grade-B zombie flick.

4. cigarettes. i dream about smoking them, about trying to quit, about smoking too many at once, about having to hide the cigarettes i smoke. i light the wrong ends of cigarettes. i have trouble lighting them. i inhale deeply. i wake up and the stench of smoke is in my nose. i can taste cigarettes. (or what i imagine they taste like.) i should note i've never smoked a single thing in my entire life.

to the boy who complimented my poem

you're supposed to correct me! that's NOT how it was! i did NOT make eye contact with you, and i certainly wasn't as comfortable and confident as i come off in this snippy little poem. and i expect my poetry teacher to like it when i'm being a little ice queen, but YOU are supposed to call me on my bullshit. you officially have my permission. in fact, it's part of the JOB description if you want to be a friend of mine - built in shock proof shit detector. because i am FULL OF SHIT, and i need people who will TELL ME THAT, either gently like ed and maria, or bluntly like mana and my sister. oy. hard to earn my respect if you accept me as gospel - just my wayward nature. i barely even WROTE the poem. really, you did - you said it, you asked the intense, brutal, erotic, scary, so-sexy-it-makes-me-weak-kneed question. i just reacted, in the space of a tiny little stanza. you give me too much credit, sir.

i wrote this phrase a couple of months back (actually, at first i couldn't remember if i wrote it or emily did. . . i think it was inspired by something she said): "A GROUP OF TEENAGERS JUST TRYING TO STUMBLE THROUGH LIFE WITHOUT TOO MANY PEOPLE GETTING HURT." it still applies, even though i'm technically no longer a teenager. i'm still right. we're not trying to hurt anyone.

and some other things. i want to email you but i'm not sure if it's too passive aggressive. posting on my LJ is *definitely* passive aggressive, but i'm pretty sure this will not be read. but i can't talk to you . . . you make me strangely silent. it's scary, few boys silence me . . . only the really powerful ones. uhoh. in your presence my big mouth shuts itself up.

more later. i'm not done with you.

reprint

dude, i'm not typing it again, or even copying and pasting. you wanna know the latest shit, look at my livejournal. my ID is the same there as here.

to sum up: there will always, always, ALWAYS be another girl, and she will ALWAYS win.

the meanest thing i've ever written

**this is cross-posted with my livejournal. this is the last nasty thing i will post there, b/c it is nearly completely an SLC audience, and i don't want to perpetuate the crap around here. so, any venting necessary will be done on this blog from here on out. this is me sinking to her level for a time, writing about it so i don't actually do it. it was prompted by her saying i looked like hagrid, and Boy telling me about it.**



you know what's a party? apparently, every day, there is a new insult about me. being posted in the IMer profile. what doesn't make a lot of sense is that i am blocked from viewing this IMer profile.

how stupid ARE you, have you never been in a goddamn catfight before? you SUCK at this. you know what that means, don't you?

that means i don't KNOW about the insults until YOUR ex-boyfriend - yup, that's right, the one you spent 11 months of your life with, the one you gave your virginity to, yup that's the one - until he tells me about them while i'm laying in bed with him. and he usually starts out by saying i'm beautiful. uh-huh. beautiful. and then he tells me whatever your new bullshit is. man, this plan is working out GREAT, huh? you really showed me! what with that boy in my arms and the compliments coming my way rapid fire, i am WELL on my way to suffering JUST AS MUCH AS YOU. this makes perfect sense!

why didn't I think of this, act like a huge gigantic bitch, and do my best to drive him back into YOUR arms? silly, silly me. there is so much i can learn from you. please, keep on teaching.

because ultimately, i will win. i will have the boy, and not be burdened with the knowledge that, you know, i became his surrogate mother. it will not be my job to scold him, but just to enjoy his company. and i will enjoy it. without having to use him as a barrier against my own insecurities, without relying on him for emotional support, just for the pure joy of his company. i will not be left clawing at his ghost or trying to inflict pain on anyone else who thinks he's great too.

and, to accomplish this, i will not devote my time to approaching you or staring at you. i will not try to get my friends to focus their negativity on you, either. i will not spend any portion of my day devoted to creating more misery in this world. i will not bother talking about how much you suck when you won't even know the conversation took place. in short, i will not do things that make me look like a big gigantic loser (a sore one, at that) who cannot let go, who is acting pathetic, who is behaving as though she is a fraction of her age. i left the hell of junior high long ago, and i am sure as fuck not going back for the likes of you.

so, congratulations. you know your strengths and i know mine. you focus all that misery, all that impotence, all that hatred within yourself, and then go ahead and share with me. i'm happy, sweetheart. with or without your boy, i will be okay. if i get to keep him in my life, get to know him as a person, and watch him grow into whatever he's about to become now that he's by himself, that will be awesome. but i know i'm loved, and pretty, and a decent human being - no need to prove it or keep someone around to affirm it. you do what you have to, darlin. i hope someday you feel okay.

update

here are the last two posts to my livejournal about the boy situation. if you want to know more/gory details, just ask. i just don't want everyone to get (even more) sick to death of it.



"Fetish"

It's a simple story, really.

Boy breaks up with Girlfriend.
Boy meets Girl.
Boy and Girl enjoy one another's company, move way too fast for it to be wise, make unwise decisions, enjoy each other recklessly, too soon, too quickly.
Girlfriend finds out, is upset.
Boy feels like shit for hurting Girlfriend.
(He cannot bring himself to say "Ex-," even in Girl's arms.)
Boy tells Girl, in true Old Movie Fashion, that they cannot see one another anymore.

Everyone wants to throw up.



(Except in this version, Girl is downing Plan B when Boy calls to tell her, and Girlfriend may be in Serious Health Trouble, and Boy has interesting sexual proclivities. The details change, but the story remains the same.)




"what i wish i could say to her"

i am sorry. in my better moments. it was never our intent to hurt anybody.

he's free now. let him go.

i know this is painful, believe me i do. but he's gone. you have to stand on your own two feet now, and blaming everyone won't change the fact that, at the end of the day you come home to yourself. maybe being a relationship for a long time can mask that, but it's still true no matter how much you avoid it.

you have only yourself upon which to rely.

do you REALLY want me to suffer as you have? is that your goal? or is it just easier to hate me rather than him?

i want you to say, fuck him, he can do whatever he wants, he's not good enough for me anymore. i want you to leave me alone. i don't want you to be a fucking psycho. i said i'm sorry, now please calm down.

please leave him alone.

i don't know why you approached me and said hi today, but i don't take it as a good sign. i don't want confrontation with you. i don't want contact with you.

but.

you should be warned. if you confront me, i will be honest. i will tell you that i'm not sorry for what we did, that i liked it, that he's done with you and that is not my fault. i will tell you to stop acting like a child, pick up your shit and move along. i will try not to say, him abandoning you has nothing to do with your father, because that would go too far. i know too much about you already.

i would like to have faith in you, to think that in normal situations you wouldn't judge me by how many pairs of heels i own or what colors i wear with my haircolor or call me ugly. in a weird way, i want to have the faith in you that he does, because i want to know that he chooses women wisely, want to believe him that you won't really damage me or my relationship with him.

right now, though, i just want you silent and gone from both our lives so this new relationship can unfold in peace. please.

the past 24 hours ago*

24 hours ago, i got back from babysitting Liam, all ready to settle down with my Incredibly Depressing Book for the evening. the phone rang. i hadn't been expecting to hear from him, as he was involved in SLC's 24 hour play festival (playwrights show up, get topic, start writing, hand over script 12 hours later to actors and director, who have 12 hours til it goes onstage - pretty fucken cool).

he comes over, somewhat drunk, and we talk and make out and cuddle and make out some more and we shower and decide to go to the pub and come back and we negotiate some boundaries, we go to bed, we play with each other, i make good choices and bad ones. i'm still not sure how i feel about certain things, some of which are and are not his fault. we close our eyes at 5 a.m. and he leaves at 7 a.m. for his half of the play festival (directing/acting). he calls me an hour and a half later so i'll wake up for work. i perform poorly at prospie day due to lack of sleep. a fellow admissions worker pulls me aside to tell me she had spoken with boy before he broke up with his girlfriend - that he should wait awhile after they broke up, etc.

this makes me feel like an asshole. they've been broken up for a week about, ooh, tomorow. he and i need to have the several conversations we've been avoiding. damn.


*wow, i just re-read the title. i AM tired! i think i'll leave it.
**i'm not sure anyone reads this anymore, but 'sokay, i'm basically just keeping a record for myself at this point, i guess.