I feel I should begin this post with some trigger warnings.  Rape, Violence, Anger, Sexual Misconduct, General Misconduct, Predatory Behavior, Intimidation, Social Acceptance of Repulsion, Politics, Economy... 

Complacent is not the word for how I feel toward the rape culture in which I live; but I feel like when I express my opinion about events in my life, my attitude may be viewed as such.  I was reprimanded by a favorite last night and was asked to stop talking.  I wasn’t finished talking.  I wanted to delve into why it was an uncomfortable conversation.  It certainly wasn’t a revelation that these things occurred in my life.  I didn’t think there was anything my friend was hiding.  And then the words were said, “Just because it regularly happens, doesn’t make it right.”  I used the word normal.  I’m big on mot using the word normal and try to use the word regular.  And when offense was taken to the word normal; I realized I meant regular, because it should not be normalized. 
I am wrong.  I wish I could express the jumble of apology with as much depth as I feel to this friend.  It wasn’t very nice of me to persist when I was asked to stop. 
And so I have been unraveling the feelings and memories I have.  I shared at least four times in the few minutes we spoke of physical or sexual violation using the word ‘first’ in each story.  And then this morning, I realize my words weren’t true.  There was a time before that I recall and a time before that.  It’s just a piece of who I am.  Some of it is what gives me the strength to walk around.  And some of it is what gives me the fear to - yes, walk around.
This is where it’s going to get detailed and personal and probably a little political. Unlike sitting at the bar and asking me to be quiet while I persist, you can shut off now and stop drawing in my words. 
Upon reflection, I don’t know if any of these are ‘first times’ but I’m going to try to make this a linear cohesive expression of what I’m thinking.  In eighth grade, I sat on the bleachers in gym class with shorts that were probably too short and too tight.  From under the bleachers, someone in my class touched the skin on my thigh and when I was startled, I shifted in my seat, enough to allow a finger to be inserted into my vagina.  Eighth grade.  I just noticed I wrote the word allow.  And I’m going to leave it there in that sentence.  But I didn’t request it, nor did I allow it.  My cheeks flushed and a tear formed in the corner of my eye.  I knew who was under the bleachers and by the end of the day, I knew which of the two penetrated me without consent.  I had to look at them in school that day and every day after for years.  I spoke with him on the phone outside of school.  I never confronted him about his finger.  I never told anyone I was in school with about it.  Three people, to my knowledge, knew it happened.  Me, and the two under the bleachers.  It was never addressed.  
In eleventh grade, someone who sat behind me touched my hair.  I sat in history class knowing the person behind me would sit for the forty five minute class and touch my hair.  He sat behind me in other classes, but the only class I noticed he touched my hair was history class.  I was afraid of him.  I’m not sure why.  He made me feel ooky when he looked at me and when he asked me for my phone number, I was strong enough to decline.  I was the weird girl in the back.  It would seem like I would welcome any attention I could get, right?  I didn’t want to feel ooky.  It occurs to me now that I did not consent to this hair touching.  I also did not consent to him cornering me near my locker, or following me home.  Other than the hair touching, there was no physical contact, but I was intimidated.  I was frightened.  
At the same time, I had a friend who made a false rape claim.  The situation was bizarre and this was the tipping point to alleviate myself from her friendship.  She had been lying to people with whom we worked about dating someone because she disliked being single.  (Eleventh grade)  There was no boy.  Of course those with whom we worked wanted to meet (the non-existent) boy.  She had to break up with him.  But why?  She claimed he raped her.  And her story convinced all of us.  She called me crying and short of breath.  And when I realized she was talking about the boy she made up, I was worried that she lost her grip on reality.  Understanding she lied to cover a lie and took it to a crazy dark place was not something I could handle.  I abandoned our friendship and did not try to make sense out of it.  We had friends who had been molested by family members and were witness to boyfriends and girlfriends treating each other poorly already. Middle school and high school.  Who was she lying to?  Who was she lying for?
I was in high school and a stupid thing we did was pick up the pay phone when it rang at the mall and give people our phone number.  Girlfriend who lied about her boyfriend wanted me to have my own.  She gave a caller my number.  He called and I was curious where it would lead so I talked to him.  Until he sat across the street from my house and watched me.  That was terrifying.  My father was a police officer and I felt like if I told him about this person, I would get in trouble for being stupid.  And trouble in our house didn’t mean being grounded.  It meant physical and emotional pain.  It was easier to deal with this alone.  After all I was almost an adult.  He became more aggressive, calling with sexual requests and masturbating while I was on the phone.  If I hung up, he called back.  It was a time of house phones.  It was easier to take the call than explain to my mother that I didn’t want to talk to someone.  When he knocked on the door when I was home alone and walked into my house and pulled me onto his tense lap in a chair I had to look at every day, I let him.  I didn’t want a fight in my house.  He left minutes later.  I can’t remember what stopped that situation.  I think I moved out of my parents house soon after. 
The first time I was actually raped, I was at a party.  Or I was under a party.  Someone at the party told me he would take me home because I was in no condition to be around people.  And to this day, I preface the tale with, it was my fault, and then I hate myself for post-consenting to the violence.  I was led down to a mattress in a stone basement and penetrated in both vagina and mouth by what I remember to be four people.  I was held down, but wasn’t fighting.  I just wanted to be sleeping in a safe place.  I remember thinking, I’ll just get through this and then I’ll get to go home.  But I blacked out.  Shut down.  My mind didn’t want to be there and powered off.  I woke up bloodied and bruised and alone.  Walking through the house to leave, one of the faces told me I should come around more often and I did everything I could to hold myself together until I was in the shower at school so that no one could see the tears stream down my face.  I was in college.  I just turned eighteen.  I saw the boy who said he would take me home later at a bar/club we frequented to dance.  I watched him dance with a statue and have a good time.  My body was frozen and my eyes could not leave him alone.  The friend I was with questioned me and when I pointed out that I didn’t know how to deal with the feelings I had thought I forgotten, he got into a physical fight with the rapist while I stayed frozen on a bar stool.  I don’t know how I got home that night.  I saw the rapist a few times after and each time I kind of black out while I was around him. 
Then I lived with a brutality I’m not prepared to share right now.  I’ve worked with people who have assaulted or intimidated me physically and sexually.  I’m also coming to terms with the fact I probably have post traumatic stress disorder. 
The friend I was out with last night reminds me that my life is terrible all the time.  It makes me smile.  Not that I’ve gone through it.  But that I’m still alive.  There’s a sense of pride figuring out the survival mechanisms to breathe.  And when I can’t figure it out, my brain just powers down so my body can work out the necessities without being paralyzed by something as stupid as fear. 
I know this is a long way to get to the political climate of the day, which precipitated the discussion last night.  
Last night, I watched Caberet for the first time ever.  I say I don’t like musicals.  I think I may really like musicals.  But that introspection is neither here nor there right now.  (actually, I’m going to explore this on the writing in a row house page in a bit.)  Caberet, for those who don’t know, has a gradual progression into intimidation with a backdrop of sexy naughty girls and boys.  Traditional gender roles were questioned, words were key for innuendo, and in this production, there was a blatant parallel between events leading to the Nazi rise to power and the Trumpian world I currently reside.
A movie mogul is accused of rape and sexual misconduct.  Our President treats women with disgusting depravity.  One has been ousted from his position, while the other remains…..  
I’m not surprised by the casting couch revelations.  It all seems regular to me.  I was in a pool when I was in second grade and the older boys in the neighborhood pulled my swimsuit away from my body.  One of them commented about the pubic hair he could see through the yellow spandex.  As an adult I hear family members and friends talk about their girls enticing boys.  It’s all a game of sex.  Everything seems to be sexualized.  And in my world, that comes without consent.  
So, I’m spending a lot of time in the past few weeks thinking on the matter.  And trying to sort it through with one of my favorites didn’t turn out to be productive.  
I had lunch or brunch or some kind of food with an old friend who told me that one of the best things they remember about when we first met was that I said they had a nice neck.  I was behind someone and felt it was appropriate to say, ‘your neck is beautiful’.  I remember the neck.  And I think now to when my hair was being touched.  It was around the same time in my life.  Was I the intimidating jerk sitting behind someone in class giving unwanted advances?   
There’s countless stories like that I’ve recalled over the past few weeks.  Sometimes it’s a word that I know makes people uncomfortable, yet persist in using for shock or to hurt, when that’s my intention.  Sometimes it’s an action that gets out of hand.  Still I’m the jerk face acting.  
I’ve had times when I’m sitting with someone and I think I’m reading signals, or I’m sending signals… there’s a sexuality present in many moments shared between people.  Except when it’s not.  Except when there is no thought of sexual attraction.  This consent though, this non-consent, this mutual intimacy only occurs when both parties are cool with the attraction.  But how does one tell?  Certainly a movie mogul who meets young actresses can’t believe there is an attraction to all of them.  He knows that he is a predator.  The president knows he is a predator.  Right?  
I’m as offended at the shirtless men who are ogled by women as I am by topless women ogled by men.  And then I go to a show like Cabaret where the boys are wearing corsets and garters while kissing one another and I’m aroused.  I’m aroused and I’m curious what their mouths feel like on each other and I think sexual thoughts about the scenes I’m witnessing as the Nazi’s are moving in to restrict who is allowed to perform in the theatre and go to the theatre and marry in Berlin while an American who doesn’t think these heavy things are his fight, turns to run home because these terrible events will not affect him at home in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
Sex sells.  Sex is pleasure.  Sex seems to be a part of everything.  
But I’m considering, as I have in the past, that it’s not the pleasure side of sex.  It’s the control part.  And in my experience, when sex is the best is when there is a release of control.  There is a freedom in not being held down and not holding anything back.  There’s an impassioned crescendo allowing the purest of breath to pass through and relieve all the senses.  Sight turns to darkness and sound blurs within ears.  Whatever the science is behind an orgasm, it has nothing to do with being restrained.  
I feel like we’re taught - not just girls! Everyone!- I feel like we’re taught to be desirable to others.  To what purpose?  And I feel like we’re taught to endure some abuses because the assumed benefit outweigh the atrocities to our spirits.  I feel like I’m at fault for learning these lessons as well as teaching them.  I struggle hard to get to the next sunset, I can’t take on the enormity of coming to terms with all the facets of sexism.  I don’t know what my place in this morass of depravity.  If I ever made anyone uncomfortable, not only with my actions, but with my words, or a look… if I am responsible for anyone questioning their worth beyond their dick or their pussy, then I am guilty.  I can’t fathom that I’ve lived so long without being in such a position to cause pain.  
And then I think about intention.  Intention is big with me.  The intention of the movie mogul (I assume) is to get the physical release of an orgasm, the emotional charge of being in control, and the sensational gain of another movie on the screen.  The President in his misogyny is, in my opinion, more despicable.  Since his days in the limelight, he has used his money and name to become a character in his own depravity.  No reports of rape have surfaced yet for him, but he has said things to imply his daughter was sexually desirable to him.  He has said on record that women allow his sexual assault because of his societal position.  Society is completely dismantling one man’s career and then providing excuses for another who is in a position to allow an egregious devolution of consenting society.  Is it because no one has confirmed he penetrated them?  It is because all of the other things I have experienced except penile penetration were not rapey enough?  Am I being sensitive when I talk about it and admit these things happened or am I apathetic when I ignore that which I don’t think I have the strength to change?  I’m consenting to silence because I’m repulsed when I admit these things occur.
Consent.  (My fingers kept typing the word condescend.  Maybe it is a condescension.  It absolutely is condescension!) 
I was forcing myself on my friend last night.  I was forcing him to listen to me as I spoke on the matter when he did not want to listen to me justify predatory behavior.  My intention was to explain.  Not excuse.  In realizing, I don’t think an apology will help.  I disregarded his consent. Truly the best person I know and I was a jerk to him.  
I’m sick about the state of the world.  And feel helpless.  I’m scared.  I’m scared that the the things that have been regular abuses facing people will no longer be shameful acts that people hide.  I’m scared of some big things, because of how small some things make me feel. 

​A few weeks ago, a friend who knows many of my mental illness struggles sat with me at lunch and I explained to her how I managed to deal with some everyday life issues.  Specifically, my home.  Aside from the metaphoric home that represents security and peace, the physical house in which I live – my home – is a mess.   The house is in need of repair and we live in it, so there is constant upkeep.  It’s a house.  It’s a home. 
So, specifically, my dog pee’d on the electrical outlet in which my refrigerator was plugged.  When you stop laughing at this and read on, I’ll tell you that I handled this situation with grace and intelligence.  I had a short-term plan and a long term plan.  A temporary fix and a permanent repair plan.  And I was able to do this without interruption of the day.  Literally moving the fridge to another outlet.  Easy right?  Well I tried to explain, and my old pal understood that on a different day, that action would have been excruciating. 
Yesterday morning, when I flushed the toilet, the handle popped off.  Just broke.  These things happen.  I take a breath, but instead of exhaling a plan to go to the store, buy the piece and replace the broken bit, I broke down.  I sat and drank a couple extra cups of coffee and fought against crying because regardless of all the things I pretend to be capable of dealing with, I feel like the mask of normalcy cracks, and I’m not even sure why I try at all.  I went to work, stopped at the home improvement store and bought the piece.  Waiting for the bus to get home, I wanted to collapse.  The piece weighs less than half a pound.  It’s a toilet handle.  Just the handle.  It seemed unbearably heavy. 
I was starving.  I wanted to eat.  I wanted to put the piece on the table and make something to eat first and I knew that would leave me exhausted and I would promise that I would change the piece the next day.  After all, the toilet still worked – just not the way it should. 
I took another breath and walked upstairs to the bathroom, opened the package and twisted the nut off the handle.  I slide the rod through the hole in the tank, twisted the nut back onto the threads.  Done.  Test.  It works.  Even running down the street for the eight dollar piece, all in, active time for this fix was less than a half hour.  It was exhausting.
These two things describe my complacency and agony with my brain.  Today is the agony. 
I used to scratch my skin until it bled.  My ex said, ‘you’re horrible to your skin,’ even though I knew I would use rich and expensive lotions and oils to keep it soft and elastic.  And yet, I scratched it open.  Frequently.  I was treated (in error) for kidney failure and next for a bum pancreas, with doctors explaining to me that my body is suffering malnutrition along with the anemia I knew I had.  I became enlightened to the fact that malnourished individuals have a habit of rubbing and scratching their skin as a means to stimulate nutrients to get to the extremities.  A survival instinct.  And I looked at my fingernails with an understanding that I had to stop scratching my skin open.  I reasoned that I could not keep bleeding.  And at my most recent doctor appointment, I was told, ‘no you cannot donate blood right now.  You don’t have enough for you.’  Quite honestly, I may be doing a disservice to those relying on the blood banks by giving them a batch of mine.
And today, years after I’ve begun wearing acrylic all the time on my nails so they are not sharp enough to cut, and I have lessened the habitual scratching, I feel a feeling that I know was a piece of that cutting and scratching. 
I’m crazy.  Or anxious.  Or manic.  I don’t know exactly what this is but it is what I know.  It’s a part of the home that’s inside me.  It’s a part of what makes me too uncomfortable to sit among the normals.  It’s a feeling that I want to peel off my skin.
I received a notification for a Halloween even.  It’s a burlesque show celebrating a performer who shows graphic sex and violence in his work.  Brutal bloodletting and torture as well as sex and anger.  I suppose there is a pleasure in the release of the heavy emotions associated with this type of act.  This type of art.  So, my brain went to work, skimming through my slim list of friends to invite to a nudie show that is going to be challenging to watch with my past experiences and the current state of my brain.  But I want to.  I want to go to this show because it sounds interesting and I want my brain to stop shutting down when experiencing the sights and sounds of brutality.  I want to train it to be better than it is. 
And then, as I sit and get on with my day and drink another cup of coffee, I realize, I’m completely mad.  I’m crazy.  I’m anxious.  I’m manic. 
I’m on the brink of tears without the strength or calm to reason why.  I feel dumb and brilliant at the same time.  I feel like this mass of blood and flesh is getting in the way of letting my brilliance shine.  I want to tear off my skin and be truly who I am without the mask everyone sees and judges.
I wish I had a lifestyle that allowed me to cocoon up and wait for this to pass.  (I do still have faith that these periods of insanity pass… or at least wax and wane with the movement of the moon and earth)  I’ve considered that if my lifestyle did allow such hibernation, it would be detrimental to my health and extend these periods of chaos.  For crying out loud, I was frozen stiff at an historic tour because there were birds crunching in the dry leaves of the park.  I know if I didn’t force myself to face the sunlight on the days my brain is most unprepared… well, I think I would devolve into a corpse with a ferocity slowed currently by the sheer will to see one more sunset. 
It’s hard.  It’s fucking hard to be crazy.  It’s even harder to be strong through it.  I feel weak and small so often and then I have to remind myself that I am strong.  I carried a heavy thing yesterday and did an important thing.  The perception of others that it was small doesn’t change the greatness it means in my life.