Head Full of Hornets in Tangent

My head is a hornet’s nest the past few days. I feel this cloud around my heart and my past choking me in a way it has never done before. From the moment I stood in front of my house at 7 years old and decided I would protect my mom and my grandma from the horrible stain…I have coped with what happened. As I stated in my earlier entry about the incident in question. Yes, I am afraid of the dark and yes, I don’t trust people with my kids. But all this aside, I have become a pretty adjusted human being. That being said this whole Kavanaugh business has me in a surprisingly dark place. Whether you believe her or not, the fact remains people like me are listening, we are reading, we are aware. The ugly, the hate, the doubt, the “it happened how long ago and you’re still not over it”…it kills.

It kills in a way I never knew it would. I thought I was adjusted. I thought I was living with it instead of against it. Apparently I was wrong. Here I stand on a precipice of wanting to scream my lungs out and needing to stitch my mouth shut. So there I’m left my mouth wide open screaming, but no sound comes out. My body quakes as I listen to people I love, people I care about, people I am shielding from my stain…say their doubtful, hurtful words…I am bereft of options.

Choices are blocked off from me as I stand there proof of all their questions against Dr. Ford. I could rob them of their delusional ignorance with two words. Me too. But I don’t. I can’t. Because my the price of vindication is too steep. I paved this road twenty-three years ago. I made this choice at 7 years old. Just as much as I knew it then, I know it now.

It cannot come out.

No matter how much my body rages against what my mind tells it. I quake as I read the comments “she probably deserved it” or “it happened so long ago, how does she remember” or “he was a teenage boy, we all know thats just how they are”…the excuses, the forgiveness, it eats me.

I was 7 and he was 16…yes, he had his whole future ahead of him….but what about mine?

Yes, it was 23 years ago, but there are times I can still feel his hands as clearly as I did then.

Did she deserve it? Did I? Does anyone? Does any person no matter how drunk, how scantily clad, how bitch-tastic, how promiscuous…really deserve her (or his) voice to be muffled as you want nothing more to scream for the next ten counties to hear you? Do you really deserve your body to shoot with mental pain so fierce you can’t tell it from the physical pain? Do you really deserve the knowledge that your body being yours is the biggest lie we tell ourselves?

In a moment, your life or your chastity can be stripped from you with the snap decision of any random person. We are all at each other’s mercy. The only safety we have is the justice system. The knowledge that this intangible set of promises will keep each of us on our best behavior. That we must each be good citizens or else.

But its a lie. Victims of abuse see this in a way those who have never had to deal with will never know. We know better. The wife being beaten by her husband knows that a restraining order is just a piece of paper. The young college freshman knows that white rich frat boys have powerful daddies who will save them the noose.

Call me jaded. Call me bitter. Call me another feminist. So be it. The past few days have let me see people’s true nature. We treat an alleged victim like the criminal and the alleged criminal like a victim. We treated them the same. She received death threats. Again, you can believe her or not, but she received death threats and every victim of past, present, future has saw or heard how she has been treated.

Back in the closet the skeletons creep as your daughters heard you say “Boys will be boys and groping isn’t that big of a deal.”

Back then I never told my mom to protect her. But now, I think watching her stand on the fence about this MeToo movement and the women coming forward…I realize now I may be keeping quiet to protect myself.

I used to know in my heart, if I told her she would cradle me in her arms and be strong until she thought I wasn’t looking then she would cry. But now? Now I am terrified if I told her she would look at me and say “Why not put this back under wraps? Just pretend this conversation never happened? Huh? Come on, lets go get something to eat?”

Its plausible he was too drunk to remember. It is plausible they are both telling the truth in their own right. It leads me to think…23 years…he would be about 39 years old right now…was I so easily forgotten? If I saw his face on television, heard his voice on the radio, if I spoke up…would he look at me and say “I don’t know this lying bitch.”

Last updated October 02, 2018