Insecure Writers Support Group 5 July 2023

 

Image by Anja from Pixabay

July 5 question - 99% of my story ideas come from dreams. Where do yours predominantly come from?

Doubts. Fears. Movies. Songs. Stories. Television programs (The Twilight Zone was a big inspiration for me.) Trauma. Nightmares.

I wrote a poem about this very subject, which was published in an anthology called Soul Ink on June 23 of this year. You can read it here if you're so inclined.

https://poetryofthenetherworld.blogspot.com/2023/06/soul-ink-is-here-8sunday-snipsun.html

Here's a humdinger of a dream that I had last night. Being lost and needing to get somewhere is one of my recurring dreams. Also, I was highly anxious about a dental appointment to replace a filling that had come loose. I got through it, but when I say nervous, I don't mean a little jittery. I mean Defcon 5-level threat of a panic attack. I took a 5 MG Valium tablet before the appointment. It did nothing more than slightly reduce my blood pressure. 

For those of you who are sensitive about salty language, you might want to give this part of the post a miss. There is also a brief discussion of third-degree sexual assault without any graphic descriptions.

I dreamed I was lost and trying to find my car so I could take it to the mechanic. For reasons unknown, I had parked it and then wandered to a woman’s office. She may have been a lawyer, but I’m not entirely sure. A cop came in behind me.

As I was walking down the steps, a group of children hurried over and started playing on them. The steps were old, and the concrete had gone cattywampus. I said “Excuse me” as I made my way past. There was a little dark-haired girl watching me disdainfully, and I suspected she might say something rude. I wasn’t disappointed.

“Why do you have to be obese?” she demanded.

“Oh shut up, you stupid child,” I shot back, far more aggravated at having to deal with her snotty attitude and the precarious trip down the crumbling stairs than ashamed of my body. My reaction is actually a breakthrough, but I was too anxious and irritated to appreciate it.

I was having a hell of a time finding my car. A heavyset Latino fellow, probably in his late 20s or early to mid-thirties offered to help, but he ended up perving on me, putting his arms around me and grinding his groin against my backside. I told him I didn’t need his help and ordered him away from me. He called me a bitch and left.

I was going to say I didn’t know anyone who fits this description, but then I realized I did. When I was working at the local McChoke and Puke at 16 years old, there was an assistant manager who liked to make time with the high school girls. I gave him a ride home one night, and he proceeded to grope me. This was doubly creepy as he was dating one of my friends.

In the dream I thought to myself, this must be what it felt like to have dementia. I was lost and couldn’t remember the streets I’d been down. (Hell, in real life I get lost in parking lots if I don’t manage to park close to the store!) I needed to get to my car if I was going to get it to the mechanic before the shop closed.

I woke up feeling a nervous wreck.

I have been having a lot of repressed memories break through this month. On the upside, if I remember it I can deal with it. On the downside, this is shit I really didn’t want to remember.

Image by Angela Yuriko Smith from Pixabay

Repressed memories are like the Whizzo Quality Assortment. You never know what kind of nasty surprise you're going to get next.

~Ornery Owl Has Spoken~

Image by Ulrich B. from Pixabay

https://www.insecurewriterssupportgroup.com/p/iwsg-sign-up.html

25 Years After

 

Image by Marc Pascual from Pixabay

It’s time to get revenge on the fucker who assaulted me in the wee hours of November 1^st 1997.

How?

By making November 1^st a day to enjoy!

You didn’t manage to destroy me, you entitled bastard. I’m still alive. I may be broken. I’m not “more beautiful for having been broken,” whatever the fuck that means. I doubt there is a single person in this world who would find me beautiful. I’m old, I’m fat, and I have a face like the back end of a bus. I have a myriad of health problems. But I’m still here, and I plan to keep kicking until I can get what I call a win. You may have fucked me up mentally for years but I win anyway.

Ornery Owl has fucking spoken.

Image by Jim Cooper from Pixabay

Armored on the outside, me

The owl's my spirit flying free

Open Book Blog Hop + About Me Monday: Disappointment

 

Image by Glauco Gianoglio from Pixabay

Teenage me was nowhere near as pretty as the girl in the photograph, but she believed her life would be perfect if she could become pretty. 

I am not a pretty girl, it isn't what I do.

You may be wondering why I would post a picture resembling my teenage self's ideal appearance. 

Well, today's question for the Open Book Blog Hop is...

Do you think the child you were would be impressed by the person you've become?

Buckle up, Bitches, coz it's about to get real and it's about to get real salty. If you have a problem with profanity or with a frank discussion of topics such as depression and low self-esteem, the back arrow is your friend. I don't take kindly to people telling me how I should feel, what I should think, or whether I should pepper my speech with expletives. 

Image by Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay

I tackle some difficult subject matter in this post, including:

Discussion of sexual assault

Diet culture

Eating disorders

Internalized fatphobia

If you think any of these points will be triggering for you, please approach with caution or avoid it. Whatever you deem best for your own mental health.

The child I was is disappointed in what I became, but she doesn't have much to say about it.

The teenager I was despises what I became.

So, what about me does my angry inner teen dislike so much about the woman I am?

I am broke and I am broken.

I became old without ever becoming fabulous first.

I have multiple health problems. These include endocrine problems. Thanks to a completely fucked endocrine system and decades of food insecurity both because of insufficient income to purchase adequate sustenance and because of being brainwashed into trying to hate myself thin, I was often in starvation mode. As Caroline Dooner says in The Fuck It Diet, your body doesn't know if you're in the middle of a famine or if you're trying to fit into a ridiculously small bikini. It reacts the same way.

The Fuck It Diet is the only diet anyone needs. I recommend it in conjunction with Health At Every Size. 

https://bit.ly/FIDCIE

https://bit.ly/HAESCIE

Yes, I digress, but I will never pass up an opportunity to help people escape the prison of diet culture for good.

My inner teen doesn't get that chronic dieting destroys the body's ability to lose weight, particularly if said body also has endocrine problems. She is outraged by my "allowing myself to get so fat." 

Yes, I use the word fat. It is a neutral description of a large physique with a high percentage of adipose tissue. I am an old, fat, disabled woman who lives in poverty. There is nothing wrong with any of this except for the poverty part. Nobody should live in poverty. A society that allows anyone to do so has failed. Because the little town where I live has a monthly food bank, my son and I have adequate provisions.

My son is not able to work a normal job either. He is high-functioning autistic and his sleep schedule is very irregular. He speculates that he may have a 25-hour circadian rhythm. He also has issues with depression and anxiety. He is not on disability because one of us needs to be able to amass savings in case of an emergency. People on disability are not allowed more than $2000 in savings. Considering that replacing a water heater, for instance, costs more than $2000, this is pretty fucked up.

Back to my inner teen. Considering that she hoped to become a beloved actress, a famous musician, a renowned writer married to a famous actor, musician, or fellow writer, or some combination of all of the above, I can understand why she is horrified at being stuck back in the early 1980s looking at me and knowing that I am what she will become.

I can understand why my inner teen despises me. I used to despise her too. I thought she was a horrible, spoiled brat who ruined my life. 

I no longer hate the troubled girl I used to be. In the past five years, I've started to understand why my life turned out the way it did. I craved acceptance but never found it. An older boy sexually assaulted me when I was fifteen, but I believed it was not a "true" sexual assault because there was no PIV penetration. It took me 40 years to realize that unwanted digital penetration is sexual assault and to understand why I started acting out following this incident.

My inner child and inner teen are still integral to my creativity. Even though I am more psychologically fractured than someone who was accepted by their peers and had a normal and non-traumatic childhood, I have managed to become someone worthy of my own respect although I may never find it possible to like myself.

 When I hear people saying you have to "love" yourself, that is such a strange concept to me and I think, no, I do not have to "love" myself. Attempting to do so feels forced and artificial. I need to respect myself and have compassion for myself, including all the fractured, wounded, broken bits. I need to realize that although I am not what anyone else would consider even remotely physically attractive, I am still worthy of being treated with common decency and respect and I will accept nothing less.

This is one of my favorite reasonably current pictures of myself despite the bloated "endocrine face." My Crowley doll makes my inner child happy. My inner teen wishes we had more time for writing fan fiction. Adult me realizes that I am a taskmaster when it comes to myself and I don't know if that will ever change.

I was still able to use Henna when this picture was taken and enjoyed changing the color of my hair every couple of months. Unfortunately, I developed an allergy to the Henna and my scalp became full of scabs and scales. It was itchy and unpleasant, so I gave up and went back to my natural gray. I'm not ashamed of my gray hair at all, I just had fun changing the color. My gray hair is very resistant to most dyes so regular hair dye won't work. I can't be arsed to color my hair at this point anyway.

Yeah, so that probably wasn't a pleasant read, but I'm not sorry. It's as real as it gets, and...

~Ornery Owl Has Spoken~

Free use image from Open Clipart Vectors

https://daryldevore.blogspot.com/2022/08/daryl-devore-discusses-whether-kid.html

It would be a straight-up crime not to share the absolutely tan-fastic deep progressive house mix accompanying my writing on this fine day. 

https://odysee.com/@EnglishChannel:4/deep-progressive-house-mix-level-069:8?r=GTwnGJ4fFBQfzuJgpHVpfKBKaC9b8B16

Fat Friday: Meditation, Prayer, and Therapy for Weight Loss plus Other Loads of Tosh

 

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Once a week, I receive a helpful newsletter from a lovely lady named Isabel Foxen Duke. Isabel is a nutritionist and sociologist who helps women who are trying to break free from the diet mindset, which is a lot of us.

Here is a link to the post she references in her most recent newsletter.

https://isabelfoxenduke.com/will-therapy-help-you-lose-weight-not-according-to-science/

The following is my response.

Hello Isabel,

I am struggling with the "exercise is supposed to make me thin, so why exercise if it's not making me thin?" issue. 

I have endocrine problems and, over the course of some 33 years, dieted myself to the point where my body refuses to lose weight no matter how much I starve it. I am no longer able to work because of disability, so doing the punishing workouts I did when I was younger is no longer an option. 

I used to buy into the idea that I had subconsciously made myself fat so men wouldn't be attracted to me, and I did this in response to sexual trauma. This is the worst idea ever. Whoever came up with it should be ashamed for multiple reasons.

Please know that I do appreciate your letters. They are a great help in my ongoing battle against my abusive life partner, ED. (Eating Disorder.)

Your pal,

Ornery Owl

I'm going to share with you all a little something that I'm pretty ashamed of.

I missed out on a lot of moments with my son when he was little, because when I wasn't working, I was at the gym trying to punish my body into a shape that it wasn't meant to be. If I couldn't get to the gym, I worked out obsessively at home with aerobics tapes and free weights. My marriage to a man I never really loved (my son's dad) was falling apart. I believed that my life would instantly become wonderful if I could just reach a certain number on the scale. Then everything would magically fall into place.

I hated my body, and, perhaps more to the point, I hated myself. 

I really needed help, but I wasn't getting it. Therapists always focused on the wrong thing. They treated me like a silly little girl who would be happy if she could just lose weight. Rather than try to get to the root of the problem, they cheered on my orthorexia and "healthy" eating habits. 

I feel that the best therapists know that a client's real problems are not always the ones they present on the surface. At least some critical elements of my trauma were buried. There was an instance of sexual assault that I never even acknowledged to myself until 40 years after it happened. I can't help but think how much it sucks that the guy who assaulted me certainly went on to assault lots of other girls and women in the space of 40 years. 

I'm rather certain that the trauma caused by being the victim of sexual assault brings about hormonal changes such as an excess release of cortisol. Cortisol encourages weight gain and causes difficulty in losing weight. Victims of sexual assault may develop eating disorders. The key is to treat the psychological trauma caused by the sexual assault because doing so will help the victim be more comfortable in their own skin, not in order to encourage weight loss because fat is the worst thing a person can be, for fuck's sake.

I'm sick of fighting this stupidity. 

Don't treat people like shit based on their size.

Or for any other reason either.

Fucking hell.

~Ornery Owl is Mad as Hell~

Free use image from Pixabay

Hangry Wyrm says:

"Forget about it, Ornery. Let's eat!"

Fierce use image from Pixabay

N. R. Williams, Fantasy Author: A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall WEP Bloghop

N. R. Williams, Fantasy Author: A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall WEP Bloghop:   WEP challenge for April, 2022 inspired by Bob Dylan’s, A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall. Write, Edit, Publish is a bloghop started by Denise Covey...

Content warning: This brief, well-written piece addresses sexual assault.

I never reported any of my rapists. I was sure I wouldn't be believed. My own family's attitudes confirmed that. When I told them what happened, they blamed me.

It does take great strength to raise a child conceived during a violent assault. But I do not fault anyone who can't. I don't know if I could.

WTF Wednesday: Where Did the Joy Go?

 

Image by John Hain from Pixabay

I had planned on getting a lot further in 52 Weeks of Writing by now, but the Crazy Train got derailed this month. I've struggled to complete a 5000-word story for potential inclusion in an anthology, and that isn't like me. Fuck it, let's get down to business.

Today's Question:

When you first started writing, how did it make you feel?

When I first started writing, I felt excited, free, happy. I was exhilarated. Writing allowed me to bring the scenarios I created in my mind to life. I felt unstoppable. With writing, the impossible became possible.

Do you still feel like that when you write? If not, what has changed?

When I try to write now, I feel lost. There are so many rules to adhere to. I have to think of what a potential audience will like rather than simply writing what I imagine.

My imagination is no longer free. Its wings have been clipped. It has been shackled and caged. The stories I want to write are not the ones that have priority. Most of the time they don't get written at all. 

I haven't believed in myself since I was a young child, and even then that belief was pretty shaky. In truth, I didn't really believe in myself, I believed in certain of my abilities. But I have been told time and time again that my abilities are sub-par. There are many who are far better than me at everything and it wouldn't matter a bit if I were suddenly erased. Nobody would miss me. Certainly nobody would miss my writing. I am a joke.

For far too long I have been craving the approval of others. The unhappy child wants to be told that she's been a good girl who has done a good job. 

Those of us who have been sexually abused are often chided that we should have told someone. The people saying this don't understand the power of shame. You don't want anyone to know such things were done to you. Some victims have been threatened. Sometimes the abuse is shrugged off when we try to tell or we are told that we are lying. We feel deeply ashamed of ourselves and want to be told that we aren't bad. But hearing this once isn't enough. There is a never-ending insatiable hunger for approval. 

At the core, I think this is why I was drawn to horror fiction and to vampire characters in particular even when I was a child. The vampire represents uncensored need, and with its superior strength, it can exact revenge on those who harmed it in the past. Vampires are seductive and dangerous. Those who fuck with a vampire come to regret it. 

By the way, I think writing programs can fuck off with their constant nit-picking about passive voice. Passive voice isn't always a bad thing. Kindly fucking go fuck yourself actively.

These posts are only lightly edited. I keep kicking around the idea of one day turning my ruminations into a book but I always end up asking myself who the fuck would read or benefit from such a book? I think I'll address the "who the hell do you think you are" question some other time.

I decided to watch Magical Mystery Tour on Odysee. This film reveals that no matter how normal he looks on the outside, Paul McCartney has a very odd imagination. (The film was primarily Paul's idea.) Honestly, I think that's a good thing. 

I've always thought that it would be nice if I could look normal on the outside. I wouldn't want to be stunningly beautiful because nobody would take my ideas seriously if I was. However, I've always wished that I didn't have to be stunningly ugly, which I am. It shouldn't matter, but it does.

Here is Magical Mystery Tour in case you'd like to watch.

Here is the link in case you can't see the player.

https://odysee.com/@Youtube-Archive:a/The-Beatles---Magical-Mystery-Tour-Full-Film:c?r=GTwnGJ4fFBQfzuJgpHVpfKBKaC9b8B16

Spirit of the Universe, I thought I was doing better about not seeking approval but the need is insidious. My approval-seeking behavior is multi-headed like a Hydra. I cannot conquer it on my own. I am broken and I am tired of trying to cobble myself back together. Please help me learn to put myself first. Please help me revive the childlike adoration I once had for my stories. Amen.

~Ornery Owl is Seeking~

Image by vishnu vijayan from Pixabay

Resource Books:

52 Weeks of Writing

https://amzn.to/33sESxd

Self-Help Sucks

https://amzn.to/3sCWA9q

The Icky, Sticky, Nit-Picky Legalese If You Please (Or Don't Please)

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A Response to Life's Journey by Dawn of Dawn's Night

 

Free-use image by Enrique Meseguer on Pixabay

https://dawnsnight.wordpress.com/2021/10/10/life-journey

Ah, Dawn, I really feel your words! My nuclear family wasn't physically or sexually abusive but they didn't understand me at all and were often inadvertently emotionally abusive. I was badly bullied at school and was inasmuch as asked what I was doing to cause it. 

My father (RIP) once suggested to me that I had "weird mannerisms" because I tended to talk with my hands, the result of not being able to speak above a painful whisper during a severe month-long strep infection. Because of his words, I became very wooden, rarely gesturing with my hands at all and being very self-conscious of it when I did.

When I was fifteen, I was sexually assaulted by a nineteen-year-old guy. This was 1980 and I didn't believe there was anything reportable because there had been no PIV sex. The cops would have laughed at me. My friends supported me, but like me, they didn't think it was "real rape." I started acting out more than ever at that point. Not one adult bothered to ask what was going on with me. I was just scolded for being bad and told that I needed to be fixed.

I suppressed that event for 40 years. It really wasn't until I was in my fifties that I started being able to acknowledge that the bullying my classmates inflicted on me was abuse. I was 54 years old before I was able to acknowledge that I had been sexually assaulted by that fellow.

I still have trouble acknowledging that my parents psychologically abused me, even if the abuse was inadvertent. But they did. It doesn't mean that I don't love them but if I'm to move forward I need to be able to acknowledge it.

Thank you so much for this very powerful poem. I mean it.

~Ornery Owl Has Spoken~

Free-use image from Open Clipart Vectors

Dark Hearts Love Too: Appointment With an Epidemic

Dark Hearts Love Too: Appointment With an Epidemic:   Image by Gordon Johnson from Pixabay The rat ran and she chased, the plague chased and she ran kisses can serve as vectors for disease an...

a poem addressing my many abusive relationships over the years.

Dark Hearts Love Too: Small Flies and Other Wings

Dark Hearts Love Too: Small Flies and Other Wings:   Image copyright Brooke Shaden Surreal Photography The poem was also inspired by a painting called Small Flies and Other Wings by Indonesia...

This poem is a metaphor for my thoughts as a sexual assault survivor.

I've been told that I "need to get counseling" to "process my feelings" about what was done to me, but I found that counselors tend to be trained to try and make their clients "normal." I find this a flawed approach or at least one that doesn't work for me. I was never normal in the first place, and, as Thomas Wolfe famously said, you can't go home again. Once you have been sexually assaulted, you will never again know life as someone who hasn't. It's simply not possible. 

Also, I have no desire to revisit the events in question in a group setting. Yes, I know, by "not dealing" with what happened, what happened will deal with me, but it does anyway.

I actually am not abnormally afraid that someone will break in and sexually assault me. I'm not afraid to be out in the dark, although at this juncture I don't see very well when driving at night because of cataracts. Also, I live in the middle of nowhere, so there isn't anywhere for me to be going at night. I'm not afraid of men. I function as normally as anyone with my particular limitations, including physical, neurological, and psychological can.

My brand of weirdness manifests in a need to sleep in a somewhat confined space, up against a wall. Somehow, this makes me feel safer. I also bristle whenever I discuss the times that I was molested, even though decades have gone by. That will never stop. No amount of counseling with someone I'll never feel free to truly be myself with will ever change that.

~Ornery Owl Has Spoken~

Free Use Image from Open Clipart Vectors on Pixabay

If I Had Only...

 

Image by Dina Dee from Pixabay

This is my response to a post by C. Lee Mackenzie.

https://www.cleemckenziebooks.com/wep-kicks-off-2021-with-a-kiss/

As someone who has been sexually assaulted, I resonate with the feeling of wondering what I did to provoke it. Even years after the event, I wonder if maybe I could have prevented it if I had behaved differently at the time.

The image that I chose for the post reminds me of a dream that I had at six years old. In a tomb within a pyramid was a woman wrapped in bandages like a mummy whose body had been cut into perfect cubes, yet she remained alive. Her face had not been wrapped. She was anywhere between 25 - 40 years old. Her eyes were closed and her expression was one of sadness and resignation to her fate. There were at least two men in the tomb with her. I could sense that she felt like she might as well play dead because a woman is not allowed to live her own life, she must live to serve man.

I can't recall being consciously aware of the prevalence of chauvinistic attitudes and the fact that women are always supposed to be pretty and compliant while men can look however they look and do whatever they like, but I suppose that I must have had some awareness of the inequalities that I was destined to face because I was a girl. I wasn't pretty, but I wanted to be. Still, perhaps there was an awareness that being perceived as pretty is a trap too. It sucks to only be desired for beauty.

Even at that young age, I was aware of the way that men looked at women and what they expected of women. My mother did not get to have her name as "Susan Ornery" or even "Mrs. Susan Ornery" on her credit card. The name on the credit card was "Mrs. Roger Ornery." The department stores and credit card companies viewed married women as their husband's property.

At six years old, I had the silly idea in my head that I wanted to have twelve children named after each month of the year. I later altered this to the more sensible idea of having twins, a boy named Glen and a girl named Glenda, because I loved Glen Campbell's song "Rhinestone Cowboy." However, I knew damn well that I never wanted my name on my credit card to be "Mrs. Dick Grayson," even though I was head over heels in love with Burt Ward as Robin. Even if I changed my last name, the first name on my credit card would be my own.

I honestly see that dream as precognitive. I have had a difficult go of things and many of the abuses that I have endured are 100% because I am female and there are a lot of angry males in the world who use women and children as punching bags.

~Ornery Owl Has Spoken~

Free use image by Open Clipart Vectors on Pixabay

Madly-in-Verse: Write...Edit...Publish... + IWSG October 2020 : G...

Madly-in-Verse: Write...Edit...Publish... + IWSG October 2020 : G...:   Cutting straight to the chase without the usual preliminaries, in keeping with the spirit of WEP Lite ... Blind Mole in a Black Hole To be...

As someone who struggles with suicide ideation (the planning part is pretty haphazard and so completion is not likely to be imminent) and has finally started figuring myself out (wish I could have done that 25 years ago), I have some thoughts on the matter.

People like me--depressive and not able to remain cheerful despite others' best efforts any more than I'm able to remain thin despite others' best efforts to shame me into being so--are inconvenient and uncomfortable because we tell it like it is rather than lying with a smile. 

It's likely that I'd always have been a depressive personality. I think some of it is hard-wired, just like my ADHD is hard-wired. But a great part of my suicidal tendencies and self-loathing are due to trauma. I honestly didn't realize this until just this year, and then I started looking at some incidents in my life that I really preferred not to. I opened some old wounds. 

The truth is, I'm no more mentally ill than the next person who has been abused in various ways for much of their life and then had their pain minimized by others. After being sexually assaulted in 1997 and struggling with panic attacks that came one after the other, my own family said to me, "well, you got over this before, you'll get over it again."

In other words, I'm not as crazy as people like to label me, and I talk about my truth. People don't like that. I'll never be popular because I'm not willing to paste a smile over a gaping wound and give the people what they want.

Light Need Not Be Bright

  

Image copyright Harimao Lee

Be shining your light

In time of new beginnings

Light need not be bright

Don't let naysayers stop you

From sharing your true talent

~cie~

prompts used

https://chevrefeuillescarpediem.blogspot.com/

https://mindlovemiserysmenagerie.wordpress.com/2020/09/30/heeding-haiku-with-chevrefeuille-september-30th-2020-new-beginnings/

https://mindlovemiserysmenagerie.wordpress.com/2020/09/29/photo-challenge-334/

http://www.octpowrimo.com/2020/10/octpowrimo-2020-begins.html

oh no, it's the notes!

If all you wanted was the poetry, take off, eh, hoser? Cause now it's time for the notes!

A few years ago, I wasn't in a great place mentally. In truth, I haven't been in a great place mentally for most of my life. For me, poetry has always been the one place where I can let it bleed. The medium doesn't judge, but people still do because, let's face it, people suck. 

There was a commenter who referred to the angry, dark poetry that I was writing at the time as "cathartic" and said something along the lines of that I would one day be "a beacon of light for the world."

This made me see red for a couple of reasons.

First of all, it felt extremely dismissive of my emotions. The intent of what I was writing wasn't to be "cathartic." The intent, if I'm to be perfectly honest, was to spill everything inside me all over the goddamn page, messy and enraged. Cathartic, my messed-up ass! I was damn well hemorrhaging emotionally, and I wasn't about to stop the bleeding because Joe and Jane Q. Public found it uncomfortable. This is my place, my poetry. Nobody has the right to tell me not to bleed or to clean up the mess in my own house.

Second, I felt like there was now an onus for me to become a "beacon of light," and my immediate reaction was "don't fucking put that on me!" 

I did not want the responsibility of being anyone's god damn beacon of light.

I just wanted--and needed--to spill my guts all over.

I realize that the person who said those words was trying to be encouraging. But sometimes "encouraging" is the wrong approach. 

I held a truth inside me for forty years. One of the reasons it never came out was because of people encouraging me to believe it was "not that bad."

It was that bad.

There were actually a couple of truths that I discovered over this past year.

I'm not ashamed to say it, but if anyone will be triggered by descriptions of sexual assault, it is best that you don't continue reading this account.

When I was fifteen years old, I was sexually assaulted by a nineteen-year-old guy that I went on a date with. I believed that it wasn't sexual assault because there was no PIV penetration. There was digital penetration and there was blood on my underwear from it.

I also believed that it was my fault because I didn't fight back harder. 

If you would like to read the approximately 3000-word essay that I wrote regarding the experience, you can find it here.

https://blog.reedsy.com/creative-writing-prompts/contests/28/submissions/8426/

To quote my own work, this story isn’t a hoot, a lark, or a laff. It does not have a happy ending. It deals with inconvenient and unpleasant subjects such as female socialization, male entitlement, and sexual assault. 

Here is an excerpt from the essay.

There are numerous reasons why I didn’t fight back, and most of them are reasons that people with healthy self-esteem won’t understand.

I wasn’t physically afraid of him. I could have kneed him in the groin if it came to that. I could have screamed. I could have told him in no uncertain terms to take his fucking hands off me. I could have gone into the theatre and called one of my parents to pick me up. But I didn’t want to make a scene. I was raised to be a lady. Ladies don’t make scenes. Ladies don’t hurt boys’ feelings. This is contradictory to the fact that ladies are also not supposed to have sex outside of marriage, but Ladies are Good and Quiet and Pliant.

Whatever the case, I ended up turning into a rag doll. I allowed this creep to thrust his fingers into me. That’s the part I remember. I don’t remember doing anything to him, although he may have put my hand on his penis and demanded a hand job as reciprocation for his “pleasing” me. I didn’t enjoy what he did. It hurt, and for some reason, I didn’t tell him to stop. Maybe I was afraid he would hurt me worse if I told him to stop. For whatever reason, I was psychologically incapable of doing anything except lying there and allowing it to happen.

I told myself that it wasn’t rape because he didn’t put his penis in me. I told myself that nobody would be on my side if I said he assaulted me because I didn’t try and stop him. I figured the less I said about it, the sooner it would go away.

My less messy truth is the fact that I had ADHD and had been abused for as long as I could remember because let's call a spade a spade. Bullying is abuse. I was desperate to be accepted, to be liked. I thought that I was all wrong. I needed someone to tell me that I was all right.

To quote my own work again:

Attention deficit disorder, now sometimes known as inattentive attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) tends to be overlooked in people who don’t present with overt hyperactivity. I never fidgeted overtly in class. I gave the appearance that I was paying attention or taking notes, but mostly I was secretly doodling or writing notes for stories. I had a B average. I wasn’t disruptive.

I was someone that no-one took a second look at until I started acting out by cutting class and cutting myself. Then I became a bad kid, a problem child who needed to be disciplined, reined in, made obedient again.

No-one said to me “what’s going on with you, Cie? Did someone hurt you?”

All anyone ever said to me is “you’re being a bad kid and we need to fix you.”

Despite the suicide ideation and self-harm, there was a strong sense of self-preservation at work. I became determined that no-one was going to turn me into Stepford Cie. I would die being true to me if that’s what it took. Better dead than a mindless robot.

After being incarcerated (and yes, I do think of it as incarceration) on the psych ward at Saint Anthony’s hospital for a weekend after I turned sixteen and being dehumanized and treated like trash by a good half of the “health professionals” there, I made a resolution that I would die before I would ever be placed on a psych hold again.

I think that's another reason why the implication that my words were nothing more than "catharsis" enraged me. My words were not yet another bandage plastered over a gushing wound because I was inconveniently bleeding all over the page. My words were my blood. My words are and will always be my blood. When I write poetry, I am allowed to bleed, no matter how messy or inconvenient or unpretty it may be.

I wrote the piece that I am referencing back in February, two days before my fifty-fifth birthday. As I explained in the essay:

I will be fifty-five in two days from the time I wrote this piece... I may be a fuckup, a loser, society’s trash, but I will never be a prisoner again.

I will not be a prisoner in an institution again, nor do I intend to be a prisoner of other people's rules for life or for self-expression. 

This is my place--my poetry. I am under no obligation to be anyone's beacon of light.

We as a society need to learn to let other people tell their truths and not silence those whose truths may be messy and inconvenient or to admonish them that they need to become something pretty and pleasant; the sort of person who writes bucolic moon-June-tune poetry exclusively, perhaps.

Shine YOUR fucking light, not the light that other people tell you that you're supposed to shine. 

I tell my truth not only for me but for that fifteen-year-old girl who had no goddamn voice. 

I am her voice.

You weren't bad, Young Cie.

You were misunderstood, and no-one gave you a chance.

Free use image copyright Enrique Meseguer on Pixabay

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Copyright Information

The Icky, Sticky, Nit-Picky Legalese If You Please (Or Don't Please)

Copyright 2020 by Naughty Netherworld Press/Poetry of the Netherworld

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Lesser-Known Symptoms of PTSD, and Why the Borderline Personality Disorder Diagnosis is Crap

It doesn't, actually. it creates scar tissue.

Free Use image by Alexas Fotos.

https://pixabay.com/illustrations/time-heals-all-wounds-consolation-1087105/

https://themighty.com/2020/04/ptsd-symptoms-we-dont-talk-about/?utm_source=newsletter_mental_health&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter_mental_health_2020-05-06&$deep_link=true

This is a good post. One of the things I like to talk about is the theory (which I believe is correct) that "borderline personality disorder," a label that is applied disproportionately to girls and women, is a subtype of PTSD. Everyone labeled with "borderline personality disorder" has a history of trauma. Their behavior doesn't come out of nowhere.

It took me forty years to realize that the main reason behind a lot of the acting out I did in high school was the fact that I had been assaulted by a creepy guy that I agreed to go on a date with. This was 1980, and back then, it wasn't considered sexual assault if there was no intercourse. Without going into details, what this 19-year-old guy did to my 15-year-old self was clearly sexual assault. I kept it hidden and blamed myself for not fighting back harder and for being stupid enough to go out with him in the first place. I knew nobody would take my side and would blame me.

I started cutting class, cutting myself, and doing a lot of drugs. Rather than anyone asking me if anything had happened to me, all I ever heard was "you used to be a good kid and now you're a bad kid. You need to straighten up and fly right." Surprise, surprise, at sixteen I was labeled a "hysterical neurotic" by one of the most inept clowns of a psychiatrist that I've ever had the displeasure of meeting. I was later given the equally useless label "borderline personality disorder." 

"Borderline personality disorder" is the modern "hysterical neurotic." It is a way of writing off girls and women who are acting out because of trauma. It is a label that needs to be retired.

If you're interested in reading the piece that I wrote about the traumatic incident, the link will follow. Fair warning that it isn't pretty and it doesn't have a happy ending.

https://blog.reedsy.com/creative-writing-prompts/contests/28/submissions/8426/

Ornery and Sly

Telling it Like it Is

Ornery Owl

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Sly Fawkes

Image copyright Julia Henze, purchased from 123rf.com

And now, the unavoidable legalese blah-blah

Content copyright 2020 by Cara Hartley

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Quoting portions of the post for educational or review purposes is acceptable if proper credit is given.

This post is cross-posted on my mental health and sociopolitical blogs on Blogger.