Sexeteria

...I believe as each woman tells her story for the first time, she breaks the silence, and by doing so breaks her isolation, begins to melt her shame and guilt, making her experience real, lifting her pain.

--Eve Ensler, for NPR's This I Believe

Sometimes you owe the universe a debt of gratitude.

One of the most painful symptoms of the disease that is sexual assault is the silence. At first, the silence is imposed on you from the outside. Most immediately, your assaulter pretends not to hear your cries for help, or in many cases, creates a situation where cries for help are not even possible, or are stifled. You're told, whether actually or symbolically, "Shut up and take it."

After the fact, things are often not much better, and in some ways, even worse. Perhaps you can not expect that someone who is so fucked up and evil that he or she would think it was okay to rape someone would ever be human enough to pay attention to your basic humanity crying out in pain. But after, you assume that others--NORMAL people--will heed that cry. Often, however, that's not the case. Rape and incest makes people uncomfortable. It rocks the societal boat, upsets the balance of things people would prefer remain steady. Hearing and believing the victim means the hearers have to DO something. Ignoring and silencing the victim means they get to keep living as they're used to, with no discomfort for them. The victim's discomfort becomes irrelevant; an unfortunate but necessary side effect to maintaining the social compact.

So more often than not after a rape or assault, the others around you tell or show you in a variety of ways that they'd also prefer you shut up and take it. They make it known they don't want to hear about it. They ask you questions that show you they don't want to believe you. Even if sympathetic, they rarely offer to help or provide support. You get the message, "You're on your own with this."

So you shut the fuck up. And you take it. And you build a wall around yourself, so you can be on your own with it--because that's what they've told you to do and because this is the only way you know how to survive without experiencing more hurt. You stop trying to get other people to hear you or help you, and you start imposing your own silence on yourself.

When I was a teenager, I once had a waking nightmare. I woke up screaming, thinking an animal was biting my arm and wouldn't let go. Terrified, I kept screaming and trying to pull it off. And the more I pulled on the animal, the more it clamped down tighter on my arm. I finally ran across the room, still screaming and struggling with the animal, and switched on the light. When I looked down to see this animal that had attached itself to me, what I saw instead was my own right hand clasped tightly around my left forearm.

That's what the silence of carrying a sexual assault around with you is like. It becomes a sort of living nightmare for the person experiencing it. Part of you is still screaming for help, but there's a hand over your mouth, smothering you. And the scariest part is that it's your own hand.

This silent scream-suppression can go on for years. Decades. It did with me.

The only way to break free of this nightmare, to turn on the light and see and name what is REALLY there, is to get your voice back. But even when you finally are brave enough to realize this is the only way out, it's still incredibly hard to do. After everyone around you has convinced you your only safety and support will come from keeping quiet about it, saying anything about it out loud is so scary that it almost seems better to keep living in that nightmare world than risk more rejection.

And this is why I feel entirely lucky to have started writing this blog, and through it, to have met Hiromi.

When I first started this blog, I still felt pretty alone with my story, and my survival. I was learning to talk about it, but I didn't have any people beside my therapist who I felt I could talk about it with in great detail--mostly because I was afraid of their reactions. But, through my blog, I met two people who I began to get to know and eventually began talking about it with. One of them was Hiromi.

I am having difficulty writing this entry, because words really can't describe what a gift it is at a time like that--or any time really--to run into someone who is is fun and funny and smart and talented and SO fucking cool that talking to her makes you think life might not suck so much after all. And not only that, but someone who "gets" you in a way in which you don't have to explain things you generally need to explain to other people. And who can listen to you without judging you, and can respond in ways that take your own thoughts to higher and more evolved levels. And not only THAT, but someone who seems to genuinely enjoy your company as much as you enjoy theirs. And not only THAT, but someone who gets what it is to be a survivor, and how hard it is to come to terms with that, and how hard it is to validate your experience to yourself and others--and who helps, through her own compassion and undesrtanding--to allow you to gain that validation.

How amazing is it to run into someone like that? People who embody all of those qualities are few and far between.

Hiromi is all that , and more. Talking to her has, among many other positive things, helped me to slowly but surely peel back finger after finger that was covering my mouth until I felt I might actually be okay if I spoke up.

She's helped me be less afraid. And only another sexual assault survivor can really understand the full impact of what that sentence means.

And she's helped me to laugh on some really, really hard days. And everyone can understand the full value of that.

Today I want to tell her that I'm grateful every day that I know her, and that the world is a better place because she exists. And I want to thank her for being her amazingly wonderful self.

So hey, Hiromi:

Girl, you are the shrimp and spicy mayo to my inari. You're the guacamole to my cheddar cheese omelette. Yeah, people might look at both of us together and think we're weird, but they're the ones missing out on something totally delicious.

And here's a present for you, which I hope will be the first thing you listen to when you wake up in the morning. Play it real, real, REAL loud. I propose we learn to sing and feel by heart over the coming year, so that when I finally get the chance to meet you, we can dance and sing our asses off to it together.

Or hell, maybe by then, we'll be so over-brave, we'll be able to stand in front of a crowd of strangers and sing it out loud in front of them--literally AND figuratively.