things you tried to kill, i found a way to grow.

I'm home, and I'm ready to fuck shit up. I was ready to fuck shit up before I even got here, but then I was reading an old journal, but not old enough, in which I recounted everything I remembered about my last date with... let's call him Fuckface, for old time's sake.

I was triggered for the first time a couple of months ago, which was surprising and scary. I think it comes down to that night.
So I'm putting that entry here, because I can't keep being "home" where most people don't know, when I've been living where it's such a huge part of my open identity. I get nothing from keeping quiet, so I'm going to tell everyone, when it comes up. Because I forgot that even four years ago, I knew that what happened was wrong. I left myself clues so I could work it out later.

You should know that this is just the last incident after 4 months of the same shit. This was one of the 2 that I reacted to the most, in the moment, but I was checked out for most of the stuff I didn't react to until later.
You should know that Sady Doyle holding her ground on #MooreandMe has a lot to do with feeling like it's okay to do this.

Trigger warning and story after the jump.

Written 1/5/07 about 9/11/05:

"I'm pretty sure we went to the Spinach Festival that day.
The next thing I remember, or rather assume, happening is his 10ish minute attempt to put his dick in my ass, but that was challenging, as we were in his floating bunk bed thing. And so! I am lying next to Fuckface in his bed, we are both lying on our backs, and he is whacking himself off with his left hand, and me with his right. I am staring at the ceiling, diagonally in front of me to the left. I say "I feel worthless." He says "Yes, you're worthless." Apparently this is sarcastic, but I don't hear it. I say "I'm just a body! There is no need for me to me here! I am only the waste disposal!" He says "Don't call yourself 'waste disposal.'" He laughs. "I do need you here. You're... you're necessary. You're not worthless." I don't respond. He says "Fine, you do it," and holds up his hands (he's been going at it this whole time). I start. I try for about 2 seconds, but I'm terrified and enraged at him for making me do that when he knew I was horrible and couldn't do anything for anyone with my hands, and why would the asshole put me in such a vulnerable position? I stopped. He finished himself off. I swallowed his cum. It's safe to say I couldn't tell what movement meant I should go do it, and so I smiled that pitiful, helpless smile that provoked him to say "when you smile, it ruins everything."

Afterwards, he kept trying to cuddle, and I wouldn't speak and kept trying to get as far away from him as I could in his one person wide floating bed. He'd touch my back and I'd move away. I felt like I was going to scream, and I wanted nothing more than to be Deb and say "Don't touch me right now." He said "If you don't want me to touch you, just tell me." I think I said "Can you take me home now?" I think he was flustered and didn't know what to think. It was so very unprecedented.

I had brought The Dresden Dolls, and we listened to them on the way to my house. Good Day turned into Girl Anachronism, and I was taken aback by how perfect they were for this, so much so that I ended up blaming them entirely, and in between Grant and Foster I asked him to drop me off at [my elementary school]. He said okay. Amanda sang some. He asked why. I said "I want to walk. ...and I feel like screaming." He said okay, glanced at me, and kind of sped up. He asked me if I was okay, if I would be okay, if there was anything he could do, he loved me, he needed me. I said "thanks, bye." I hadn't really been listening. I waited for him to leave the parking lot. I paced in a small circle. I looked for him to come back and was mad he didn't. I couldn't scream, I was convinced he was hiding somewhere where he could hear me, and I couldn't let him hear me and I was hyperventilating and almost crying, I started walking home and looking behind me, looking in my driveway for him, wanting to come find me and make sure I was still okay. I thought he would check up on me. I thought he wouldn't let me get away with this much... privacy. And anger. I ripped at all kinds of plants. I wanted into my house and wrote a journal page full of "why," over and over. I called him an asshole.

It never occurred to me that we'd break up. Not even then. I impress myself."


Several things, because I'm defensive, because I feel like if I don't say them people will question me and I'll question myself:
1) Unless you're doing some scene and have already negotiated something to mean "stop," "I feel worthless" should mean stop.
2) "I do need you here. You're necessary." so you don't have to clean up your come, asshole! That is not what "necessary" looks like. Maybe you "needed" me there, but I neither needed nor wanted to be there, and that matters.
3) This is the same night he told me that if we broke up I would kill myself. Worked out a pretty good deal for yourself, eh fucker?
4) This is one example of how violence within a relationship can work. Of course he asks how I am afterward, he's already gotten what he needed, and after that comes the parts where we're supposed to care about each other.
5) So much of the trauma here comes from the struggle between knowing that I'm a human with a complex inner life and all that while being called upon only as object. I know the nonconsensual objectification thing is one of the first things feminism figured out, so understanding that is often taken as a given, but fuck, that shit is real.