Love. Hate. Nothing in between.

During my junior year in high school, there was no shortage of people who would join me in my endeavor to destroy myself or take advantage or it. This was the 'smoking lounge crowd', back in the days when you could go out between classes and smoke what were most often cigarettes in the courtyard and exterior stairwells of the building. It was the only crowd I fit in with at the time, simply because it was the only one that did not reject me. There were plenty of people here willing to skip school, get drunk, get high, trip with, or screw me. Looking back, I know there was a lot of pain here that was being numbed.

Ron was different than the rest, and I knew it even then. Around him I felt not just lack of rejection, but acceptance, appreciation, and respect. He treated everyone this way. He didn't judge or put down or have a mean word to say about others. He didn't want anything from me, and was the only person at the time that I think saw me solely as a person. A person worth talking to and laughing with. I felt safe around him, a sense of peace. He was just "that kind of person".

I hung out with him in the smoking lounge, shared a history class with him, and saw him at a few parties outside of school. I was attracted to him because of this, in a way I've never been attracted before. I was attracted to him as a person. It had not reached a physical level, because that's not how he was, and because I didn't know him that long. But to me he became a good friend, probably more than he probably ever knew.

In history class, Ron was the cut-up. He made everyone laugh with some sharp, relevant, but nonetheless class-interrupting quip. The teacher laughed heartily, too. It seemed like a goal, sometimes. It relaxed everyone, put us all on the same level, made things more interesting. Once she regained her composure, you could tell she resented it. He did not do it often, or with cruelty toward others. Just enough to make class interesting a few times a month. Otherwise, he was a low key, sort of just blending in, do no harm, just being himself kind of person.

Ron left late that school year. He got his GED so he could work full time because his family was struggling financially. I would still see him at friends houses from time to time. In May of that year, me and a few others, including Ron, were hanging out at a friend's house on a Friday morning during finals. I did not have a morning final, and went to my car to return to school for my afternoon history final.

My nemesis, a sociopath who played a huge role in ensuring that the entire school thought the worst of me and treated me as such, sought fit to show up earlier and remove the coil wire from my car without my knowledge. By the time we figured it out, I missed the final and was not allowed to make it up, causing me to fail the class and have to repeat it my senior year.

Ron died the next day after being in a car accident that Friday afternoon, hours after I saw him. He was a passenger in the back seat of a car traveling down a two lane road to go pick up his paycheck. An oncoming car crossed over into their lane and hit them, causing the car to roll into and for Ron to sustain massive internal injuries. No drugs, alcohol, or speeding were involved, and the driver of his car was not at fault.

I was numb. I felt a strong connection to Ron because he was the only person who made me feel worth as a human at a time when I felt nor received feelings of worth. It was like a small beam of hope that I was only beginning to see. I was not in love with him, but I think he was the first person I loved for who they were and how they treated others. He was such a rarity at that time in my life. I felt a great loss inside, and the loss of a great person. But I couldn't go to his funeral. I didn't know anyone else who would be there, I'd be alone, and I was scared of somehow being judged or rejected because that was what I was used to. My connection to him was personal. It was like that with a lot of people. In a world where friendships exist in groups with strict boundaries, he appreciated people on an individual level no matter what group label you had. And no one who knew him disliked him.

In school on Monday, the last day of school, I knew that this news would not be the kind of thing that they'd announce over the loudspeaker with 60 seconds for a moment of silence. Ron was not a popular person, just a person. He left school a few months earlier. And he was part of the "smoking lounge" crowd. I turned out to be right.

In between classes, I walked over to the office area, where I saw our counselor and one of the teachers I knew he had outside the teacher's lounge. I asked them if they had heard about Ron, and they said they did not. I told them what happened, and they reacted as one would expect. With sadness, seriousness, concern, and silence as the news was absorbed.

During this time, our history teacher walked up to listen in. When I was done speaking, she said, "he deserved it" and walked away.

That is not a misquote. That is exactly what she said, as straightforward and emotionless a statement as could be. Just three words made me feel such pure hate for a so-called human being more than any other person I have ever met before or since. Three damn words.

Ron was the best person I ever knew at the time, and perhaps one of just a half a dozen such people I have known like that in my life. He didn't have a mean damn bone in his body. Then this bitch, yes bitch, has the audacity to say to a sixteen year old student that he deserved it. That he deserved to die.

I was too shocked to do anything. I suspect the others were also, as I didn't hear them say anything, but I wasn't paying attention to them. I was frozen.

Sometimes I wish my shock wore off just enough so that I could have literally tackled that sack of shit right then and there and beat the living crap out of her until 10 people had to pull me off. And I would have had every damn right to. And get her ass fired, and her vile inhumanity exposed for all to see and judge with venom.

But I just stood there in stunned silence and watched her walk away. Later that she seemed to take great pleasure in telling me that she would not allow me to make up the exam, I got an F, and that I would have to repeat history next year.

Strength comes from refusing to be shamed

In the interest of disclosure and empowerment,
of stubbornness and sheer attitude,
I hereby submit my experience with sexual assault.

I am not objective in this area, I take it personally. I have every right to. I am tired of silence and shame.

This is a work-in-progress.

I find myself starting with a glossed-over framework, with more details in areas that I've shared in safety a few times before, and completely skipping over areas that I still have a hard time facing up to.

Memories are not neatly, chronologically stored for easy access. They cross-reference based on sensation, emotion, place. These stories we tell are not of isolated incidents, they are viral in how they impact our lives. Realizations seem to happen randomly, there is no order to it.

That makes it hard to tackle. I used to try to figure it out so I could write it, all of it. Now I know I need to write it so I can figure it out.

I will update and edit this over time. Updates will not be added chronologically. They will be inserted so that the story reads chronologically. At the present time, I will indicate that an entry has been updated with a date at the end. Full additions will be separate posts, and linked from this entry, which appears on the front page as a permanent link.

This may be triggering.

There is some detail in the areas of rape, molestation, and drugs, along with other destructive coping behaviors. No story exists separate from the person, or the rest of their life. I write this not just to reject the shame, but to allow others to feel less isolated in their experiences. If you think it might be too upsetting, please take whatever precautions necessary that will keep you safe.

---

Part 1: Petrification last updated 3/12/06
Part 2: Dehumanization last updated 3/26/06
(previously part of this original post, it has been moved to a separate entry)
Part 3: Humiliation last updated 3/26/06
Part 4: Visualization last updated 4/09/06

A note to recent visitors 3/29/06

updated 3/29/06

Legacy of abuse

"Why is grandma upset?"

I told my daughter that my mother-in-law has been worried about a lot of things lately, and that sometimes it's just too many things at once, and makes for a pretty cruddy time emotionally.

She's a bit too old for that answer, and pressed for details. The truth, though, is rough. How to tell it without the reality being too overwhelming?

My mother-in-law told me this past weekend that I am more a daughter to her than any of hers ever were. It is not, for her, some sort of idle gooey praise. It is a strong statement, one that she felt necessary to follow up with the caveat that no one else in the family can know she feels that way, because it will cause a scene.

It was bittersweet. Touching but ultimately horrifying. At 70, she's been walking on the same eggshells almost all of her life.

"Well, grandma has been worried about grandpa's health, for one. She is also sad about our plans to move and all the pressures of retirement decisions and people pulling her this way and that. You know how things can build up when you are under stress like that? It doesn't take much to upset a person under those conditions."

My daughter understood, then asked if was her aunt that upset grandma.

Health? My father-in-law, stepfather to my spouse and his siblings, got the pathology report back today that confirms cancer.

Retirement? They are 70, and both still work because they can't afford retirement. Having two middle-aged kids who never grew up, and take advantage of her all the time doesn't help.

Moving? We need to do it for our son. We have recently learned the prognosis for his disability, and it means making adjustments. We can improve his ability to be independent by moving to a more accessibility-friendly area, but cannot afford areas like that anywhere around here. We have been trying to encourage my in-laws to follow, or at least move somewhere, almost anywhere, and retire. They own their home, and can buy a similar one in better shape and in a better area for half of what they'd get for this one. This has been our mantra for years. You can afford to stop working, but you'd have to leave the area.

Our pleas are different from some of the other siblings. One wanted them to sell and use all the money for a down payment on a house for him, where they could then live in an attached apartment of sorts. They saw it as the pitch for his upward mobility at their expense that it was. Now he wants them to sell and move to a more expensive area where he wants to get a new job, because then he'd have a free place to stay during the transition. Another, the aunt, wonders why her mom is talking of moving at all, and peppers me with questions on why we would possibly want to move. I can tell she is trying to talk us out of leaving, because she fears that her favorite person to abuse might actually follow and therefore won't be nearby any more for her to shit on. A third would just have to find someone else to live off of, that is if he doesn't get jail time at his court hearing tomorrow.

Still, our talk is just as much pressure as anyone else's.

My daughter was right on the money when she guessed that her aunt did something to upset her grandmother. It was classic verbal abuse.

"As a matter of fact, yes, it was your aunt that upset grandma." My daughter was mad. This aunt extends her bahavior beyond her immediate family more than anyone. While the incidents have been tamer, they still cross lines and are blantantly direspectful.

I never wanted my feelings about others to influence my kids relationships with them. If their relationships were good, I didn't see reason to possibly influence that by sharing others bad relationships with them. I wanted them to form the relationships freely. But this aunt crossed some lines with her, not abuse, but control-issue behavior. So I've shared with my daughter, if only to assure her that it's not about her, it's about the other person. Not a tell-all, but enough so that she knows she's not alone.

But now this wasn't about her relationship with her, or mine, but her grandmother's. I said it. "You're aunt is abusive."

"What does abusive mean?" she asked.

Honestly? It means that she has physically threatened the 5'1" 70 year-old, and verbally abuses her all the time, mostly without other witnesses. She steals from her and berates her. Her and her brother, the worst of the kids, are very much like their father, continuing the abuse that she endured with him for several years.

Their father? Alcoholic. Verbal, emotional, and physical abuser. Womanizer. Bullshit artist. Rapist.

And even before that, their grandmother grew up in a home where her own siblings were abusive to their father, where she was not believed and everything always centered around how it made her mother emotionally distraught.

A viral cycle. It's so complicated.

I sugar-coated as much as possible. The truth is important, but so is context, and ability to understand. Most of my response was explaining that part of it. Then I told her that her aunt yelled at grandma, and that it's a pattern that has gone on for a while. That it did not even start with her aunt. That sometimes, it seems, kids turn out very much like, or very much unlike, their parents. Her aunt and uncle turned out a lot like their own father. Her dad (the oldest of six), is the opposite, and can actually be almost too sensitive to anything that is like his father in any way.

I want my kids to have access to knowledge and information, so that they can make the best decisions for themselves. How much easier it would be if I could tell them about things without it being tied to people they love.

With thanks to biting beaver, whose post last week came at the right time for me. It gave me a bit more resolve in dealing with things this weekend, and the encouragement to even begin to write about this now.

The sky is falling!

Apparently we are having some big scary snowstorm. Um, okay.

I believe, and this is not backed by a shred of evidence at all, that lawsuit fears have made us so safety conscious that no one knows how to drive when the tiniest blip of precipitation falls from the sky. This, of course, makes things more dangerous.

When I was a kid, I walked to the school bus stop in a foot of snow. My kids won't walk to it again until it's bone dry. I rode along as my parents and the rest of the planet navigated snow-covered roads to go about our business. My kids see that the streets are practically abandoned when we drive on wet streets after a quater inch of snow has fallen on what would be a busy Saturday evening, with businesses practically devoid of customers. I was raised to not fear the great white plague of the pavement, and confindently battled the slush and ice and little white things falling from above. My kids will be stranded and not know what the heck to do when an inch of snow triggers some Weather Security elevated alert level.

Whenever the wheather panic button is pushed, it reminds me of the Christmas Eve blizzard of 1983.

We had been skiing in Colorado, and had plans to reach my grandparents house in northeastern South Dakota by Christmas eve. We didn't get far when it was apparent that the weather was going to be a bit nasty, but dad wasn't going to stop and stay in some hotel in Rapid City on Christmas Eve. I don't know if he didn't think it was that bad, or it was the South Dakota boy in him, or if he was just being a stubborn fart. We pushed eastward.

It's a good thing we had been skiing, because the temperature was at least 30 below, with a wind chill of 70 below. We were decked out in full skiing regalia, layers upon layers, with blankets to boot. We still froze our asses off. Dad put a piece of cardboard over the radiator grill to keep the frigid air from locking up the engine. They closed the interstate, and we were in the whiteout on the interstate in South Dakota, with not a Stuckey's for miles around.

We edged forward at no more than 10 mph. I could only see the truck in front of us when it was within a few feet of our van. How the heck we were supposed to find an exit, I had no idea, yet somehow we did. Relief came in the form of a small motel that still had empty rooms that had been locked up for the winter. That means there was no heat or water. But we had beds, and that must have been better than the school auditorium we heard people were sleeping in nearby. Dad took off on a secret mission and returned.

We slept in all our ski-clothes layers, and awoke Christmas morning to find that no one could get their vehicle started. Again, dad disappeared, and returned with our van. He had gone out the night before, knowing that he should be able to find a farmer with a heated garage somewhere. And that's what he did. Our van had more heat than we did that night.

We spent a good part of the morning jump-starting vehicles in the motel parking lot, and everyone went on their way. The skies were clear for the final leg of our trip.