it’s past my bed time but i’ve had the urge to write— vent about this all day.
i feel emotional, for some reason. since being with ethan (his house,,) and now having left— i have the strong urge to cry. i cried a little, unknowingly, while with him. he noticed before i did. i can’t figure out why it could have been though. at the moment, i thought maybe it was the stress of everything, or maybe landing a job i didn’t actually want.
even now i’m drawing a blank.
recently read a freshly published article (to my surprise, it didn’t have as many likes as i had initially thought) about james baldwin and his experience being groomed and grooming other young men. i had never heard of this side of him before, so i read it. i wonder what in the substack algorithm marked this as “they would read this.” i did, but the timing feels peculiar. it’s as if it knew this, being groomed, was on my mind.
i was working when i first felt compelled to write something, anything. the words seemed to flow and buzz around my head. how i thought i was safe until i wasn’t. that i didn’t feel desirable as a person until i was. even now, im realizing i was quite young with my first grooming experience. it was online, though. so- that never really counted (it does. it did.)
i remember the confusion, the betrayal i felt. the lies i’d tell myself to “keep the peace” as my mom would eventually say. never being able to express my anger, and if i did, i was punished. in a twisted way, it was validating. if i was desirable, that meant i was lovable— i typed quickly in my notes to later vent about my experience (now! :D)
the eventual shattering of my being by an ex didn’t help with the processing of this trauma. i’ve come a long way now, but i haven’t been able to forgive myself, even with recognizing i did all i could with what i had. the anxiety of breaking a marriage (happened anyway), losing someone i had looked up to (by design, it seemed), the general fear i had of an older, stronger man who 5 years ago was a stranger to me.
i don’t know if i’ll ever get over my fear of men. it took me until i visited my aunt and cousins and saw my little baby cousin bulked up for football. my baby cousin who used to be lanky and mischievous, now a football player and performatively aloof. i was anxious when he stood up to get some tea, a normal action. that’s when i knew this shit was bad.
this fear has led me to wrongly project ideas onto seemingly well meaning men, to fear even family i’ve known since i was little. how much is nature, and how much is nurture? 48 hours case files showing girls who had been brutally murdered. by the end my mom would ask little me “do you think you could recognize someone harming you? can you avoid this?”
confident, i’d reply “yes, of course” it’s so obvious. if only. if only it were always that blatant, so visible.
i hadn’t eaten when i went to ethan’s. he’s sick, so he didn’t want to do much. so we cuddled, chilled. my stomach wouldn’t stfu, growling every five minutes. i was hungry, but decided against getting food with him like i normally did, to go get shittier fast food (sheetz). there was a moment where we held each other close, him warning me “if you don’t get food on the way home, i’ll kill you” this is the first time he’s every jokingly threatened me like this.
“that’s fine.” i reassure, jokingly but secretly seriously. perhaps i’m okay if it was him who took my life, the one thing im afraid a man would do to me. what i’ve been groomed to remain vigilant of since the day i grew consciousness. images flashed briefly of how he would do it; him strangling me like he had playfully before.
