Living in the Light

Names changed, identifying details obscured. This is a place for exploring my story. Part of me hopes that one day it will be taken up and challenged, that it will serve as a ground for understanding and healing and reconciliation. That's not likely, but this is how I get better.

[still-needs-work]

brohohohohohohoh

original post

[still-needs-work]

True Colors

Just got tagged in a post by Nick apropos of absolutely nothing. Turned what had been a perfectly pleasant lazy sunday into an exercise in controlling panic. Managed to recognize the immediacy I felt around wanting to respond was a fantastic reason to do precisely the opposite, but I don’t really want to be skill building every day.

His initial post, regardless of how nasty and bullying was a response to me sending him a message. This is just harassment and baiting for sport. It’s dehumanizing, it’s cruel, and it’s designed to cause injury. 

That is violence.

[still-needs-work]

Creative Interventions Toolkit

[still-needs-work]

Well that was a fuck-up

Nick was someone who stood out in my mind because of how big his presence was when she went on the attack. 

I remembered that he mocked me.

I remembered that he used the abuse he suffered as a weapon to try and silence the women who were coming to my defense, and I remember how furious I was that he was silencing me.

From where I’m sitting right now, it looks like he was running to the defense of people he wanted to protect without stopping to think and consider if that was actually something that was going to help them.

In his desire to protect and defend, he ended up enabling and doing more damage.

The worst part is that I think the lions share of my anger was because he was following the same pattern of urgency and fear that’s been driving me for so fucking long.

I was angry at him because I saw him sliding into the place to keep enabling. To keep delaying and excusing and making himself complicit in even more pain and hurt and damage.

I was angry at him because I knew that, but I wasn’t able to see it. I think I may have in an abstract sense, but it didn’t really hit home. 

I was angry at him because I didn’t know how to square my anger at the woman who lengthily compared me to Jerry Sandusky. In order to tear down other women who had seen what was happening a little closer up and had treated me as a human being.

I was angry because he shared my inability to see, and in doing that I didn’t see him. I came out of the blue with a fairly nasty couple of messages demanding apologies. 

I was angry because I had an absurd notion in my head that since he had suffered abuse (I assumed also as a child) that he should somehow know that I had as well. I felt an intense sense of betrayal from someone who, in all reality, I barely knew. 

I let my anger, and blindness overwhelm me. I gave into that darkness and I attacked him.Then he attacked me. 

Because I used violence against him.*

A friend of mine read this and pointed out that my communication with him wasn’t violent. I had lots of anger I carried with me but the argument that violent communication is something which needs to be very strictly and clearly delineated is a solid one. I was angry, I was not violent.

Because I let my anger and hurt guide me.

I fucked up. 

I was wrong.

In all of my anger and hurt and self righteous armor I didn’t give him the basic courtesy of being treated like a human. I contributed to one more round of the cycle. 

I don’t know his experience, but I would have felt very much back in the position of the abused if someone came at me that way. That’s exactly how I felt when I read his public vitriol and derision that was aimed my way. 

I did him harm, and that’s mine to own. I get to figure out how to make sure I get to a place where I don’t make that mistake again. 

I really hope he has the opportunity to do the same. I like to think it’d be really helpful on both sides to have that conversation, but that’s out of my hands.

I want to speak and be heard. To a point of desperation which, when I allow it to force my hand, usually ends up in more harm for myself and anyone in the vicinity. 

This is the part where I hold the line. I like to think that i can keep the sense of empathy and keep myself safe without falling back in. 

Gonna do my damndest.

[still-needs-work]

fuckingha

Had a moment tonight after where I started feeling my stomach turn in and my shoulders bend, and I said to myself that I wanted to die. It’s been the mantra when this feels hits since I got out. 

Only said it once though.

Thought about it, and realized that I didn’t. First fucking time in I don’t even know how long, but I don’t wanna die anymore. 

Started doing the dishes that’ve been sitting in the sink for prolly a month, and I said that it was going to be okay. 

It’s actually going to be okay.

[still-needs-work]

Your abusive partner doesn't have a problem with their anger; they have a problem with your anger.

[still-needs-work]

Creative Interventions Toolkit Section 2 ( http://www.creative-interventions.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Section-2_FINAL.pdf)

[still-needs-work]

This gives me some peace

Creative Interventions Toolkit

Found this noodling around a repo of one of the organizations starting to try and build out communnity accountability structure.

This made me..dunno..relieved to read. It shares ownership among those in the community as well as those being harmed and doing harm.

It focuses on growth and reparation, it doesn't require reconciliation and accounts for everyones humanity.

More importantly, it expects growth and movement from all. This is a way forward of strength and growth. I want this.

Some Basics Everyone Should Know

Accountability is the ability to recognize, end and take responsibility for violence. We usually think of the person doing harm as the one to be accountable for violence. Community accountability also means that communities are accountable for sometimes ignoring, minimizing or even encouraging violence. Communities must also recognize, end and take responsibility for violence – by becoming more knowledgeable, skillful and willing to take action to intervene in violence and to support social norms and conditions that prevent violence from happening in the first place

Centers on Those Most Affected by Violence to Create Change. The intervention centers those most affected by violence. It provides ways for those affected by violence and causing violence to develop new skills, insights and ways to put together a solution to violence – or to form a system that not only addresses violence but reduces the chances that violence will continue.

• Supports the sometimes complex pathway to change and transformation. Changing violence, repairing from violence, and creating new ways of being free from violence can take time.

• For the survivor/victim, the intervention relies upon consideration of the best ways to support survivors or victims of harm by sharing the responsibility for addressing, reducing, ending, or preventing violence (breaking isolation and taking accountability), without blaming the survivor/victim for their choices (without victim blaming), and by offering support towards what they define as their own needs and wants (supporting self-determination).

• For the person doing harm, the intervention relies upon consideration of the best ways to support people doing harm to recognize, end and be responsible for their violence (what we also call accountability), without giving them excuses (without colluding), and without denying their humanity (without demonizing).

[still-needs-work]

Well that sucked

So Nora decided to up the ante. Turns out writing things, anonymizing details, and putting them somewhere with no link to you or the situation is totally unacceptable and deserves retribution.

It’s correlation, not causation, but I just took a look at the traffic patterns to the site and noticed a curious timeline

* I’m Comic Sans, Asshole

I totally believe that she believes the story she’s telling. I’m still coming out from under the alternate reality she’d twisted my head into. Really glad I’ve got things like data, and people I still managed to connect with despite the splitting. 

I wanted to say this.

Out of the 10 significant relationships in my life, only 2 of them didn’t involve either physical abuse or sexual coercion. 

With me as the recipient. 

[still-needs-work]

Actively being punished for putting my story to paper. Redacting

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