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[listening-through-the-lens]

Mia Borders #miaborders #toupssouth #listeningthroughthelens (at Toups South)

[listening-through-the-lens]

Mia Borders #miaborders #toupssouth #listeningthroughthelens (at Toups South)

[miaborders]

“Shine a Light”

- The Rolling Stones (1972)

I’ve put off this essay for years, but I don’t see the point in continuing to do so.  I have three nieces now and with the current climate being what it is, the silence feels deafening.

I was sexually assaulted when I was eleven years old.  It was in a place I felt safe by a man I was told I could trust.  I can count on one hand the number of people who know this.  I kept silent for a number of reasons:

1.     I felt guilty.  Something deep inside told me that this was my fault.  We live in a culture of victim shaming/blaming and even at such a young age, those feelings were present in my mind.  I’d done something to invite such behavior.  I deserved it because I was a bad kid.

The first thing I did was pray.  I asked God to forgive me for what happened – for whatever I did to merit the violation.  The second thing I did was to bury it for over a decade.

2.     I wasn’t raped.  I felt for a long time that because I wasn’t raped and hadn’t been violated brutally, I should just keep my mouth shut.  So many others had it much worse and my small cry would do nothing but take away from their voices.

3.     My family.  I didn’t want anyone in my family to know because I was already the runt of the litter.  They would never see me in the same way.  I would never be strong in their eyes because this happened to me.  I would always be weak because I let it happen.

I didn’t want anyone – least of all my grandmother – to feel guilty.  No one let me down.  No one could have saved me and I didn’t want anyone to carry my shame.

There was also the fear that no one would believe me – or that some would believe me and it would create a chasm in my family.  I couldn’t bear that on top of everything else, so I remained silent.

4.     Pity.

 It wasn’t until he died that I finally told someone.  As it turns out, something similar happened to her, but she never told anyone either.  It hurt me to know that she had been hurt and was too afraid to speak.  Rather than take those emotions and turn them into something positive – use my voice for good – I shut down even more.  I put them into a tiny part of my mind and locked them away, drowning them in alcohol.

I drank to avoid overwhelming emotions.  At the time, I thought I was mostly just heartbroken and frustrated in my relationship, as well as stressed from work, school, family issues, etc.  Once I quit drinking, however, that tiny part of my brain opened up again and everything fell out.  After three years and nine months without a drink, I’ve come to a few realizations with regards my assault:

1.     I have nothing to be guilty for.  He was a pedophile who took advantage of his position, age, and physical strength to sexually assault an eleven-year-old girl.  He’s burning in Hell and I gladly dance on his grave.

2.     My voice matters.  I was sexually assaulted and I don’t want that for my nieces.  If it takes me saying something, then I’ll scream it.  I don’t want them to grow up in a society that doesn’t believe a woman who says she was sexually assaulted unless she has a list of witnesses, photographic evidence, a positive rape kit, and a signed confession from her attacker.  I want them to grow up in a culture that protects its women and defends them by believing them first and foremost, and then locks up offenders for more than a few months.

3.     I love my family more than anything in this world.  I want to be the best person I can be for them.  I want them to be proud of me and I want them to know that I will do anything for them.

4.     I am not a victim anymore.  I was for a very long time, and it took a lot of work to discover where and why I was still hurting, but I’m not hurting anymore.  These past few years have been the most trying of my life, but I’m emerging stronger and better than I was before.  I am a survivor.  I have been hurt, I have lost loved ones, I’ve run myself into the ground, but I’m alive.  In all honesty, that’s more than I thought I would be at this point.  I’ve seen darkness.  I’ve lived in it.  I’ve loved it for the isolation it provides, but I don’t want to be isolated anymore.  There is so much light in my life now and I want to be a part of it.

So, that’s what I’m going to do.

[thesparkseeker-blog]

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THE EVOLUTION OF A SONG

Part 3 - The studio cut

For my latest album, I was fortunate enough to have Anders Osborne produce. He loved the demos I made, but really brought them to life in the studio along with my incredible band (Rob Lee - drums, Jesse Morrow - bass, Takeshi Shimmura - guitar). Our engineer, Warren Riker, is even more amazing than his résumé says. Google him. Amazeballs...

Recorded at Dockside Studio in Maurice, LA.

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THE EVOLUTION OF A SONG

Part 2 - The demo

With this particular song, I finished an instrumental demo before I had any lyrics in mind. As I listened to it over and over again, the lyrics came to me. I was annoyed with someone in my life, so I used that relationship, heightened the drama, and wrote the lyrics for "Forget My Name."

The instrumentation is all performed by me, with the help of some fairly decent studio magic, if I do say so myself.