A rage scream in text form.

[unhingedwordvomit]

On unworthiness

I feel like I'm suffocating. I can't talk so I must write. Ruth Bader Ginsburg was so much more than a meme. Her notoriety over the past decade cracked open a door in my worldview that I luckily pursued until the door was in shambles. In my extensive education (21 years of it), I received a negligible amount of information about the history of women in this country and on this planet. Through my own pursuit of knowledge outside of educational institutions have I come to understand that RBG quite literally worked herself to death for us. She spent decades fighting the most intransigent forms of patriarchy and machismo- relentlessly. She endured so much hostility, ridicule, and abuse so that women in this country could have opportunities we take for granted. I wouldn't have a career in STEM had RBG given in or become complacent. I'm not even sure I would have a meaningful career at all without her. Would I have become anything other than a wife, mother, and perhaps teacher or nurse, underpaid and undervalued as a caretaker of men and their shirked responsibilities? Do people truly understand what this woman did for us?

And not just women. RBG beat men at their own game. She forced them to confront their toxic masculinity because it hurts them just as much as it hurts women and children. In both her personal and professional lives, she demonstrated that men are equally culpable as caretakers and women are equally capable as breadwinners and leaders. Most importantly, she showed that forcing women into dependency upon men fucks us all.

I don't think people of our generation and onwards fully grasp what life was like before RBG. Women didn't work outside the home unless it was as a caretaker (nurse/teacher). Women didn't go to law school, or med school, or any other graduate school. And when women like her managed to do the forbidden, they couldn't get jobs. And when she managed to get a job (thanks to a man advocating for her), she couldn't be a leader in her field. And when she managed to become a leader, the glass ceiling STILL continued to suppress her potential.

RBG made it to the top, despite all odds, because she had a supportive partner. He valued her as a human, not as a vessel for his seed. He cooked. He reared children. He waged a campaign to get his wife onto the SCOTUS bench. Honestly, if there weren't a well-documented record of his behavior, I would have a hard time believing men like him existed.

Which brings me to my final thought. RBG is also more than an icon. She was a beautiful human being. She shouldered an incredible burden in life caring for a husband with cancer, a toddler, and attending law school for both of them. I cannot think of a person who more embodied empathy, preserverence, and deep, unwavering love than RBG. In a world full of selfish cowards, she was solid and noble. We did not deserve her and we continue to lower expectations of decency and community to the point that they're nearly nonexistent. On her deathbed, she continued to fret over us. We are a disgrace.

Rest in power.

[unhingedwordvomit]

On the first of many #metoo moments

For the better part of my life, I have been in love with someone who was manipulative and abusive. We started dating when I was 15 and he was 18, after months of me begging and pleading with my parents to let me date him (spoiler alert, they were right, and I shouldn’t have been allowed within 100 feet of this fuck). He was controlling and unhinged from pretty much the get go. He would lose his mind if I wore thongs, tight skirts, or pants with no back pockets (leggings weren’t quite a thing yet). He was extremely insecure and any guy friends I had were basically enemies of the state. If I ever dared to speak to another person with a penis, I was basically cheating on him and he would call me a fat whore and dump me. A few hours later, he would call me begging for forgiveness. I would conservatively estimate this process went on every couple of weeks. And because I was very young and very naïve, I tolerated all of it.

He told me he loved me after we had been dating for two months. I was definitely in love with him, but since it was my first foray into the love business, I didn’t say it until a few months later. The lows were frequent and very low, but the highs were also very high. One day I was a fat (115lb) whore (virgin). The next I was the love of his life. He went out of his way to make up for his shitty behavior by taking me to nice dinners and making me baked goods. I thought this was how love worked.

As I mentioned, I was 15 when we started dating. The pressure to have sex with him crept up, but I wasn’t ready. I told him this. We did everything but have sex for the first year we dated. I did whatever else he wanted, because I needed to distract him from actual, vaginal sex. I knew I was too young for sex. I knew it wasn’t the right time. I found every excuse in the book to not let this man take my virginity. But after a year, the tensions surrounding not having sex were at an all-time high. He was horny and pissed, and I was desperately grasping at reasons to not have sex. The spring after I turned 16, I went on a band trip to NYC. This was another typical ordeal with him, since I would be far away and hanging out with dudes, which was, of course, unacceptable. The whole trip was me trying to manage his emotions and keep the breakup cycle at bay. I texted him constantly and bought him a present. But it wasn’t enough, and during the long drive back home, he dumped me again. He said I didn’t really love him if I wouldn’t have sex with him (* I will return to this later). I was crushed. I was broken. I loved him so much. I didn’t want him to leave me. I didn’t want to have sex.

The day after I got back, I went over to his parents’ house (he still lived with them while in college) and we had sex. At the time, I thought it was sweet and romantic. He was very gentle and loving. In hindsight, I want to vomit. It took me well over 10 years to realize that coercion is rape. For good measure, I’ll insert the legal definition of rape in TN here. Because, as a woman, I have to constantly prove that what I’m saying is true. This is from www.rainn.org.

Let’s return to the asterisk. I endured a year of manipulation and coercion. He would say anything and everything to degrade me, to belittle me, and to make me feel guilty. He would say anything to make me feel obligated to give him sex. I resisted and resisted until he had finally worn me down. This is rape culture. When are men going to realize that no means no, not convince me? Consent is never ambiguous. Pressure is not consent. Discomfort is not consent. Why do men want to have sex with women they have to beg, belittle, and dehumanize?

He (like most men) will never admit that what happened was not consensual. Even though the legal definition of rape includes coercion, he will find a way to reconcile it in his brain to not rape. I’ve actually never confronted him about this. And since I don’t plan on talking to him ever again, I don’t think I will.

One time we broke up for a 3-4 month stint, which was our longest at that point. I started dating someone else. A very kind man. Someone who treated me like a human being. My ex had taken to stalking and harassing me and my new man, probably because he couldn’t handle the fact that he dumped me and I might’ve dated someone else. He would follow me home from work back to my dorm. He hacked into my voicemail and email and changed all my passwords. He threatened to post nude pictures and videos of me online weekly (turns out he couldn’t actually do this because I was a minor in the photos). He incessantly called me and my new man from a restricted number. All hours of the night. He and a cunt (who once pretended to be my friend) drew penises and wrote derogatory things on my car, then covered the entire thing in saran wrap. One of my most vivid memories is driving it to a car wash while sobbing. Eventually I went to the university and had some sort of no-contact order put on him. This finally stopped him. Unfortunately, I was still in love with him. Ugh. UGH. I’m still so disgusted with myself. I dumped my new great boyfriend and went back to him a couple of months after the no contact order. I don’t know if I will ever live this shame down.

We continued our toxic relationship until I was 18. We broke up 5 months after my brother died. Actually, we had just gotten back together right before my brother died. We had been fighting the night he died. If I had taken another route home from his apartment to my house, I would’ve passed the wreck. But for all the abuse I endured during our relationship, he saved me after my brother died. I couldn't have gotten through it without him.

The night my brother died, he was working late at Walgreens, because of extended holiday hours. I had just gotten home and had resumed fighting with my boyfriend via AIM. It was around 1 am. The phone rang. WTF? My mom answered (I found out later they hung up because she thought it was a prank call). The phone rang again. Then my mom was running down the hall shouting my brother’s name. I will never forget the panic and terror in her voice. My parents said the cops had called and they were going to UT Medical Center. I didn’t go because I was pissed. So. Pissed. He had finally got his act together! Because my mom said cops, I thought he had gotten back into trouble. I was sure he and my parents were about to be embroiled in whatever legal ramifications his choices had brought on. So I declined to go. I mentioned this to my boyfriend, as our text fight had been interrupted. Later, a cop showed up at my house. He asked if my parents had been notified of what happened. I said yes. He said that he was still breathing on his own when they left the scene. I was very confused and asked him what happened. He said he couldn't tell me (what??? You can tell me he was breathing, but not anything else???). Then he left and I was mostly very confused, but my brain still hadn’t put it together that something really bad had happened. I told my boyfriend about the cop. A few minutes later, he called and said he was coming to get me to take me to the hospital. I found out later that my mom had called him and told him to bring me after they found out that shit was bad. Even as we were driving to the hospital, I was clueless. I was mostly pondering, “What could he have done this time?” My boyfriend dropped me at the entrance and I went in by myself, because he wasn’t a dumbass and had put together that shit was bad. After I got there, the doctor told us he was going to die, and I had a hysterical breakdown. My boyfriend came into the waiting room and from there, basically carried me emotionally and physically through life for the next few months. I couldn’t function, and he functioned for me. Despite our terrible and toxic relationship, I will always be grateful for this. He transformed into a completely different person for a few months. He stopped being abusive. He was loving and supportive. He was my lifeline. I clung to this version of him for many years after. In all honesty, I still cling to it a bit. When something traumatic happens, it binds you to the people who are there living it with you. I think this is one of the main drivers of why I would go back to him for years after we broke up. It’s strange how one person can break you and save you.

I vividly remember the day we broke up for good. It was a day around his birthday. Since I was 18 and couldn’t go to bars, I was not invited to the birthday celebration (no possibility of having, you know, a party). Instead, I planned on cooking him a romantic dinner. I got up early that morning to straighten my hair the way he liked it. I had bought a new dress I knew he would like. I went grocery shopping and showed up at his apartment just as he was rolling out of bed. I made him muffins for breakfast. He opened my gift of some very nice wine glasses, a great gift for an alcoholic (did I mention he’s an alcoholic?). He left to go run errands, and I spent the next few hours making ribs. At some point during the day, a former coworker and friend (male) texted me to see how I was doing. My shitty boyfriend demanded to know who I was texting and, as usual, had a jealousy tantrum. He was in an immediate and incurable sour mood. We ate dinner in silence. I cut him a piece of cake in silence. I cleaned up the mess in silence. After cake I stuck around because I was sure he would want a birthday blowjob. My devotion to this fuck was BOUNDLESS. Instead, he said to me, “You can go now.” I walked out of that apartment knowing that this was THE END. I later broke up with him, a departure from his usual routine of breaking up with me. He begged me not to. And I somehow summoned up the fortitude to not go back.

For a while, anyway. We’ve actually never gotten back together since. We’ve had “things” every few years. I am filled with shame writing this, but I tried to get back with him several times over the past 10 years. He (not shockingly) would never commit to me in any tangible way, but definitely had no problem fucking me. After getting raped by another guy I had dated on and off, I reached out to him. And he was incredibly supportive. He was actually the first person I kissed after months of crippling PTSD. I actually cried while kissing him, and he was extremely kind about it. I’ll never figure him out.

Almost a year ago I was getting ready to break free from the shitty life I was living in Texas. We had rekindled our “thing” for a couple of months. In fact, he was going to help me move across the country. Then he blows me off, four days before the move. I didn’t have time to find anyone else to help me. I was DEVASTATED, but I was also too overwhelmed with panic and stress to really think about him and my devastation. Once I arrived in NC, I began to process the ordeal and realized I didn’t love him anymore. I don’t know why I needed to endure so much abuse, pain, and disappointment to get here. I’m afraid as time goes on, the negative memories will dull again and the feelings will creep back in. Yet another reason why I need to write this down. I wish I could get a lobotomy to selectively remove this part of my brain. Actually, I would like to forget him altogether. I wish I could never think about him again. I would gladly forget the only genuine love I’ve ever felt, because then I could permanently move on from this fucking ordeal. It is not better to have loved and lost when that person is abusive, selfish, generally shitty, and will never ever ever EVER reciprocate your feelings.

For many years of my life, I have hated him while simultaneously being in love with him. At this point, I don’t hate him anymore, for any of it. I’m still incredibly hurt by it all. I don’t believe in karma, but he’s already been dealt a lifetime of misery. He has certainly not been left unpunished. Revenge is never satisfying, anyway.

I’m sad to say that I’ve never loved anyone else, although I have wanted to. I’ve even told other people that I loved them, probably out of sheer desperation to love someone else. When I look at pictures of him now, it still feels like a punch in the gut. But I don’t feel any love anymore. At least not for now.

Me in 2008, hours before I would finally end an abusive relationship.

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On lost Christmas traditions and disillusionment

Almost every Christmas since my brother passed away, my aunt and I have coped with the family drama by getting stupid drunk while everyone else engages in drama. This is really what got me through the holidays in the past. My relationship with my parents was strained a year after he died, and it quickly derailed in the subsequent years. They got crazy religious, while I did not. More on that in another post.

My aunt and I had a close relationship for most of my life. She is only 12 years older than I am, and my mom often joked that she was her first child. She was there when I was born. Growing up, I spent every summer and winter holiday with her. She let me try beer when I was 13. Actually, she told me I could try her Miller Light while we were at a bowling alley. I said no instinctively, because I am a goody-goody. Then after a few minutes, I decided I wanted to try it. But I had already said no. So while she was bowling her turn, I took a secret swig. She knew exactly what I had done as soon as she caught sight of my sour face. She scolded me for not being discrete, but then laughed. I still think beer is nasty.

My aunt was very new-agey. The complete opposite of my mom. She had dreadlocks and barely wore makeup. She got me into incense and astrology (cringe). She took me shopping to buy my infamous space pants (one day I will find a picture!). She would drive us around the ECU campus in my grandmother’s luxury convertibles to look at cute boys. She was so cool. She was so fun. I idolized her.

She got pregnant with my cousin when I was 12. She lost the dreadlocks, but was still my cool aunt. I have always found babies to be annoying, but my little cousin grew on me. We still spent every summer and winter holiday with her. One time the cops showed up to our NYE “party” because my brother and uncle were shooting off illegal fireworks. Never a dull moment.

Things changed over the years. She got married and had another baby. I graduated high school. We were still very close.

Like my parents, my aunt found Jesus after my brother died. I tried to go on that journey with them, and couldn’t. Because I don’t believe in anything supernatural, and barring a traumatic brain injury, I never will. But I tried. Anyways, after I feel off the Jesus wagon, she still accepted me and we were still close. In fact, we were maybe even closer. She was the only person I could confide in about my strained and stressful relationship with my parents. She was the only person close enough to the situation to understand what I was going through. She saw how they changed for the worse. She let me vent and validated my feelings. She was a cornerstone of my sanity for years.

I can’t recall exactly when she started to change. But things came to a head right before my dissertation defense. I was under a considerable amount of stress (shocking!), and when she asked me about where to find a grocery store around campus, I told her to just Google it.

Later, in a group text, someone asked where I wanted to have a celebratory dinner. I said I didn’t care (again, I’m preparing for the biggest day of my life) and that someone else could pick. My aunt went off and was extremely verbally abusive. She said I was a bitch and ungrateful (my mom quickly offered to find a restaurant). I have scoured my computer and iPad for these messages, and for some reason it doesn’t include all of the messages. The abuse started right after I said, “Y’all can pick…” No idea why some of her messages disappeared. Even if I had selectively deleted some of her messages on my phone, they still would’ve shown up on my iPad. Where did they go?! I really wish I could find what she said verbatim. Oh well.

While I was at Kinkos at 9pm at night spending $200 getting my dissertation printed (not getting drunk with my friends), she sent me these messages. I asked her not to come if she was going to be like this. And she didn’t.

By the way, preparing for my defense is what I had to do that was keeping me “so fucking busy”. Clearly I’m the one lacking common “curtesy” here. Ok, done being petty.

After this incident, we didn’t talk for around 8 months. I was so profoundly hurt. She couldn’t bother to show up for me on the most important day of my life? I went out of my way to not think about it, because I would start crying almost instantaneously if I did. I had to block her number, because she couldn’t stop sending me vitriolic messages. At some point, I unblocked her, and occasionally she would send me a napology (non-apology) that would essentially say, “I'm sorry, but you made me act that way.” I couldn't forgive her, because 1) napologies don’t mean anything and 2) I was wounded in an irreparable way.

Then on December 19th of last year, I was lonely and overwhelmed with work and family stress. I reached out to her and we reconnected. My mental state was pretty bad at this point, which I think was why I could set aside the mortal wound. It was actually a relief to have someone I could talk to like we always did again. She helped me with my job search. I stayed with her when I came to Raleigh for job interviews. She helped find people to pack my stuff up in Texas. After I moved back to NC, I would hang with her family. Things were great. 

Then something happened and she behaved in a way that I find to be reprehensible and unforgivable. I’m not going to say what this thing was, because it’s not my place to out a victim. But the situation involved rape. I am so deeply affected by the entire spectrum of sexual assault (more on that in other posts). In fact, the most recent time I was raped, I reached out to her and she was extremely supportive. Which makes this whole thing even more baffling, appalling, and sad. 

At this point, the thought of being in the same room with her makes me physically ill. We haven’t talked in 8 months. I don’t see a path forward from this. The fact of the matter is she is abusive in all manners of the word, and I don’t have time for people like that in my life. I have personally experienced her abuse, as well as witnessed her abuse of others. My grandmother has basically said I should just get over it and love her as she is (more on my fucked-up grandmother in another post). She hasn’t reached out to me since this message, which I assume means she has as little desire to have a relationship with me as I do with her. 

I’m angry, but I’m also really sad. Sad that someone I adored for my whole life has become an intolerable person. Sad that I’ve lost a deep and profound relationship. Sad that we’ll never get drunk at Christmas again. 

[unhingedwordvomit]

On my dead brother, and other holiday exasperation

Today marks 10 years since Dustin died. I had a long shitty day at work and didn’t think about it much. But then I got home and got pensive. Memory is a strange, and usually unreliable thing. But the memory of the doctor telling us he wasn’t going to make it seems as vivid as the day it happened. I remember screaming at the doctor. I remember acting hysterical. I remember crying into my boyfriend. I remember my parents keeping it together. I remember the 500 questions they asked us (mostly my mom), so we could donate his organs. I remember when they took him off life support. I remember a nurse pumping his lungs for him. I remember the last time I saw him, when the doctors rolled him down the hall for surgery. I remember standing around the hall with my entire extended family, thinking what the fuck just happened.

I felt so close to everyone that day. And today I feel more distant from them than ever. After 10 years, I can’t stand my family. I don’t talk to my aunt, who used to be one of my best friends. I don’t talk to my emotionally abusive ex-boyfriend, who I was irrationally in love with for 12 fucking years. I have to shut my ears and mouth and attempt to reach a nonreactive, meditative state every time I’m around my parents.

I often wonder how Dustin would’ve turned out. Honestly, I think there’s a good chance he’d be pro-Trump white trash like the rest of my family. There’s a chance we’d have the same strained relationship I have with the rest of my family. There’s a chance we wouldn’t even talk. This is a shitty feeling. But death doesn’t make someone a saint. He did shitty things. He said shitty things. In fact, he often insulted people by calling them homophobic slurs. He often called me “thunder thighs”. He was also 16. I was certainly dumb and unwoke as fuck at 16. So any feeling I have about how he would’ve turned out is mere prognostication. Maybe he would’ve turned out better than the last generation. Maybe he wouldn’t have voted for Trump. Maybe he would’ve stood up against white supremacy. Maybe he would’ve marched with women. Maybe he would’ve found meaning in his life and the lives of others, instead of religious delusion, self-obsession, and capitalism at all cost. I’ll never know.

Before he died, we had a strained relationship. He had been getting into trouble for years. He did dumb shit that teenage boys do, like sneaking out, smoking weed, and destroying property. One time, my parents caught him doing some stupid shit (I don’t remember what at this point), and he started screaming about killing himself. My parents had to take him to a psychiatric facility against his will. He had been in trouble with the cops, and at one point, the neighborhood he and his friends had trashed was considering suing us. My mom had to quit her job to babysit him, and they also took him out of school and put him in a private (expensive) school for kids who got into trouble. This put a huge financial strain on the family, and I resented him for it. I resented him for the stress he put on my parents. I resented him for filling our house with tension. We barely spoke for over a year (at least). But after a few months at his new school, he was a different person. He went from failing classes to making A’s and B’s. He stopped getting in trouble. His demeanor was lighter. One day he repainted this wall in my room that had been damaged by leaking water, and my mom said, “You know he’s trying to make up with you.” A couple of weeks before he died, I had come home for winter break and noticed how different he was. A few days before he died, I was in the kitchen eating something, and he started talking to me about the work he was doing on his car. This was the first time we had spoken more than a few words to each other in who knows how long. Afterwards, I thought, “That was strange.” Strange in a good way, but I didn’t think too much of it. After he died, I thought about that moment every day. The last time I talked to him was when I woke him up the day he died to move his car. He drove a manual, which I couldn’t (and still can’t) drive. He was parked behind me, and I had to go to work. He jumped out of bed and moved his car without complaint. I never saw him alive again.

I hate the holidays. I hate being an only child. I hate being around my family. I hate pretending like I don’t hear the racist, homophobic, misogynistic, pseudoscientific shit they say. I hate calling them out on their racist, homophobic, misogynistic, pseudoscientific shit because nothing ever changes. I hate pretending that their Christian worldview isn’t insane, intellectually lazy, and an affront to science. I hate being related to people with whom I have nothing in common. I hate that my mom would rather buy me shit than donate her money to people who actually need it. I hate that people spend December buying cheap garbage they don’t need, most of which is made in China by slave labor. I hate consumerism. I hate the holidays.