If everyone keeps telling me I’m crazy… I’ll just keep not being crazy.

Women have a wonderful power in this world.  We have the power to nurture life inside our bodies and bring it out into the world, we have the power to rule nations, the power to keep order in our homes or in others, sweeping floors or ruling them, CEO’s, nurses, teachers, boxers, Olympians, religious leaders (come on Catholic church, I know you can do it!) all the while nurturing our friends, family, co-workers and complete strangers.  This power is awe-inspiring, and scary!

Think about it…  what if women realized that true power that is held within ourselves.  We could realize that we are being taught to hate the way we look, when in all reality, being a waif sustaining herself on an almond and a dry lettuce leaf daily, that spends hours in makeup and hair then turned into a “beauty” by a random man’s standards by a computer in a skyscraper is not true beauty.  There is true beauty in all of us.  Billion dollar companies deeply depending on that hate would come crashing down and the love of true beauty would spread.  CEO’s and hairdressers and nurses would DEMAND the equal payment for an equally well done job.  The fact that this is not already a world-wide practice is the definition of insanity to me but hey, maybe I’m on my period so WATCH OUT!  If women stood together and said ‘This is enough!  We are not a subservient race!  We are equal and will be treated as such.’  Just imagine.  A Cleopatra-esque era could come about!  Or maybe, just a better world, full of less injustice.

But I digress.  The power of being a woman is scary and makes men (some men, sorry) scared.  Therefore, when an intelligent woman disputes that man’s opinion, she’s thought of as crazy.  An example.  This not crazy Kate had worked and worked and worked to have a lap band installed.  I was prepared.  I was ready.  I was going to be THIN!!!!  And my life was going to be completely different and better (oh the naivety!  I so miss thee).  I went under the knife and went forward with my new life firmly in place.  Then, one day I had this terrible pain in my abdomen.  Not only did I have this awful pain but my stomach was protruding like I was 4 months pregnant!  I am a nurse, therefore I rubbed some dirt on it and called the physician that installed the band.  The doctor went “Well, obviously you over ate”.  Well no, sir, I did not.  Could you please deflate the band and on my merry way I will go.  He shook his head at my lying face obviously hiding the food in my chipmunk cheeks, deflated the band and I went on my not so merry way with my mouth firmly shut.

Again, a few weeks later, worse pain and further abdomen bloating.  I called the doctor again whom advised me to go to the ER since the band was obviously not the problem.  Into the ER I went with my anxious mother (A single 30-year-old woman has to bring someone with her you know).  X-rays were taken, medicines were given, further x-rays were taken.  “Your stomach is growing!!”  Yes, I would think that would be why my stomach looks like I’m 6 months pregnant but WHY is the question I would like to know.  Heads shook, the secret stash of food this fat girl had to have stashed was searched for and into the hospital I went for test after test after test.  Then discharged with no answers and continued pain and pregnant belly (to be known as “alien baby”) and told to take a daily walk (hey, why not? Apparently my sliding around on my butt board all day was making alien baby unhappy.  A walk should work.).

The band had to come out.  The surgeon advised I had to go through the clinic in order for this to be paid for.  To the clinic I went, to see the dreaded residents. I advised them of the random abdominal distention.  “Show me”.  I’m sorry, what?  “Then show me this distention”.  “Like a magic trick?” I asked the idiot resident.  “Well, yeah”.  “Get the fuck out of my room and get me a real doctor you fucking idiot” I calmly replied.  I’m not crazy.  I’m not crazy.  I’m not crazy.  Became my mantra as the pain continued even through the band came out.

The pain continued for a year with the random alien baby distention.  A year full of invasive testing, doctors visits and people looking at me and telling me I was crazy, only in a professional manner of course.  Until the beautiful day I wasn’t.  My GI doctor (whom introduced himself as Dr. Jones, but not one of the Jones brothers – the grey beard did not give it away), advised he had one last test he wanted to run for something that’s usually overlooked called Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth (SIBO).  It’s an easy test.  You can’t eat for 8 hours then you drink sugar-water and blow into a machine.  OK, worth a shot.  Alien baby and I didn’t eat for 12 hours, went into a small room, drank something that tasted like shit and blew into a machine. The tech asked if I eaten today.  Nope, this not crazy girl didn’t eat for 12 hours now and would like some coffee, please. The tech advised that she had never seen a test come back positive this fast. HALLELUJAH!  I’m not God damned crazy!  You know, because even though I kept telling myself I wasn’t crazy (into the mirror with mascara smearing down my face), when every physician and tech and resident and your mother looks at you with pity or shame or anger or gives you that sad shake of their head, the thought creeps into your brain that yep… I’m crazy.  This pain is in my head.  This alien baby is in my head.  I’ll never get better.  I’m god damned crazy.  All the power you have is gone.  You’ve allowed other’s to take it away from you and you slowly die from the inside out.

I let that happen to me.  Once.  Will you allow it to happen to you?

No.  You’re not crazy.  You’re not ugly.  You’re not dumb and you ARE worthy.  Worthy of so much.  Don’t let yourself get in the way.  And don’t you DARE let someone else steal your power.  I won’t.  Never again.

Quiet

I have a place I go when I’m dying:

outside or in.

Two single palm trees swaying in the soft wind.

White, powder snow.

Clear, azure water lapping up towards me.

The soft roar of the tide carrying my worries away.

 

This place has saved me more than once.

Calmed my anxieties.

Called me home.

 

That night.

This place turned into a tumultuous storm.

Black thunderheads billowed overhead.

The calming rhythmic roar turned into menacing snarls.

Azure to black, tangling branches trying to ensnare me.

 

This calming dream that has saved my life now suffocates me.

The roar that has once saved me was heard THAT night.

At first whispering increasing in pitch until, when it was over, I wanted to scream, and I couldn’t, it could, but only in my head.

I hear it now and I cower.

I imagine my place of power and now it’s littered.

Tears, garbage, friendships, love.

I see it all one the once pristine beach.

The cleaning will be a long process.

One I don’t want to start.

But it will begin.

it has to.

Or life will not go on.

P*T*S*D F*U*C*K M*E*

PTSD.  All I can visualize of this well publicised diagnosis, as a nurse mind you, are heroic American soldiers from Afganistan or Iraq whom hear the backfire of a truck and duck for cover thinking a bomb is going to go off at any moment. 

For me, PTSD means that everytime a motorcycle goes down my street I stop breathing and wait to see if it stops in front of my house (this has happened 22 times today).  My perpetrator has a motorcycle, so does my Dad, my brother and my neighbor.  The night my rape happened, a motorcycle was never involved, however I know he has one… This makes no sense to me but, there it is.

My PTSD also means that anytime a door slams outside of my home (my safe place) I tense and see if my dog is going to bark.  I wait to see if my perpertrator’s wife is going to show up at my door screaming at me or egg my car or what not as she doesn’t believe it was rape, of course. 

 

  My PTSD means that I go out to my car looking to see if someone is waiting for me in my car or if my car is full of balloons (I have a life threatening latex allergy).  It means when I come home I have to take a deep breath, clench my hands and just make it to the front door.

 

 This is what PTSD means to me.  This is my life now.  A life full of anxiety.  Full of wondering and waiting for the worst to come.  I wonder when it will hit me that the worst has already happened?

Hello. My name is, Victim.

I was raped. That’s a really hard word for me to fully comprehend these days. I had it plugged into my brain, which was once considered quite bright, that rape was a brutal act of penetration into the vagina with screaming, yelling, fighting, hurting, blood, dry, holding down…. violent. Rape kits coming out and long trials where the bad guy gets put in jail and sodomized to get a taste of his own medicine.  When I think of “my rape,” it doesn’t quite fit the cultural norm that was so ingrained into myself.

It was calm. Quiet.

I protested a long time prior to the actual act. I think. “No, no, no, no, no. This isn’t right. I can’t do this” counts as protesting, right?

Don’t answer that.

Then, he was above me. No penetration. Only oral… after he was done with other things. I was blackout drunk. He was drunk.  It’s ok then, right?  I was asking for it.  Put myself in a dangerous situation.  I thought I was truly safe; my best friend’s home.  Because I can’t remember the details of that night, maybe it didn’t happen?  Again, don’t answer that.

Then, he told me to clean up and went upstairs to his wife, who just happened to be my best friend. And it was over. As was my life previous to that night.

It took me two months, maybe three, to understand that not only was I sexually assaulted, but that what I went through is considered rape. Again, I am far from a stupid girl. I was just overwhelmed? Guilty? Sad? Scared? Shamed? Confused? Idiotic? What?

Thank God for survivors like the victim from Steubenville, Ohio. She was the one that made me realize I wasn’t alone. I realized that my name now includes a new title: Victim. We belong to a club no one wants to join, but admission is so easy. We will eventually be called survivors, even if we don’t feel like ones ourselves. Yeah, we survived what happened, but what is left of the lives that we used to live?

Do we continue to have those friends we held so dear? I’ve been slut shamed by the ones I used to trust dearly. Do we continue to have our safety? My bat is constantly by my side and am considering buying a gun. The slightest sound in my home, day or night, makes me jump and wonder… is it him? Is she coming to take her revenge?  What about our lives?  I’ve become a hermit.  No social life for me because if someone I trusted so implicitly could do this, what could any stranger do?

But yes, we are survivors. Victim. That is my new name. Maybe one day I will be able to call myself survivor, but for now, Victim will do. For my new life. Here goes….