Breast Cancer, Bullying, Infant Loss, and Domestic Violence - October is a Month for Survivors:

October is

Domestic Violence Awareness Month?. So what?

It also happens to be National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, National Bullying Prevention Month, National Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month. All excellent causes to be certain, but there are now so many national awareness months that is is hard to be sure what causes we should be aware of when.

Those who have survived these events need no reminders, so surely they aren’t the people these months are created for. A month long reminder of those who have is probably not a bad idea for those who need reminding but I am not certain that disease, bullies or death put much stock in days of observation.

So, perhaps October Awareness Months are supposed to do something more than just observe that these things happen?

It takes a great deal of courage to survive the hardships life sometimes throws our way. To take a stand against breast cancer. To have your childhood innocence tainted by fear. To keep going on after the loss of a child. To escape abuse not just physically but emotionally.

Not everybody does.

October is a month to honor survivors. To thank them for the strength they show every single day. To thank them for being an inspiration to the rest of us. October is a month to remember those who did not overcome their demons. To remember those they left behind.

October also happens to be National Pork Month, Vegetarian Awareness Month, National Pizza Month, and National Dental Hygiene Month as well.

Don’t let the true heroes get lost among the pork and the pizzas.

October is Survivors Month.

Thank a survivor today.

Slips in Recovery...

I regressed. To have come so far in recovery to be stopped now is painful.

...but this time it is different.

I hadn’t had a full panic attack in a while, at least not the kind that seem to happen for no reason whatsoever.

I had three small panic attacks yesterday and two rather large ones. One of them happened while I was crossing Main street, out of the blue I felt totally exposed and vulnerable. There wasn’t even a car coming, I just had to get out of the open. Fight or flight kicked into full gear.

So apparently I am now afraid of open spaces in addition to enclosed spaces. I can’t go to the store. I can’t drive down the street. I can’t be alone without locking all of the doors at least ten times, making sure the dogs are on watch a few dozen times, needing to have self-defense items nearby at all times.

Almost like old times, only I am not hating myself for doing so.

The difference is... I know it is PTSD now. I know that recent events have triggered old neural pathways in my brain. As things have grown more and more unstable in my surroundings I have groped for more and more control over my environment.

Instead of fighting it, I’m just doing what I can to accept that right now I need to feel safe. Trying to assess what I can control and what I can't. Trying to keep myself out of situations where I am likely to feel insecure. Allowing myself to do things that seem silly because they make me feel safe.

This time I know the problem isn’t really an outside force, they are merely the vehicle, it is my brain and the way it processes information that is causing my problem. I also know I can handle it.

So instead of giving into the panic attacks or fighting them I just let them pass. I found a safe space to let it happen, and as soon as I was calmed down I went into mother mode and talked myself the rest of the way down.

I know a lot more about my brain and how it works than I used to. I understand triggers and my reactions now. More and more I am able to split off into psychology mode. To step back and see what is going on as a scientific observer.

I’m still learning lessons... but when I need them they are there. To see myself not as insane but someone who has had to develop some abnormal coping skills to get me through some abnormal situations. If normal people had faced some of the things I have... they wouldn't pass for normal either.

Most of all, I no longer view myself as a failure when things slip a little... I just remind myself that I am a survivor.

A lot of us see ourselves as weak when flashbacks and panic attacks happen, or when we backslide in our recovery. It is hard not to feel crazy when your brain is spinning out of control. You aren't crazy, you just have a different kind of normal.

Instead of beating yourself up about a panic attack, stop and step outside of the situation. Figure out what you need to feel better and do it. Resorting to self-destructive habits is only going to prolong your struggle.

Afraid of Being the Bitch

Somehow, in the past few months I stopped being afraid of being a bitch.

Perhaps it was a build up of the whole year, and this month was only a culmination of this past year. Either way, for the first time in my life someone called me a bitch and I was actually proud of it.

Always before, I back down. If I didn't back down, if someone pushed me past my bitch point I felt guilty. Years later.

Perhaps it was because this time I really did earn it.

Because when I said no. I meant it.

He was only touching me, he said. Patting my cheek and smiling. The first time I only looked at him, puzzled. The second, I pulled away. The third time I saw his hand coming towards me, I stepped back.

“Dude! Boundaries!”

I then proceeded to explain to him that I had a personal bubble, as did he. I would stay in my space for the rest of the evening, and I expected him to stay in his.

He didn’t believe me.

By the end of the night, we had words. Very loud words. Nobody else had heard the other conversations... only the ending. “If you don’t back the f*&$ off, I’m going to knock your ass in the dirt.”

After I left, the other men discussed my bitch-hood in depth with my husband. Culminating in the concern that he was perhaps being led around on a leash. He fully admits that he is whipped, but so am I, and I admit it just as freely. We think other people's concern for our marriage is funny, by the way.

He defended my actions, because he knows how rare it is for me to blow like that. He knows that I am very casual about setting boundaries in the beginning. I progress with each step. When I get to the point of raising my voice, I am done being nice.

No means no.

I do not deny that I was being a bitch at the moment. I gave him plenty of warnings. Then he decided he was going to give a friend a ride home, both of them were beyond driving. I told him hell no. I was designated driver for a reason. I told him that I was perfectly capable of taking care of her. He said he was going to anyhow and grabbed my friend's arm.

So, I stood up.

And for that I got called a bitch.

Is it wrong for me to be a little bit proud of that?

This was the same group of men who had caught my husband making out earlier and observed that we weren’t going to make it because we were “too in love.” *blink-blink-blink*He also defended our marriage. We’ve been together ten years and still make out by the firelight. I still worship the ground he walks on. We’re okay with that being considered a modern marriage failure.

No, we don’t do things the “right” way anymore. I don’t insult my husband, he doesn’t crack jokes about me. He doesn’t refer to me as fat, even when I am. I tell him that his hair loss only makes him sexier, and I mean it. We do a lot of things that aren’t normal for marriage, and it works for us. Either of us would do anything for the other, and we have proven that a dozen times over.

I think those men actually felt sorry for my husband because he was married to me. For that I am sorry. I strive to make him proud of me in all that I do. But, he wasn’t embarrassed at all. He was proud of me too.

He has worked hard to give me a safe place to experiment with all of the concepts I wrote about in “Sister, Survivor.” Boundaries. Assertiveness. Saying what you mean, and meaning what you say. He let me play with these concepts, and blow them over and over. He didn’t want a doormat as a wife any more than I wanted to be one. Those concepts saved my life. They certainly saved our marriage.

If that is a failure, then yeah, we are okay with it.

So I am a bitch now.

But, I’m a happy bitch.

Triage: Sorting and allocating aid on the basis of need for or likely benefit from.

I know what happened. I was there.

In the end, nobody can take that truth from me.

It was the word triage that did it. The second that word was thrown on the table I knew the investigation was over. It had never even begun. They don’t explain the need to triage cases to the people that are first in line, only to those who are on their own.

It was that word that pushed me past scared and straight to pissed.

They had already spent a year defining and redefining the word rape for me, and for so many others. One man had changed our lives, and the lives of our friends and loved ones. Nothing was the same after Prince Charming. Were we wrong in thinking that he owed us something in return?

He had taken something from each of us, without permission, without compassion, and without warning. We can’t just take that something back. It’s gone. One night in jail for each night we cried ourselves to sleep. One day of hard labor for each sleepless night. He deserves to know what it is like to live in the same fear he kept us in for so long.

Those of us who survived built something new and better in its place, but the scar is there and it will always be there. We deserved something in return. I still believed that the justice system worked back then, that it was created for people like me, not people like him. I was so very wrong.

Time and time again I found more system than justice.

This person said that person had the case. That person said someone else was handling it. Someone else said they’d never heard of it. I was a piece of paper lost in the shuffle. I’d already been branded a troublemaker. I could hear it in their voices when I called. They knew who I was. They knew what I wanted and they really didn’t want to deal with me.

Each time I called, “Nope, we still don’t know anything, but we will call you as soon as we do.”

Shuffle some more papers around.

They never called.

Nobody ever called.

A year later there I was, sitting in front of the cop with that cocky little grin on his face, listening to him brush us off. “Triage.” They had already decided that I didn’t need their help. It was a done deal for them. I really was on my own.

Triage: Sorting and allocating aid on the basis of need for or likely benefit from.

I came home and read that definition over and over for the next few months, hoping to find some reason, some rationality, but there was none. They couldn’t help me? They wouldn’t help me? They just didn’t want to?

They only spend their time on cases that they think they can win.

Triage: Padding the win-loss record. Padding the conviction rate. Padding the numbers.

They didn’t want more victims. That was the one number they didn’t pad. In the year I filed my rape case, I know at least two other girls who did as well. Yet the statistics for that year, and many other years in the files, say no sexual assaults were reported.

Victims don’t look good on paper. We got shuffled around again.

If anybody wants proof that politics have ruined this country they need only look in the courtroom for confirmation.

There were cops who were kind and compassionate over the next few years. There were cops who were impatient and condescending. There were a few cops who scared me even worse than Prince Charming did. I found the same types of people no matter where I went, even among the attorneys I spoke with, and among the judges I dealt with.

Nobody could do anything without blaming three other people. Finding a real human being to talk to is getting more and more difficult. Being treated like a real human being is becoming more and more rare. Justice has become a well-oiled bureaucratic machine. It isn’t efficient, it isn’t effective, and it mostly just makes a lot of noise.

It also doesn’t respond well to sand in its gears.

We aren’t technically rape victims until the court grants us that indignity. We are just grains in the gears. They shuffle us around just long enough for us to get lost. Eventually, we do go away.

Prince Charming is still on the streets, a lot of Prince Charmings are. No matter who they are or where they come from, they know how to exist within that bureaucracy; sometimes I think they are the oil that keeps it running. The machine did more to protect Prince Charming than it ever did to protect his victims.

They told me that I couldn’t go around calling him “the rapist.” Prince Charming could brand nearly a dozen girls as liars, sluts, and even delusional psychotics who imagined the whole thing, but we couldn’t call him what we already knew him to be without a judge's approval.

I know what happened. I was there.

In the end, nobody can take that truth from me.

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