A month ago, I was on the trip of a lifetime in Cambodia and Australia. The how that odd combination came about is a bit of a long story, which I will get to at some point in time because I’m notoriously bad at writing about my travels until they’re long passed.
Seeing the Sydney Opera House for the first time.
Exploring the temples of Angkor Wat.
Anyhow, I was in Cambodia and Australia for three weeks, and it was the best goddamn trip of my entire life. It was life changing; then, it was more life changing. I think it’s going to be one of the most life altering, influential trips of my life. Before this trip, I was working towards a future, but, now, I am incredibly excited about my future.
While on my trip, there were a lot of life lessons. I would love to admit they were new and earth shattering. They weren’t. They were all things I knew cognitively and have preached but not really done because I’m a giant hypocrite. So, here are some of the lessons I learned while I was traversing the globe.
Playing in the ocean at Sunset Beach on Koh Rong Sanleom, Cambodia.
Cambodia is not at all close to Australia. I booked my trip within a trip thinking, ‘Gee, I’m already on that side of the world. Can’t be that long of a flight.’ Jokes on me. The flight from Sydney to Kuala Lumpur was longer than the longest flights I’d been on before this trip by a chunk. They may be close in time zones, but they’re in completely different hemispheres. I promise, I’m not dumb.
Let friends help. I’m so bad at accepting help. My trip started off… Well, I legitimately had a panic attack before I’d even arrived at my gate in Houston. This trip was almost the very worst experience of my life. I’m me and can figure it out. But more importantly, I accepted help that was given freely and with love from a few very close friends. Hindsight, so fucking glad I did. My entire trip would’ve been miserable otherwise.
Just go. I was a bit anxious about Cambodia. Likely not for the reasons you’re thinking. It’s the first time I’ve been in a country where I don’t speak the language. Not even a little bit. I knew NOTHING. I picked up some. Very little. I tried. Khmer is beautiful. I wasn’t perfect at it, but the people are amazing, and I didn’t need to be.
Spend the money. I have always been on the save, save, save for vacations so I can spend, spend, spend whatever I want (within budget) on the trip. I have always enjoyed just doing and buying the things I never would in my real life while traveling. This trip went a bit different. I’m also older. I spent money in a different way than I used to. I came home with almost nothing because I didn’t really want anything. I spent a bunch of money on doing stuff and staying in cool places.
Don’t spend the money. There were a lot of factors in not spending money on things. I’m older than I used to be and have more stuff than I know what to do with. I also no longer believe I need souvenirs to remember a trip by. Although, I would really love a chair from Cambodia. Pictures are now my keepsake of choice. I also had the constraint of changing places almost every day and bopping between CONTINENTS and having to carry everything. I had a plethora of opportunities to spend money on things. I chose not to. A month later, I don’t regret it.
I have cell phone service in the Cambodian jungle. I can facetime my dogs from a remote Cambodian island. But I couldn’t send a text from Grand Canyon National Park. The RIM. Not even IN the canyon. This will never cease to amaze me.
Let your friends bully you. I mean, not in the realest definition of the word ‘bully,’ but in the friendly, they-love-you-and-want-the-best-for-you way. I listened to my friend, Sabina, and that literally changed the trajectory of my future. I will be forever grateful.
Trust your gut. I am notorious for overriding my gut feeling. In everything from life to love. My gut has always, always, alwaysbeen right. Why did it take me this fucking long to listen to it. I trusted my gut the entire trip, and I’ve never had a better, easier trip in my entire life.
Trust strangers. This is actually something I’ve always been pretty good at. There was a moment when I was 30 minutes into a tuk tuk ride, taking me out of the capital into rural Cambodia, passing cows and farmland with a man I had just met three hours earlier, munching on lotus he’d bought me, no questions asked, and the thought ‘Hmmm… this could’ve been a bad idea.’ Except it was a brilliant idea! I trusted my gut, which lets me trust strangers. Which turns strangers into friends. And friends make life so much more fun. FYI Bunna is the kindest man and best tuk tuk driver. If you’re ever in Phnom Penh, I’ll give you his number.
Keep your heart and mind open. It’s the best way to travel. It’s the best way to live. It’s always led me in really interesting directions. I think it might be leading me into the most exciting adventure of my life.
Go for it. Don’t look back.
Bisous und обьятия!
Looking at Popokvil Waterfall in Bokor National Park.
A baby Northern pig-tailed macaque watching from the trees in Bokor National Park outside of Kampot, Cambodia.
Learning how to surf at Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia.
Cats have never been my animal of choice. I grew up with them; I love them; I am very allergic to them; I need my animals to follow me around the house and never leave me alone; I have never had a cat of my own.
He was the most handsome cat and so loved.
The only tattoo I have solely in honor of another being—at this point—is for a cat. A year ago today, Ocho, one of my closest friend’s cat died suddenly. At just under a year, he was still just a little kitten. Meghan and I had spent a lot of time together over the end of 2021 and the first five months of 2022, so I was well acquainted with Ocho. We were buddies. We played aggressively. To the point of bleeding. His murder mittens got me every time. He’d come running at me with no warning, latching onto my ankles, knowing that I’d pick him up and play with him in a way no one else did. Although, maybe, he just hated me and was trying to ankle bite me right out of the house. I’ve never loved a cat more.
Loving someone who doesn’t belong to you and grieving them is a wild thing. I grew up with cats who’ve been kittens grown into old ladies. I spent years loving and playing with them. It’s not that I didn’t love them, I did, but Ocho was different. Grief is sadder when they die young and out of the blue. He didn’t suffer, but everyone who loved him did.
My relationship with Ocho was so much deeper than even his mom knew. Meghan and I met at a really weird time for both of us, and our lives collapsed into one another. For more than a few reasons, I spent a lot of nights at her house. Her home and she herself became my safe haven, and that has never really gone away. I have never felt peace the way I do with her in her home; she is just that kind of human, and her pets are just like her.
I have a history of night terrors combined with sleep walking. They had never plagued me in adulthood. I thought I’d left them at my parents’ house. I think the combination of coming into myself truly, feeling peace and safety for the first time, starting to deeply heal, and the amount of stress I was under created the perfect storm. The night terrors came back.
I don’t like to think of myself as a dangerous person, but I grew up in violence. It’s hard to leave that behind. On more than a few occasions, I’ve had to choose violence to survive. Unfortunately, under certain circumstances, violence is my body’s natural reaction. My brain moves fast and has always stopped myself before doing what I do not want it to do. None of these had been tested when another person was involved and I was asleep.
For the first time in twelve years, I started having night terrors. In Meghan’s house. Really bad ones. They were memories of moments I actively try to forget, and if you know me, you know I don’t shy away from much.
He gets to be with his dog brother forever.
Meghan is strong and capable and intelligent, but she is also kind and gentle and sensitive, though most don’t see it. Her strength is rooted in a quiet self-assuredness, coming from a foundation of stability and love she’s known her entire life. My strength comes from the complete opposite. Listening to her talk about anything has always filled me with such hope because she’s proof that goodness exists. We are so very similar in so many ways, yet we couldn’t be more dissimilar. When I look at her in her life, I see the possibility of what could have been for me if everything had been different. I’m not jealous; I’m fiercely protective. For some reason, she has deemed me worthy of existing in it with her. All of this to say, I have loved her from the moment I met her, and all I’ve ever wanted to do was shelter her peace and safety and sense of hopeful optimism. It’s not my job. It’s my privilege as her friend. My greatest hope for her is that everyone treats her better than I ever could because the world needs her and people like her, and I don’t want anything jading her heart.
Nothing is scarier than wanting to protect someone from everything, but the only threat to their safety is you. That’s where I was at. I was the danger.
I will never know when they started or ended, but I know the first time I realized what was happening. The night terrors had returned. Except at 30, I had more memories to be scared of than I did at 17.
Nothing better than these moments.
This story is one of my greatest shames. I would love to never tell it. I will because I love Ocho and his memory deserves it.
One night, I couldn’t tell you which night, but it was deep into the night. Houston had fallen silent. The house creaked in the way old houses do. Nigel was asleep at Meghan’s feet. Ocho slept on the pillow next to her. The winter air blew outside. It was the kind of night perfect for deep sleeping, and all four of us were. Then, I wasn’t.
I woke standing over her with a fist raised and my other clenched at my side. I don’t know what I was going to do if I was going to do anything. But I knew there were two tiny paws kneading my chest and a kitten shaped head rubbing against my chin. I immediately knew. My body seized up. I breathed in and couldn’t let it out. I started shaking as tears dripped from my jaw. I looked at her peacefully not snoring, laying on her back, completely unaware of the danger I had just posed to her. Nigel didn’t even raise his head, but he was looking at me in his soulful way.
Ocho bit my collarbone hard.
I breathed out.
I stepped back and looked down at him. He gave my hand a little bite and lick before he curled up by his mom’s head. Her hand reached for him, and they snuggled in closer. I backed out of her room, turned around, walked into the kitchen, grabbed the garage keys. I walked out the back door, down the stairs, and into the garage. I didn’t even turn on the lights when I shut the door behind me. I laid down in the middle of her garage workshop and sobbed. The full self, feel it in your body, pure grief kind of sob. I had almost hurt the one person in the world I would have gone to the ends of the world to protect. She had the perfect life, and I had arrived to ruin it. I was the thing she should worry about, and I had done nothing to protect her from me. The what ifs flooded my mind. I know what great harm I am capable of conscious by choice. Asleep by guttural reaction? That had never been tested, and I was horrified for her. I was also selfish: fearful she would hate me, and I would lose someone who I’d come to need, and I don’t need people.
Eventually, I stopped sobbing when the first bird sang. I sat up, realizing I’d left a me-shaped sawdust angel in the middle of her garage. I grabbed the broom, sweeping the sawdust into chaos again. I took a shower in the garage shower because I’d taken some sawdust with me, and it would be weird having to explain sawdust in the sheets. I crawled back in bed and stared at the ceiling until my alarm went off and it was time to make coffee.
One of the first things Meghan said to me that morning was my hair looked curlier than it had when I went to bed. The day began like every other day I spent the night. Except Ocho was a bit cuddlier with me than usual. Not a single ankle bite.
The goofy boy on his bridge.
I was distant for a few days and found my evenings too busy to spend the night. But when I did see her, I started telling stories about what I have done in moments where I’ve chosen violence. I told her I had bad nightmares and sometimes my PTSD makes it hard for my body and mind to communicate, and that has historically led to unpleasantness. I didn’t sugar coat anything, but I also left out quite a bit. She met stories of some of my worst moments with the same grace and compassion she always has. She told me to just be me and not be afraid for her. She kept telling me she’s very strong and tough, which I already knew, and she could take care of herself, which I already knew. But I never wanted her to have to around me, and I really never wanted her to have to protect herself from me.
Eventually, I spent the night again. The first three times, I didn’t sleep at all. I stared at the ceiling the entire time. The fourth night, Ocho curled up on the pillow touching my shoulder and face, so I drifted off to sleep. I went a week without a night terror. The second time I remember having one, Ocho nibbled my ear until I woke up. He did it every time. He kept his mom safe. He gave me enough security to fall asleep, hopeful that I wouldn’t be a threat. I never have been since. To Meghan or anyone else.
This past winter, the night terrors started colliding with insomnia and tactile hallucinations. Oh, it was a rough few months. I wasn’t sleeping. When I would I’d have horrendous night terrors. When I’d wake from them, I would physically feel whatever traumatic event I’d had to watch in my sleep. I was losing my goddamn mind. Ocho had long been gone, and all the reasons I spent so many nights at Meghan’s were no more. Then one night, the worst night, laying in my own bed, I felt like I was dying in a prison of my own body unable to move or escape what was one of the worst tactile hallucinations of my life. Ocho walked across my chest and curled up on my pillow on my shoulder. He nibbled my ear. He broke me out of my prison, put me back into my body. The tactile hallucinations disappeared all at once, but he got up and I felt him walk away.
The nights I can feel their hands start touching my body and their breath on my skin and the pain bloom like Moonflower planted in my soul, Ocho walks across my chest. Every time, he curls up and nibbles my ear, staying with me until every touch and breath is gone. Then I feel him walk away. The Moonflower wilts in my soul as Ocho takes the darkness my pain needs to bloom with him.
I don’t believe in God or ghosts or an afterlife. I believe my brain is fucked up because of trauma, and it’s doing its best to servive. I also believe Ocho knew what he was doing, and my soul has decided to keep him alive on the nights I still need him.
He was the best reading buddy.
Ocho was such an asshole. I have scars on my ankles from where he bit me. He gave Meghan and I so many heart attacks when he’d find newer and cleverer ways to escape the prison we call a house. I hate bugs, and yet I’ve crawled under her house so many times to pull him out. I would wake up to him biting me in the middle of my back at night to play with him. But he gave the best snuggles. He was always full of vim and vigor, triggering laughing fits. He just knew. Every time. He knew when I needed him. He knew when his mom needed him. He was perfect, and I miss him every day.
I tattooed his name in the place he just loved to bite as a reminder of all that he had done for me. I had no idea what he would go on to do. He saved his mom from me. He has saved me from me so many more times.
Alex is the person I have written about most. In a way, he’s at the heart of every word I write, and my heart will always write about him. He turned 33 two days ago, and for the first time in a few years, I wasn’t able to celebrate with him. I didn’t post anything the day of because I couldn’t come up with words to say, and, if I’m being honest, I will never be good enough with words to properly convey what he means to me.
This is and always has been who we are together.
I have spent twelve birthdays loving Alex. My entire adult life. I used to believe all love was conditional, but over the last twelve years, he has proven time and time again that some love comes without strings, rare though it may be. Through college, break ups, an enlistment, deployments, vacations, cross-country moves, deaths, coming outs, falling in love, buying cars, growing up, fights, and so much more, we have persevered.
At 31, I’m not old, but I’m no longer young. I can look back on the stunningly complicated life that I have led because Alex came into my life. Thank you choir. Every person we encounter shapes us in some small way, but there are people who are fundamentally impactful. Looking at my life, Alex is the fundamental human for me. I am who I am because of him. I am because of him. Every story I tell, I get to tell because he showed me I was worth loving, that life isn’t just pain. Life can also be joy. He saved my life in the abstract but also held my head above water many years ago.
Falling in love isn’t a choice, but the act of loving someone is a choice. To stay, to work, to be present, to ask the hard questions, to show up, to admit fault, to forgive, to see someone at their worst and at their best, to communicate, to be compassionate, to challenge, to support, and all the in betweens, that is a choice. An active choice made every moment of every day in big and little ways. Alex has made the choice to love me even when he has had every reason to walk away. From the very beginning, if he were any less of the man he is, he would have and should have walked away. When we broke each other’s hearts, he could have walked away. When I came out, he could have walked away. He never has. I hope he never will. At this point, there’s only so many life altering things I can drop in his lap.
Our love started in college. A grand, sweeping love. The kind I dove into with body and soul. The kind that is devastatingly beautiful. A once in a lifetime kind of love. I knew the moment we kissed I would die loving him, and I will. Though, I’ll never wear white or have children with him, I will grow old by his side—good lord, I hope his future wife likes me. We have never been a perfect couple; there is no such thing. To me, he will always be perfect. The pain. The love. The tears. The laughter. The life we built and lost. The love we found and have worked to maintain. It is all perfect. We are my favorite love story. Love cannot conquer all (it’s the gay bit), but it has conquered so very much.
One of my favorite pictures of us.
Life didn’t play out the way I saw it at 19. Although, looking back, I’m not exactly sure what I saw for us. I saw him. He saw me. There have been so many twists and turns to get lost in the way I used to get lost in his eyes in our bed ten years ago. I’m not going to go down the what if road because I am who I am and he deserves to find someone who is not gay. I don’t think I would change a single thing about our story. It’s beautiful and sad. If I could go back, I would tell myself to give more grace, be angry less, communicate more, be vulnerable, tell the hard truths, stop being strong all the time, lean into him because he loved me as I was, as I am, and there’s nothing I could have done that would change that.
I will never love anyone the way I have and do love Alex. A love I could spend forever writing about, and I might. A love that I can’t explain but I feel so deeply. It’s transcendent.
Sitting in my favorite spot in my favorite coffee shop in Houston’s Montrose neighborhood, I’m working on a listicle for tomorrow. Lacking in motivation and inspiration, I’m lackadaisically mocking up something mildly interesting, but decide to procrastinate by scrolling through Facebook to see just what I was up to on this day over the years. My eye catches on a specific yet vague post that only means something to me, and I’m reminded that seven years ago, a few hours from now, I will be raped for the last time.
I don’t drink anymore, which has nothing to do with the events of that night, but I still love a pretty mocktail.
I’m not sure if I want to write about the rape or if I want to write about the role social media plays in recovery, trauma, triggers, and moving on. Probably not either. I’m not actually ready to dive into the feelings of that rape. I don’t feel moved to write on social media either. Both are important, so I should pick one. Or trash this altogether and pretend I’m not crying in a coffee shop because of course my period is deciding to show up and be an emotional one. Then again, I might just be crying in a coffee shop because I was raped seven years ago and it is one of the harder stories I have to write. Partially because it’s the only one I don’t really remember. It is also the most stereotypical and statistically probable rape stories I have. Mostly it is still so fucking painful. Part of me wants to protect him and his family because I deeply care for them still. Even as I write this, I’m censoring every feeling and desire to talk about it because I do not want to give away any identifying information, but at the same time…. He fucking raped me. Then again, the role social media plays in this precise moment is something I have talked about and found fascinating every time a depressing memory pops up in my “On This Day” page or Timehop.
I’m heading out to dinner with one of my good friends, so I can press pause on writing this and figure out what I want to do while pretending I’m completely fine with my friend. Write this? Don’t write this? Stop here, press publish, and call it good. Or continue on by diving into the trauma or the social media. Or find a whole other angle and write on that.
Okay, I’m back. I decided to write…. I hate me. This job is terrible sometimes. Can someone please sponsor me or hire me to write a column so I can get paid for the pain I’m dredging up to create a little bit of good out of the craphole I call my past.
I’m choosing to kind of go in the rape direction but with a different angle because I literally threw up thinking about diving into that and I can’t stop shaking. I’m going to pretend the shakes are from the americano even though it very much is the anxiety.
Being the rape survivor I am, the kind of rape that was cyclical and repetitive. So many rapes. Too many to count. So many rapists. I think I know how many, but I’m not completely certain how many were involved in the gang rape, so it’s an estimate. At some point it all blurs together in a sweeping memory of the fact these things happened and were a daily part of my existence. Only the extraordinary instances stand apart from the others.
I was drunk seven years ago, which for most people would not be unusual. I rarely drank and refused to get drunk with anyone but my partner. That night, I was with my best friend, a friend I’d had for a very long time, a friend I trusted completely. We drank. I drank a lot. I don’t remember what happened. I remember what came after. I remember being willing to look past it. To forgive. To move on. Chalk it up to a drunken night between friends. An oops we could laugh about later. But the truth is… I was way too far gone to give consent. I truly don’t remember anything, to this day, but I do know what happened. All I asked was to keep that night between us until I figured out how I felt. Instead, he told all our friends I was a bad lay. No shit. I was incompacitated. It also wasn’t sex. It was rape.
Seven years ago was hard in an unexpected way. Being raped and recovering from that was not new and had become a routine part of my life. As shitty as it sounds, I know how to recover from rape, get my head on straight, pick myself back up, claim it, and keep trudging along. The act of getting over being raped seven years ago tonight wasn’t really that hard. I’d done it many times before; I half expected to do it again—most days I still do. What was hard was knowing my best friend did it to me. My best friend who knew everything did it to me. What was hard about that night and the aftermath wasn’t getting raped; though it was awful. It is always awful. It was and is the grief.
Grief is a bitch. I have lost people in so many ways. Some from death, some from growing apart, some because they were cruel. Yes, I had lost people I was close to because they raped me. This was different. I grieved in a way I never had before. I recovered from being raped, but seven years later I still miss my best friend. He was family. He was a pillar in my life. He knew everything about me, and I lost him. I lost one of three people I thought I would be able to count on forever. The only person who had never made my faith in him and us waiver. He rocked the foundation of my soul because I lost faith in my own ability to trust people. I had let him into the darkest recesses of my soul for well over a decade. He knew things about me not a single other human knew. I let myself lean on him and depend on him in a way I haven’t been able to before or since. We went through so many things. We grew up together. We loved each other. We were as inseparable as two people could be while living in neighboring states. I legitimately thought of marrying him because the idea of spending my life with my best friend seemed awesome.
He raped me, and I lost him. I lost his family who made me their family. I can’t scroll through my life from 13 to 23 without him playing some role in each memory. Even if he wasn’t physically present, he was always on the other end of a text conversation or phone call.
As I write this, the grief is overwhelming. I remember him so starkly as the man I could count on. Not being able to remember the actual raping makes all of this harder. If I could remember, I could hate him. But I can’t. I don’t get to hold on to the terror or how unsafe I felt or my confusion or the moment I knew what was happening and accepted my fate or the stomach curdling touch of his hands on my body or any of the other things I know happened. The moments that would turn all of those happy memories sour so I could stop missing him, stop loving him. The one time I decided to drink with him, he raped me. Alcohol took the memories of those horrific moments away from me. Some have called it a blessing, but I don’t. I’m left grappling with the knowledge of what he did and the aftermath juxtaposed against ten years of trust, joy, laughter, history, and intimacy only people who experienced adolescence together have. There are two competing versions of this fundamental human in my mind and neither sit well. I grieve because I don’t have the man who was once so important in my life’s story, who knew me so well. I grieve because I don’t have the closure of being able to hate him so I can let go of that hate and move on.
Alcohol can complicate things.
Whether I’ve thought about it or not, that moment rocked my trust in male friendship. I have always been a guys’ girl. I’ve always felt more comfortable with men than women. There’s an easy camaraderie between us. My dude friendships always outnumbered my lady friendships significantly. Sure dude friends had raped me before. Sure it was awful. None of them had been all that close. None of them really even came as much of a surprise when I put clothes on and climbed out of whatever spot they chose to rape me. I had never been hurt in that way by someone so close to me, someone I considered to be my person. I slowly let every dude friend in my life fade away. It took me five years to let another man come close to being my friend. I’m still working on allowing myself to trust the men I have in my life.
This is not a cautionary tale telling women and girls to not drink or they’ll be raped. Hell, I have hundreds of stories where I was stone cold sober getting raped. Rape is never the raped’s fault. Fault lies completely in the hands of the rapist. Don’t fucking rape people. If there is too much alcohol, don’t fucking touch them. Even if they beg. Err on the side of let’s enthusiastically and soberly consent to this. Like fucking adults.
This is the story of life after. For those who say it gets easier. If it gets easier for you, I’m super duper happy for you, but that’s your story. Mine does not get easier. Fourteen years after the first time I was raped, I’m still broken. It’s livably difficult. There are new waves and new obstacles and new grievances. I am always processing and growing and figuring out how to deal with the consequences of men’s violence. Social media is full of reminders and triggers. Am I fine? Yes. I sure am. I’m sitting in a coffee shop, getting this out. Yes, there are tears. Yes, I went to the bathroom, locked the door, and doubled over hyperventilating. Yes, I will post this, then get up and walk to my car like nothing happened. I am a survivor, and it fucking sucks. I’m finally getting to the point where good things and bad things happen and I don’t instinctively want to call my rapist of a best friend. I have learned to live without him, but I miss him every day, which makes me sad because now I’m the person who misses her rapist. But I don’t miss the rapist, I miss the man he was before. So here I am. Pissed off, on my period, emotional, hyped up on caffeine, in public, and in desperate need of a hug.
Happy Sunday. I was raped seven years ago tonight for the most recent time. I don’t know if I’m going to sleep tonight.
I’m incredibly open about my past, which was basically 24 years of constant trauma. (The last six have seen their trauma, but nowhere near the first two and a half decades of the hellscape I called home.) So fun! It’s a huge part of my life and led to my career in social justice and writing and depression (kidding?). If I could separate me the person from me the traumatized, I fucking would. But I can’t. It is ever present. A character in my story. It comes up. In my stories and especially in my humor. If you don’t like dark humor at my own expense… I’m probably not for you. To be in my life is to have some familiarity with my trauma. Don’t confuse that with bonding or asking others to take it on. I’ll carry that weight; I’ve got this; it’s not new. My pain is a familiar companion.
My trauma solidified my existence as a raging intersectional feminist in search of knowledge.
When a new person starts to enter my life in a non-surface relationship, I tend to give the ten minute run down. Friends, dating, whatever. The rundown will happen sooner rather than later.
I am not trauma bonding.
Sharing the events that made me is as necessary as where I’m from and who my siblings are. I am a writer who specializes in memoir work. One of the biggest reasons I give the rundown is because I want a person to find out from me what happened to me. It’s a heads up. A hey, I’m okay. I don’t want them to find out all the really violent and awful things that were my daily life through an Instagram post, an article on Medium, through my blog, on Facebook, or worse a 280 character tweet. I’m not about to do that to a person cause that just feels shitty to me. I wouldn’t want to find out someone I care about even a teensy bit was gang raped at nineteen. I want people to know I’m okay; I’m not a sploot on the surface of the Earth. I’m a broken, thriving human.
I am not trauma bonding.
My story opens the door for people to tell me their own stories. Or not. It’s up to them. I’m not trying to have a good cathartic cry and feel my feelings with someone. No one gets that. Tears and devastation are left for solo road trips and hot showers. I’m not looking to be raw and open. I’m looking to change the world, even if it’s just in small ways. My story is not new, but it has had an impact on people’s lives; helped them find their own voice; not feel so alone; know someone somewhere sees their pain and cares. My story is in the world because I want to end the stigma for survivors, for those who did not survive, for those who have yet to survive. Maybe my story will stop someone from going too far and creating another survivor. I don’t know. Do we ever really know the impact of our existence in the world? All I know is that I have a voice. I have a past. I will use my voice to do as much good in the world as I can.
I can be broken and strong, femme and capable, vulnerable and resilient, traumatized and healthy.
I am not trauma bonding.
I am simply preparing people for what the reality of being in my life is. To stand by my side in any significant capacity is to bear witness to pain that was, is, and will be. Though the events of my past are solidly in my past, the consequences and pain are ever evolving. I’m constantly reconciling and healing. Honestly, I’m also testing the waters to see if this new person can handle it. Out of sheer self-preservation, I’m not going to let myself become emotionally involved with someone who will flee when the hard stories start coming up. Let alone if they invest a lot of time and get to the point where they may see the consequences of another’s actions in the form of my anxiety, PTSD, depression, and OCD. The truth is, I am a bit of a mess. My life and mental health is really in a good place considering, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have bad days. I want to know I can potentially show a side of me that is not completely together and capable. I don’t want to hide integral pieces of myself. Fuck, I’m not going to stop writing, talking, and fighting for change because someone is uncomfortable with my past; I’ve been there too many times to do it again. I take pen to paper, fingers to keys, putting that pain on display for the world to see and hopefully feel. This is my job. This is my purpose.
I am not trauma bonding.
Silence was my protector for so long. I refuse to be silent. I refuse to be a well behaved woman. I am strong. I am broken. I am clumsy. I am kind. I am funny. I am sad. I like to think I’m smart. I am multitudes. But I am traumatized. I am not asking a single person to take that trauma on. It is just a story among many stories of my life.
She’s smiling even though she was dying inside from the boredom that is carousels. My birthday, 2014.
She’ll take pictures like this with me! Christmas, 2019
The infamous Wox of Bine night, 2013.
11… Reasons I Have the Best Person Ever
This post is sponsored… kidding. This post was inspired by my best friend when I asked her what I should write about today, and she told me “11 reasons I have the best friend ever,” so here we are. I changed it to “person” instead of friend because she’s more than my friend. She’s my sister, my partner, my soulmate, my other half, my forever and always, my constant. She is my person.
For those of you who don’t know her. Kelsey Roberts is a 25 year old bad-ass. We met seven years ago in college working at the library. She was a freshman; I was a senior. She just graduated from her Master’s program in Art History from George Mason University.
Kelsey has supported and loved me through some of the darkest times in my life. I really will never be able to thank her for everything she has been through with me, but it is a testament to our friendship and her heart that she is still around.
She’s fucking funny. We riff off of each other so well. We’re always in stitches when we’re around each other. I have so many screenshots of our conversations and an entire Google.doc of funny things we’ve said and come up with.
She didn’t run away after the first time we hung out. Seriously though. There were a lot of red flags telling her torun, but she didn’t. She was like, “Yup! This crazy matches my crazy, and it’s scary but it’ll be fun.” It’s definitely been scary, but it’s been a hell of a lot of fun.
She’s just the right amount of stupid. Actually, she’s not stupid at all, but she is a hypochondriac. When her hypochondria gets-a-going, she’ll believe a lot of things. Like the fact she’s allergic to the color yellow so she can no longer eat bananas. That’s not a real thing, but she totally believed me until I posted the screenshots of that text exchange on Facebook.
She puts up with me embarrassing her on social media. See #4 or writing about her on my blog or posting really embarrassing pictures from her drunken nights in college. (Which totally never happened. Kidding they absolutely did, and I was sober to capture her in all her glory.) Wox of Bine anyone? That’s Kelsey for “Box of Wine,” which she put on a short dude’s head so she could drink straight from the Wox of Bine’s spot.
We’re exactly the same height. Literally. Exactly. Except her mane gives her a quarter of an inch to a full inch depending on the day. We’re the same height, and it’s amazing. No awkward tall-short friend pictures for us. It’s a blessing.
She lived in DC for a few years. This was amazing for visiting purposes. I got to visit her and explore a really cool city!!!
Her love for animals is as deep as mine. We’re crazy animal people. She leans more towards cats but has a never ending love for dogs too. She fully supported me when I told her I picked up Tess and was probably going to keep her and help her through the puppy-situation. Kelsey was the first person I called with Tess news. Kelsey knew before Dylan.
She gave me a family. Her parents are now my parents. Her siblings are now my siblings. I love them with all my heart. I lived with them for almost three years. I go home as much as I can, and they love me unconditionally.
She has a heart of gold. Truly, she would take away the world’s pain if she could.
She is my other half. We always tell people: If you love Kelsey, you’ll definitely love me. If you love me, you might love Kelsey. Kelsey is pricklier and harder to get to know on the surface. In reality, she’s more optimistic, positive, and open than I am. She seems more difficult to get to know, but she’s protecting her soft, puppy-loving, do-gooder heart from being hurt by shitty people because she has been through so much in her life. We are two sides of the same coin. We balance each other and make one another whole. She is the person I turn to and vice versa. We met and instantly became attached physically and emotionally. It got harder when I graduated, but we talk every day, all the time. And we talk about EVERYTHING. From poop to sex to fashion to dogs to health issues to politics to family to my existential crises/feelings of impending doom to her hypochondria and everything in between. Nothing is off limits. We have no secrets, and whatever hasn’t been shared is solely because we forgot or ran out of time or we’re waiting until the next time we see one another in person, which should be sooner rather than later. Since meeting her, I have never once been scared about being alone. I found my person at 22. My person is not a romantic love, but it is the best love in my life. There is nothing I wouldn’t do for her, and I miss her every moment we’re not together. Someday, I plan on kidnapping her and retiring to a lighthouse on the coast of Scotland where we will live together in peace raising dogs, cats, and White Park Cattle, while reading and writing about all the things we’re passionate about.
The one thing I don’t love: She hasn’t come to visit me in over three years. She needs to meet all her new fur nieces and nephews, see my new house, and sit on the couch and binge Netflix with me!!!
