hoecogan - Tumblr blog

hoecogan · 9 months ago

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i've been wasting lots of time lately thinking about how different things would be without the various horrifying assaults i've suffered at the hands of men. in the same way that some schools of feminism categorize all penetrative intercourse as rape, is all time as a little girl spent in the hands of men some soft form of assault? of course, barring when it's not blatantly assault. being abused as young as a toddler, quasi-repressing it but - - in the way that - -

you're an artist and a woman, just too honest or whatever that magic is that makes you good at making things but also makes people hate you, in that way - it just kind of lives through you, the abuse, or has in spite of you, some darkness, some horrible truth about humanity simply because a man couldn't stop getting intoxicated and had to perpetuate trauma

you wonder about the church in the same way that you wonder about your grandfather, where something might have happened, where everything might have started.

there would be political conversations, in the living room, and it was quite obvious that jack was the king. and jack was right, of course, and there was simply no arguing with that. like all republicans, jack has flawed data, dramatic masculine ideologies, and a background in law enforcement at the highest levels all with which to prove his correctness. jack is an accomplished man. j edgar hoover wrote letters congratulating jack on the birth of all 3 of his sons. joan's liberal voting record - her love of liberal candidates and their rhetoric - it was to be laughed off as frivolous, overly compassionate, saccharine -- jack's generation didn't use words like libtard but of course they felt the cruelty of those words in their hearts for their beautiful stupid wives, whom they also loved, but they did not need therapy, because they were men, and nothing was wrong with them.

your father, giving you a boilerplate Life Isn't Fair speech, spoke about how he'd had a paper route, and he'd be out for hours, and no one would tip him, and don would jump in on the last leg to help him and get all kinds of tips. later you thought about this, how don must have appeared very precocious. this sticks out among other vague details, memories of the house in omaha in some kind of fog, especially certain rooms and how the hallway felt

how did it all come to be?

you were in santorini, ok well -

you were in petra. you're in love and you meet his friends, who barely speak english, and their children, who barely speak at all, 3 and 4. the son named for your bf, the son sharing your birthday, the daughter quite possibly the most beautiful thing you've ever seen, and you - you're some strange captivating alien to these children, they're all over you the entire weekend. it's overwhelming how utterly fascinated and in love they are with you, just throwing their energy completely at you, the sheer vulnerability of it, the openness. it's lovely but something about it is draining and deeply painful.

later you're on the ferry. you're pissed at dimitri because he hadn't told you anything about the children, or that you'd be staying at his friend's house (in their bedroom! they slept on their own couch! working class people! you could KILL him), and worse - you saw some girl sending him messages on some app while you guys were drunk at the beach so you barely slept. you're exhausted. you have your first dream about omaha on the ferry. you get up in santorini and you feel sick, you pass it off as seasickness. it's raining in santorini which is unusual. you're still so mad at dimitri, so exhausted and confused by the dream that you pass out again once they check you into the villa, which is beautiful, but dimitri is displeased by the layout and being a little bitch about it. you have another dream about omaha. the dreams both start - or turn - by evoking that 2019 ayahuasca ceremony you were at that told you about your abuse - and then they take you deeper into the feelings, the words your abuser spoke to you, drunkenly, angrily.

you wake up feeling very disgusted again, you're already processing this with your conscious mind on some level, but all the international travel, the instability in your relationship, the culture shock and language gaps while he's SO at home in europe, his arrogance and comfort are skyrocketing. you feel more annoyed, alone, and objectified with him than ever. he speaks greek very confidently to to other greek men and you wonder what he says. he switches to english for all other international people, and mirrors their level of skill. to one welsh man he says "the girl, she's from chicago" gesturing to you, as though he's speaking a language you can't understand. "the girl"? excuse me bitch? you feel particularly objectified in that instance, some welsh guy looking at you and smiling.

so you wake up from dream 2. nauseous and he's pissed you don't want to eat dinner. all you want is wine and chocolate. he and a group of greek waiters at some magical seaside place wind up collectively charming you into one of the best meals of your life. he orders egregious amounts of seafood and wine and tips too much. it's annoying you how much money he's been spending all summer. especially on the islands. you know he's spending outside his means and it's upsetting you but you're not saying anything about it. he knows you're still pissed about the DMs, he's pouring on the charm, all the usual crap about your eyes, and your posture, and how you're too good for him, he doesn't deserve you, you're so smart, you're so cute, and it's working of course, but the dreams still have you by the psyche and you don't want to have sex, possibly with anyone, ever again. but you love dimitri. but it's - dimitri. he's a man before he's anything else to you, and this - well, you couldn't possibly tell him what you're going through. and he's persistent about sex, so you're participating while completely checked out, and he lacks the communication skills to do anything about this but pout, and you offer that you realize you're distant and it isn't him, and the next month becomes nothing but traveling and living on some bizarre dilapidated rollercoaster that begins to fall apart mid-ride.

you feel like kissing the ground in chicago. he's instantly hideously depressed to've left greece, the arrogance he had strutting around europe has deflated into something foul. air portugal loses your luggage. his drone. all the expensive equipment you told him not to check. he throws a tantrum at ohare. an adult man. in public. at an international airport. can you imagine? you leave him, but you don't let yourself leave him fully, because then you'd be alone with what happened to you when you were little, though the reality is that you already are, you just wont admit it to yourself yet.

and then you have the 3rd dream that inspires you to tell your therapist. when you wake up from this one you think you're still in europe. you can't remember what country, what part of daylight it is - but you're home in chicago, and he must have done this to you. and said that while he did it. it must have really happened. and honestly, of course it happened, because it lives in you, you carry it with you to everything, like the most familiar part of you.

but you still don't believe yourself, or the dreams, because maybe those beautiful greek fairy children just cast some spell on you? maybe it was the islands, islands are filled with spirits, and maybe you are misremembering.

you go back to the 2019 ayahausca ceremony. you were living with elliot that summer. the ceiling opened up and it took you to this little tiny version of you, who knew very well something horribly wrong had happened, saddened and electrified and different, - - - the brokenness of that little one - you remember her, and the words she shared with you that her abuser said to her

all you could do that summer was get fucked up, elliot remarked that you'd been disassociating. you joke about it. you smoke a lot and you're so sad for some reason. you don't know what the ceremony wanted you to see but you're pretty sure that you were molested. there's the word. the word you can hardly say, that puts a shudder down your spine. all you can do is drink and smoke, bombard yourself with sunlight, swim, drink, smoke, and you feel exactly like you felt when you were a teenager, but you're 33, and you're so fucking sad, because you were molested when you were only 3 or 4, and that's why everything's been so weird and dark for as long as you've been conscious, that's why you were so broken and that's why all the horrible sexual proclivities, and that's why all you could do was get fucked up all through high school, and you're so sad for that poor teenager who had no idea what was going on with her, who had thoroughly repressed the abuse and the screeching memories of it. you have a dark, embarrassing blackout memory of telling one person, one time, you said the word, you said "i was molested" and you weren't sure why or where it came from, it's like you were admitting it to yourself. you were so drunk.

you see the pattern that it's caused and how you have to acknowledge and work on it - and heal it and own it - like some flaw, even though it was perpetrated onto you. isn't that being a woman? somebody get matt walsh bitch! i know what a woman is! so perhaps he was right, your abuser, when he made his disgusting comment, stuck in your psyche from age 3 about "what girls are for"

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