hurricanehouse

[hurricanehouse]

S.A.

I was sexually assaulted when I was eighteen. I’m telling you this, at the start of the essay, so that you can digest it and move on. Some people get hung up on this detail of my life, and I have to remind myself not to get frustrated with them. I’ve lived with it for over five years. They, on the other hand, are just finding out. 

It is still difficult for me to even spit the words out. 

S    e    x    u    a    l     a    s    s    a    u    l    t  . 

Have you ever seen those videos of anacondas, where they unhinge their jaws to swallow a baby wildebeest? How they look as if they are going to just explode, how their scaley anaconda skin looks like it is going to split in two? If you took one of those videos and played it in reverse, showing that lump of wildebeest traveling up the snake’s gorged body and through its unhinged jaw, birthing the unlucky wildebeest back into existence, that’s what it feels like for me every time I say those words. Sexual assault. Frankly, I prefer to abbreviate it. S.A. It’s much easier to swallow. 

I would argue that the sexual assault, my sexual assault, doesn’t affect me in my day to day life. It‘s hard for it to, when I live with girls and work with girls and at the end of most days I have to trace over my activities and ask myself “did I see a boy today?” So, yeah, my sexual assault doesn’t affect me most days. 

I still dream about it. Most of the time the dreams are small, and I’m able to wake up the next morning, think “that was a terrible dream,” and move on with my day. Sometimes though, the dreams are big and scary, and when I wake up I can still feel the monsters that claw at the edges of my psyche. There was one night, a few years after it happened, where the dream I had sent me into a PTSD tailspin and I spent the whole day in bed. These dreams, after the tears and the shaky breath and the therapy appointment that follows each one, always leave me wondering about my next boy, the boy who decides, God bless his soul, to partner with me and date me and maybe one day marry me despite the darkness I carry.  What will I do when I wake up from a Grade A dream and have to tell some sweet, innocent boy why I won’t stop crying? It doesn’t feel fair to him, that I will one day have to ask someone to partner with me in trauma that only he can uniquely trigger, trauma that he had no hand in creating. 

A few months ago, I got a massage. I was so excited, certain that the stress in my shoulders and back would be whisked away, and I would walk out feeling renewed. However, when I found myself naked, laying under a sheet, a stranger’s hands rubbing over my shoulders and back, down my legs, in my hair, I could only think about the last time I was lying naked under a sheet, his hands running over my shoulders and back, down my legs, in my hair. That massage followed me around for the rest of the day like a cloud, and I was so surprised that there were triggers from my assault that were still waiting to reveal themselves five years after the fact. It has gotten to the point now where I am used to the weight of it all, as if I wake up each morning and resign myself to carrying the trauma like a backpack. My shoulders are sore and my back is stooped, but the weight feels familiar, safe. I imagine, if I were to ever try and take the backpack off, that I would feel naked. I do everything in my power to avoid feeling this way. 

I know that, to many people, this may seem problematic, how much of my identity is wrapped up in this singular moment of my life. “Just take the backpack off,” they say, as if the backpack weren’t welded to my very being. I do my absolute best to center my life around other, more meaningful things, around loving Jesus and serving others. However, it is difficult to deny that, at least on a subconscious level, I have no problem doing what is necessary to avoid the intrusive thoughts of my sexual assault. For example, the last time that I went on a date, I noticed that I held my hands behind my back when we walked. I was relieved to see that his truck was a stick shift, and that his right hand was always occupied as we drove to restaurants and small towns and over mountains. If his hands were busy shifting from first to second gear, then they couldn’t reach for mine. I was wildly uncomfortable with him opening my car door and paying for my meals. I expected it, but it made me uncomfortable. “Why do I hate this?” I asked myself as I slid into the passenger seat. Every time he took care of me I could feel my soul twisting inside my body, like it was avoiding a punch, dodging a bullet, trying not to get hit. The kindness of a boy can make me feel seen, which is frightening for a girl who spends her whole existence trying to hide from the attention of men. This is the crux of the issue, isn’t it, that I don’t want men to see me. They can’t hurt me if I’m invisible. 

The latest psychological research indicates that yoga is helpful for those struggling with sexual trauma. I have known this for several years, yet I have avoided yoga studios like an alcoholic avoids AA meetings. After my most recent terrible dream, I called a friend of mine who has a similar story. “I think I need to start doing yoga,” I said, and she agreed. “I can think of 20 things that I would rather do instead,” I cried. She understood, in that small, quiet way that only other women who share my story ever seem to understand why I cry about yoga and massages and therapy.  

The truth of it is, when I think about my body in a physical sense, I think about Palmetto trees. Palmetto trees were used in South Carolina during the Revolutionary War as building materials for forts to defend against the British. The saving grace of the Palmetto tree is that they are structurally flexible, and as the British bombed the coast of South Carolina, the cannon balls bounced off of the Palmetto tree forts. In contrast, my body is not like the Palmetto tree. When I am hugged or touched, when my hand is grabbed without warning or I feel a strange man’s eyes on me as I walk down the street, I forget how to breathe, and I am certain, if the touch is taken too far, that my body will splinter. No random touch from a man ever bounces off of me. 

When I talked to some of my friends about my resistance towards yoga, they asked for more of an explanation. “We don’t understand,” they said. “Why are you so afraid of yoga?” I tried to parallel it to massages, naming them both as physical triggers that I have learned about in the past several years. “But no one touches you in yoga,” they replied, confused, and I was at a loss for words in trying to explain why they were both such daunting monsters in my life. When my friends talk about the therapeutic qualities of yoga, they often talk about the release, the stillness, the ability to let down their physical guards. I don’t have the words to explain to them that it is the release that I fear, that nothing makes me feel more uncomfortable than the thought of letting down my own physical guards. I don’t want to take my backpack off. 

In a perfect world, I would get a massage every week, I would greet each new day with a sun salutation, and I would sandwich these physical triggers with productive therapy sessions that examined the depths of the darkness in my soul. Exposure therapy, you know? But I don’t have enough money to get a weekly massage, don’t have enough money for consistent therapy, and don’t have enough mental energy to battle the demons that would come visit me if my daily routine consisted of downward dog. 

So, for now, I will pick one trigger, yoga. I will ask a friend to quietly sit beside me in class, and I will pick a friend who will not be intimidated by the tears that will, inevitably, stream down my cheeks. When the instructor walks towards me to reposition my leg I may think of the Palmetto tree, and as her hand grazes my body I will remind myself to breathe. I will not think about the vulnerability of laying on my back in a room full of people, and, at the end, when we all take a moment to cool down and still our minds, I will bow gracefully to my anxiety, acknowledging its presence but not allowing it to fracture my body. Yoga will not fix me, but maybe, after five sessions or ten or one hundred, I will start to learn how to unweld the backpack from the rest of my body and hand it over to Jesus, who is much more capable of carrying the weight than I ever will be. 

Sexual assault, or at least, my sexual assalt, is tricky, in that I can forget about it for days or weeks or months, and I think that I need to do a better job of facing it head on. Yoga is a good start, but so is being willing to go to a pool party with my single guy friends, or looking guys in the eyes when I talk to them. I have a daily goal to find a moment that makes me feel all closed up inside, however small it may be, and use it as an opportunity to be open instead. I hope for a day where I look forward to a boy holding my hand, where I welcome eye contact and smiles and hugs. I don’t know if this day will ever come, but I try to work towards it as if it were a possibility. 

A few weeks after my most recent first date I found myself back in therapy. “I don’t need to know if I was sexually assaulted, I already know the answer to that question,” I told her, rolling a tissue through my fingers. “What I want to know is, what comes next?”

[hurricanehouse]

Cherry Pepsi Promise

The Cherry Pepsi soda bottle sits on my dresser as I type this, between the houseplant I got for my birthday and my deodorant (Old Spice, Clean Scent). I’ve thought about throwing the bottle away countless times. Still, I can’t bring myself to do it; I can’t even bring myself to stuff it into a long forgotten bag or in the back of my closet. It seems that the empty soda bottle is here to stay.

 I’ve always been a collector, from acorns when I was 3 years, old to more realistic endeavors of stamps and stickers, and finally, paper. After my first (and only) date with Jonathan, I longed to keep something from him, but there wasn’t a scrap of anything left over from our date. At the end of the five and a half hours that we spent together, the only thing that I had to show for it was the half empty Cherry Pepsi he bought for me during our date and a smile that refused to leave my face. Realizing this, I carefully rinsed out the soda bottle and set it on my dresser. It hasn’t moved in over a month.

 The first thing that I did after Jonathan called me in August, asking me out on a date, was call my best friend Brooke. “I really like the sound of his voice,” I cried into the phone, so amazed that the boy I had a crush on from a mountain trip three years ago had actually reached out. Before the mountain trip, I knew of Jonathan as one of Brooke’s friends from college who long boarded and loved Jesus and had a crazy life story, nothing more, until one day, when Brooke texted me and asked what I was doing one weekend in early January. Suddenly, I found myself in the mountains of North Carolina, hugging this blond haired, blue-eyed boy hello.  We hiked and ate and watched scary movies that weekend, and by the time Brooke and I were driving down the mountain, I was desperate for Brooke to text Jonathan and ask him if he liked me. Jonathan and I didn’t talk for three years after that mountain trip, due to distance and timing and so many other things. I had lost hope in the practical idea of us ever talking again, until he called me that August night. “He said that he wanted to take me on a date,” I said to Brooke, before hanging up the phone.

 The second thing I did after Jonathan called me in August was hunt for my journal from three years ago. I sat up that night reading over all of the entries that mentioned him, lingering over the memories I had of him, the different ways I prayed for him, the lamenting over “why do I like this boy who lives hours away from me?” By the time Jonathan called me to ask me out on a date, it had been so long since the mountain trip that I had forgotten just how much I liked him that winter. After reading over everything, I longed to go back to the me of 3 years ago and reassure her that she would get her date with Jonathan, one day.  

 The soda bottle sits on my dresser, mocking me. Some days I wonder if Jonathan and I actually spent two months getting to know each other through texts and phone calls and our five and a half hour long date. “You were the best first date I ever went on,” I told him the night we stopped talking. “I speak with pride when I talk to my friends about you.” I’ve thought about throwing the soda bottle away, or tucking it into my closet, in some long forgotten bag, but I never will. The soda bottle will probably sit on my dresser as I move rooms and houses and states and time zones, a reminder of what I wanted for three years and got for one day.

 I remember, when Jonathan and I first started talking, that I begged God to give me everything. “Let this be real,” I prayed. “I can’t bear the thought of having Jonathan and then losing him.” I liked Jonathan in an idealized sense for several years, asking Brooke about him over coffee and wine, through texts and letters and in person. “How are Peyton and Sarah and Emily and Jonathan?” I asked, really only caring about how one of them was doing. “He’s in China.” she would say, or “he’s dating some girl. We don’t talk much anymore.” And then, finally, “he and his girlfriend broke up. He moved back from China. I think you two would be great together.”

 After Jonathan and I started talking, I liked him for other reasons. I liked the sound of his voice, that he didn’t shower me with compliments, that he didn’t obsessively text me. I liked that he called me on his birthday, leaving his friends to talk on the phone, his slightly drunk words tripping their way across miles and miles to reach my ears. I liked that the advice he gave me matched the advice of my mentors, that he wanted to hear about my job, that he cared about the work I was doing. I liked that he listened to good music, that he had an understanding of what it means to be human that is difficult for me to find in other guys. I liked that, a few nights before our date, he texted me and said “I’m excited to see you. It doesn’t matter what we do. It will be fun just to hang out. Remember, I’m not driving down to take Greenville on a date.” Those words meant everything to me, and they quieted the small anxieties in my soul that whispered, “you won’t be enough to keep his attention. He’s going to think that you’re boring.” 

 It doesn’t really matter why Jonathan and I stopped talking, only that we did. Now, when Jon Bellion drops a new album I tell my brother instead of him, or when I drink too much at a wedding and long for Jonathan, I text Brooke instead. We ended things on a “maybe someday,” at least, that’s how it felt to me. I’m fully aware that I view things between Jonathan and I differently than he does, that I have three years of a crush to back up my hope in him. It’s most likely that Jonathan sees me as some nice girl who lives far away that he took on a date once upon a time. Still, the soda bottle sits on my dresser like a promise, like the physical representation of the “maybe” that we ended on. I can’t bear to part with that promise just yet.

 I remember the exact moment that I truly started to like Jonathan. It was so cold that mountain weekend that Jonathan, Brooke, and I spent together, and I woke up in the bed thankful for sheets and pillows and heat. Brooke and I were lying there, putting off the inevitable shock of cold that was sure to come as soon as our feet touched the ground, when I heard him, Jonathan. He was in the kitchen, making coffee and listening to music, singing a line here or there. He wasn’t doing anything special. I can’t explain why that was so beautiful to me, only that it was. Brooke turned towards me and said, “whoever marries him will get this every morning.” I instantly prayed for that, not for Jonathan, specifically; but that my husband, whoever he was, would make me feel as peaceful and happy and warm as Jonathan did in that moment. 

 The soda bottle sits on my dresser. I think about trying to give it some sort of purpose. I want to throw it away, embarrassed that I am holding on so tightly to a piece of trash from a first date. I wonder how long I will keep it. Three months? Six months? I imagine, if I start dating someone new, that I will throw the bottle away with one last longing glance for the boy who makes coffee and sings, who drives three and a half hours one way to take small, insignificant me on a first date. There is a good chance that Jonathan and I will never talk in the future, that maybe we will see each other again at Brooke’s wedding, hug hello, catch up for a few minutes. I know if this happens that I will beg God “let him ask me to do something later.” More likely than not, Brooke’s wedding will be the last time that I ever see Jonathan.

However, on the off chance that Jonathan comes back, that he leans over during Brooke’s wedding and whispers into my ear “what are you doing tonight? Do you want to get something to eat?” I’m ready. I’m ready to wave Brooke off to her honeymoon and get in Jonathan’s truck, pressing play on “us” again. I look forward to the day that I can show him the soda bottle, fishing it out of some long forgotten bag, or my closet, or even picking it up from my dresser, where it sat all this time. I can’t wait to tell him “I knew you would come back for me,” because it’s true. I can’t wait to show him that through distance and time, through the doubts that stalked in the middle of the night, I believed in the small, hopeful promise of that Cherry Pepsi soda bottle.