The Surprise (or Learning How to Be a Friend)

Aleathia says:

     A few weeks ago I was asked by one of the people in my writer’s group to go to a concert. No big deal, right?

     Wrong.

     Let me lay the groundwork for you. I’m nice, but awkward. I have a hard time making friends because trust is a hurdle for me. I am nice to everyone and I can carry a conversation if you start it. I understand the basics of friendship, but in my life I have had about 5 true friends. These are people that get me. They put up with my social ineptitude time and again. They make me feel worth it.

     Anyway, the concert. So on the outside this woman and I don’t appear like we should be friends. Read that sentence again, it’s petty, I know. As you may have seen from other blogs, I am working on shedding a life based on body image. I’m not there yet. I have spent a life handing out forgiveness for being too awkward or too fat or insert-something-that-annoys-another here. You can teach an old dog new tricks, but it takes time. I’m middle aged and overweight. She is younger and a Cross Fit body builder. I’ll give you a moment to make the image.

     The take away from this concert for me was huge. We could’ve seen an orchestra or Liberace. It wouldn’t have mattered. It was the time in between the music that held the most meaning. On the hour drive there, we talked about our lives in trauma and with writing. Underneath our exteriors, under the skin, we slowly found that we were of the same tribe. Over the years, I medicated with food and she medicated with lifting. I didn’t ask her outright if that was the reason for the intense workouts, but from either point of view--food or weightlifting--it’s about control. People of trauma crave control, and as she put it, certainty.

     We shared our recent journeys in love and how we arrived at the present moment sitting in my car, splitting the countryside with our collective pain. Many times she apologized for speaking of her traumas on our first outing as friends. I didn’t acknowledge the apology because it wasn’t necessary. Car rides are the best place for people of trauma to spill demons, because the other person can only listen. There is no fixing, only understanding and clarification.

     Once at the venue, we went to buy water. She was going to buy mine because I drove. I refused and grabbed my wallet to pay for my own because it is what I do. Owe no one anything. I have lived that motto for my lifetime. She looked at me and said, “Let me buy this. This is what friends do.”

     Imagine standing in a lobby of humans and being invisibly struck by lightning.

     We talked some more as the first band came on, sitting while everyone else was standing. This was less trauma and more writing. When the band she wanted to see took the stage we stood, side by side, and something happened to me for the first time. Amongst a sea of young college students, next to this woman who is physically one of the strongest people I know, who is beautiful, and I found myself not caring about my body. I stood surrounded by beauty not worrying about how old I was, how fat I was, or whether or not I deserved to be there. I simply, was.

     The music was good. The light show amazing. The life lesson, priceless.

     In the land of healing a lifetime of traumas, these small wins feel like gold medal performances. This connected me to another human who has run a similar path, who is still working on healing and trusting and moving forward. I thank her for reaching out to ask me to do something, for noticing me, for making me feel like a valid individual. Score one for the home team.

     Thanks for reading. Be kind to each other. Write. Read books. Share your world.

Aleathia

The Lock on the Inside of My Door

Aleathia says:

      Often in life we require the unabashed courage of others to be on display before we can look inward to find our own. This happened to me this week.

      Yesterday, I finished the audio book of "Hunger" by Roxane Gay. This was a raw book about sexual assault and its lasting effects on the body and mind of a woman. Telling this story to the world had to be an excruciating, difficult task. The general public doesn't want to read about the ugliness that has happened to women, men and children. It makes them uncomfortable, and maybe, it should.

      Gay's story was preceded by the fact it was story about her body which she has struggled with since her sexual assault. She spends a lot of time drawing attention to her body and how others have treated it and still continue to treat it as a woman of size. But as I listened, I spent most of the six hours nodding my head. The trajectory of her life was oddly familiar to me.

     I have been suspicious all my life that my step-father (now deceased) sexually abused me, but I have no distinct memory I can reference. There were outward things he said like "you'd be really hot if you lost 20 pounds" or how he'd stare at me from across the room like I was a trapped gazelle he was going to rip apart with his teeth. There was his making a point to be naked around me in the common areas of our house or trying to get me to go to the nudist camp as a teenager with "the family." I did go, but I kept my clothes on in defiance. There was the eating disorder I developed and the hatred of my body that grew each year as it got bigger and bigger. There were later thoughts of suicide, body dysmorphia, and a distinct dissociation with society on a human level. There was the time he threatened the life of my brother and mother if I left the state. These were some of the things that shaped my life.

     I wanted to fit in at school. I wanted boys to like me, but in order for that to happen, I would also have to be simultaneously attractive to my step-father.  When I did bring boys home to meet my parents, my step-father would come down from his bedroom, dressed as Rambo, complete with a Bowie knife between his teeth as if he were marking territory. When I was fifteen, my own mother placed a lock on the inside of my door. This action, though a safety measure, crushed me more than anything because she knew what her husband was capable of and would rather risk my safety than be alone. I buried myself in food, books, writing and work. I joined every club I could so as to not be home because it wasn't safe for me.

     When I left home I became reckless with my body sexually and physically. There were several times I risked being raped or killed because I didn't care. I couldn't see any worth in myself beyond being a sexual object. I learned quickly that how I looked mattered to men. If I were willing to give up some of my morals, then I was worthy of their time. Except for the man I married and later divorced, I chose men who were not always kind. If they were kind, they were alcoholics and so severely depressed that they took up all my time. If I cared for others, it followed that I didn't have time to care for myself. Self care? What's that?

     I never spoke up because like all children, I didn't think any adults would believe me. When your own mother turns her head to look away then you figure the options to share your truth are very small. I wish I would have had someone to tell me it wasn't my fault, someone to save me.

     My last long term relationship devastated me. Living with a narcissist is not recommended. He still haunts me around unexpected corners, but over the last two years I have nearly exorcised him from my life. He took away my trust of men, but what he gave me was an unexpected openness to my own self. Surviving a man like that woke me up to learning how to find my voice and stand up. Through all of the personal traumas in my life I have always tried to find the lesson or the silver lining. If I had to suffer through something so scarring then I better damn well learn something.

     Several times during Roxane Gay's "Hunger" I found myself in tears. I was empathetic to her story though I feel my trauma was so much less than hers. I know trauma isn't comparative because they are personal events, but I still feel mine is less. Her story lead me to look at how much a person can achieve after such a damaging event. She says she is still healing herself in her 40's. I'm still healing myself as well. She is helping us all heal. She is making us visible. She is standing at the front of the line giving a voice to those of us who have been quiet too long.

     If you need help, someone is there at the National Sexual Assault Hotline

     Thank you for reading. Be kind to each other. Write. Read books. Share your story.

Aleathia

The Body Is Not An Apology: Unapologetic Inquiry #1

Aleathia says:

     Here I am again, random, as always with a topic that falls from out of the blue. I’ve had a week off from work and instead of going places like originally planned, I stayed home. This was no lazy week off. I have been cleaning out my house of the remnants of my toxic boyfriend. I have been cleaning out my soul. Personally, I am still reeling from the Philadelphia trip and it is hard for me to shake the feeling that even when I thought I was being still enough to unpack my lifelong luggage, I was still running. I am definitely afraid of the ugly I will find and have to claim with a flag of my country. No one wants ugly.

     I took the rare Sunday off to take my son to the Ithaca Market. When I had weekends off we would go all the time. It was a nice little trip to share coffee and a pastry, conversation, and sometimes a walk. We’d soak up the sights and smells of an open air market and feel good about life for a little while. Our usual bakery wasn’t there and it gave me a little panic because things would not be “like they always are”. I scoured the market three times for them each time hoping they would appear until Kai pointed out that a place we passed three times had perfectly beautiful pastry. This meant I had to step out of my comfort and try something new. I’m not opposed to this concept at all because I love new things, but I had been testing my mettle all week and looked forward to the comfort of sameness. The pastry was delightful. The time was not spoiled.

     We went to the Commons and walked around. It was hot and we were overdressed with the hope of fall. We were sweaty and getting cranky. We stopped in the DeWitt Mall because Kai wanted to go to the guitar shop. He is dropping chorus this year in favor of guitar lessons. He wanted an instruction booklet to help him along at home. I picked up one for my Ukulele that sits sad and underplayed. I took a cue from his playbook. I need to dust off my life and make time for all things. We stopped in the Buffalo Street Books. I don’t go there often and I’m not sure why. It’s a very lovely shop. I also have been trying to not buy too many books since I have shelves of unread wonders already.

     A book immediately caught my eye: “The Body is Not An Apology” by Sonya Renee Taylor. It’s colorful and flashy but something in me made me tiptoe to reach it from the top shelf. I opened it and saw things in myself that made me cringe and I put it back on the shelf. I walked around looking at other things. I found a pencil sharpener for my specific pencils I found in Philadelphia. I found a poetry book. And then, I was standing in front of this book again with a feeling of dread and panic. Then I was at the register buying it.

     In the quiet of my house, I read the prologue and sobbed. Do you know that kind of sorrow that is mixed with the realization that you have been so cruel to yourself for a lifetime? Yes, it was that sort of sobbing. I recognized myself. I had forgotten what I looked like underneath the shame.

     I’m in chapter one and Sonya professes that she is not going to fix my problems with self-esteem or self-assurance, but she is waking me up to myself. She calls it radical self-love and maybe this is what I need after 40 years of putting myself down, hiding who I am, being something for someone else, harboring abuses not meant for me, and being quiet when inside there was screaming. There are “Unapologetic Inquiry” bubbles in this book. Questions to be answered honestly without worry of shame. Normally, I would keep such things to myself, but I feel like this process needs a wider opening. My average post gets 30-40 visits. That is wide enough. So without further ado, here is Unapologetic Inquiry #1:

“We all live in multiple intersections of identity. What are your intersections? How do your multiple identities affect each other?”

     I am a middle aged white woman, divorced, and single. I am a product of childhood trauma. I am a mother of a transgender son. I am an emergency room nurse, an artist, a writer, and a Buddhist. I do all these things living with a thyroid and an ovarian condition, arthritis, depression, anxiety, and adult onset ADD.

     The childhood trauma informs all my other identity intersections. It was the base of my life. It was how I learned to do everything. It steered me to choose a career that is filled with trauma everyday from strangers. These traumas change the way I look at the world as an artist and a writer. These traumas give me something to meditate over. The combination of my health issues help me with my self shame for being overweight. There are wheels that spin so fast I can’t get off without feeling like it will send me into a depression, so, I stay on the wheel. The childhood trauma made me strong and allowed me to stay alive and achieve, but it made me go about it in the wrong way. I have achieved goals without letting people in my life, without sharing the best parts of me because I don’t trust them to not break them and walk away.

***

      In the last month, I have started to see how these intersections behave with each other and this might be the key to recovery if I can be brave enough to keep looking. I am not going to profess that I will be any less random on this blog, but my hope is to share these Unapologetic Inquiries in case you can’t find the book or you don’t have access to it. Ask yourself the same questions and see what comes up. I’m tired of living in a world that is defined by others who don’t know me or care about me, and who think I should look, act, feel like something that pleases them. I’m not sure how many years I have left in the world, but I would like to know at least some of the time I staked claim to them.

Thanks for reading. This was a long one. Be Kind. Love each other.

Aleathia