balancing act

These are the words I'm forcing myself to write.

I have not written a post in the last couple weeks because I literally had no idea what to write about. It's not that there's nothing going on in my life. There's actually tons. Producer session callbacks for major tv shows, hanging out with friends, throwing a Dr. Seuss themed baby shower for friends who are set to have their first baby any day now, a second semester of American Sign Language that I'm taking, events, trips, surprises... you name it, it's been happening, and I've been high on life. I've been so deliriously happy and grateful.

And yet.

I can't help but feel so saddened by the events that are going on in the world. Earthquakes, tsunami's, floods, drought... from Haiti to New Zealand to Australia to Japan...

What right do I have to post about my little life when there is so much loss and sadness in the world? What right do I have to be happy with my Stuff and my Things when I go to bed at night and when I wake up the next morning there are ten thousand less people on this planet?

It seems like there is a huge lack of balance in the world right now. And because of that, I've been feeling unbalanced in my own life. I swing from joyous about my own life to discouraged about others. And I have been trying to share my "wealth" with others, in the form of money donated, time and energy spent, gratitude and graciousness towards others expressed... but everything still feels so extreme and out of balance.

What on earth could I possibly blog about that could make whatever I have to say anything less than trivial?

Just this: that balance is achieved, one step at a time, not through guilt at the blessings we have, nor ingratitude of them, not through ignorance of what is happening to others, nor journalistic voyeurism, but through love. Love of each other, across oceans and tectonic plates and political parties and religious beliefs. And it is right, when we have been feeling lack, to receive joy and love into our lives, to celebrate. And it is right, when we have an abundance of joy and love in our lives, to share it with others, across oceans and tectonic plates and political parties and religious beliefs.

The sentences above is the only tiny, humble thing I have to offer right now to those of you who read my blog. I hope it is enough.

"I mean not that other men be eased, and ye burdened: but by an equality, that now at this time your abundance may be a supply for their want, that their abundance also may be a supply for your want: that there may be equality."

Balance. Pure and simple. And loving.

Give me something I can hit.

I would like to point out that, at the very core of my being, I am a geek. Why do I bring this up now, when I'm about to talk about a very personal, very serious subject? Because I, like most geeks, use fantasy and fiction to cope and deal with very personal, very serious things. I'll get back to this in a minute. But first, my actual point.

A couple weeks ago, a bill was proposed by Rep. Chris Smith of New Jersey - H.R.3: "No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act." Now, maybe you don't think I get it, but I do. Nobody, and I mean NOBODY, likes the fact that abortions exist. We can all agree that if we lived in a society where there are less abortions, it would be a more emotionally healthy place to live.

But let's deal with the harsh reality that right now, if the new healthcare plan goes into effect, taxpayers would help women afford abortions for rape and incest. These are abortions that, should the woman choose to have one, are going to put the woman's emotional and physical well-being first before anything else. And as much as abortion saddens me, I cannot look a woman in the eye who was sexually assaulted and tell her that she should not have access to the Plan B Morning After pill, that she should not be able to have an abortion if the pill is no longer an option, that instead she should be forced to carry her rapist's baby for 40 weeks, if she cannot mentally, physically, or emotionally do this safely.

Fortunately, Chris Smith of New Jersey agrees with me. Which is why he is sponsoring a law to legally re-define rape.

Were you drugged at a party and raped? Not anymore. Doesn't count as rape.

Are you mentally disabled and you were coerced into sex? That's not rape anymore.

Did your father, uncle, or grandfather rape you, therefore committing incest, but you're over the age of 18? You weren't raped.

Did your date rape you? Nope. He didn't. Because you weren't raped if he didn't beat you up.

Mr. Smith decided that instead of telling a rape victim she couldn't have an abortion, it would just be a lot easier if he pretended she wasn't a rape victim in the first place. Under this new bill, only "forcible" rape counts as rape if a woman needs her rapist's baby aborted. But if a woman had the ever-living shit beaten out of her, congratulations to her! The United States government recognizes that she was, in fact, raped. Everything else is a little hazy and gray. And the bill even takes it one step further and notes that "it would deny tax credits to companies that offer health plans that cover abortions and it would block anybody with insurance that covers abortions from receiving federal subsidies, even if the abortion portion is paid separately with personal funds."

PERSONAL FUNDS. As in, nobody else is paying for this abortion of a baby that a woman became pregnant with because someone physically forced her to have sex with him, just her - and she still wouldn't be able to get an abortion.

Dealing with the tragic reality of the existence of abortions is one thing. It takes sensitivity, kindness, empathy, and an honest look at the problems in this society that lead to unplanned pregnancies.

Punishing rape victims by violating their rights all over again is an entirely SEPARATE UNIVERSE.

So when I heard this, my brain exploded, my heart sobbed, and I immediately went to my safe little Geek heaven where I thought: Man. Wouldn't it be awesome if there was a superhero who fought rape? And better yet, if this superhero not only fought rape, but fought those who seek, unintentionally but mean-spiritedly, to keep rape victims even more powerless?

I wanted a superhero - a female superhero - who was strong and smart and kind, to fly around at night and kick the crap out of would-be rapists everywhere. I want her to have her day job as someone who testifies before Congress as a survivor herself of physical assault - and who changes minds daily about what rape really is, who it really happens to, and what we can do to prevent it. I want this superhero to talk not only to girls about defending themselves and staying in safe situations, but also to boys about what it means to really be men - and encourage them to never stand by and watch as a friend of theirs becomes a rapist, either.

And I thought about this particular comic. It's from The Ultimates, Vol. 1, issue #9, where Captain America is with The Avengers and he finds out that one of his "friends", Hank, has been beating his wife. Repeatedly. Since college. In fact, Hank once hit his wife Janet so hard he broke the upper part of her mouth into two pieces.

Captain America, being Captain America, goes out on a revenge mission. And when he finds Hank, who can change size and grow bigger, he says to him:

"Give me something I can hit."

No, this is not my art, buy it off Amazon, please don't sue me, Marvel.

And then he beats Hank down, even as Hank has grown twelve times his size, until he's nothing but a pathetic pile of bruised, terrified little boy under a bunch of pipes. And as Captain America walks away, he asks Hank over his shoulder:

"How big do you feel now?"

No, this is not my art, buy it off Amazon, please don't sue me, Marvel.

So let me ask you, Representative Smith: Now that you've told America what you feel defines rape, now that you've told the women of this country whether or not they've been raped or not, now that you've told rape survivors that you would like to have further say over what happens to their bodies:

How big do you feel now?

to love and to be loved...

One of the comments that struck me the most when I wrote "Riot Proof" was Eric's. You can go back and read it if you want but the gist of it was how hard it is to be a man in love with a woman who is a survivor of sexual violence. I don't really think that these men get enough credit for how hard their job is - to love someone who has been so deeply hurt and betrayed in such a physical way. So I'm writing this post for those men.

This one's for you, Eric.

The first thing to know, guys, is that you aren't the doctor OR the wound; you're the nurse. This means that whatever is going to get healed, it's the woman's job to heal. You cannot heal her wounds - she must learn to heal and to find her own power and strength again. If you do that for her it's not going to work. Trust me on this one - I spent a good couple boyfriends putting any hope I'd ever feel normal again on them. So not fair.

As much as guys long to fix and save the women they are with, women who are survivors have to learn to rely on themselves. So, guys, you're not the doctor who heals a patient - you're the nurse who can make things better by listening when she tells you what hurts, being supportive, and assisting with the first-aid when there's an emergency.

Nor are you the cause of your partner's wounds. She might try to make it seem that way - but no, not all men are equal, and you loving her and wanting to be intimate with her does not make you a lecherous, insensitive dickhead. It makes you human with a pulse. Congratulations.

The two things I hear the most from guys who are with women who are survivors are: 1) Why can't I fix it, and 2) I feel really, really guilty for wanting to have sex with her.

I've already addressed #1. It's not your job to fix her, heal her, or save her. It really, REALLY isn't. She's on her own path towards recovery and you don't have to carry her down that path; just hold her hand like she's your equal, not your project. She's not the bathroom tub. She's a living, human being who might be a little chipped and cracked here and there but she is not broken. (I am of the opinion that it is physically impossible to break the human spirit.)

#2 is harder. When you love someone, madly, deeply, Shakespeareaningly (totally coining that word), you want to be close. You want to be intimate and you want to feel like the two of you are the only two people in the entire world, regardless of how thin the walls of your apartment may or may not be. I get it. I've been there.

It's important to remember that when you're dating someone who has had sex turned on them as a weapon, to be used for the purposes of control, power, anger, or force, instead of love - that you have to start over from the beginning. You have to give these women intimacy in the form of love, kindness, gentleness, patience. You get to show how unalike some men really are from others. For this reason I advocate cuddling like there is no tomorrow. And guys, I mean cuddling with no expectation of sex ever happening. Cuddling while watching television, cuddling while reading books with each other, cuddling while eating ice cream. Cuddling while paying the bills. Whatever.

For a girl to simply be held, with no expectation of sex, is to feel safe and loved. It is a huge, huge step for girls who have been violated in the worst way to feel safe in your arms. And it's an incredible turn on. Try it sometime - and this is for everyone, including women - try just holding your partner in your arms and brushing your fingers through their hair and nuzzling their neck and telling your partner that it's not about this ultimately resulting in sex, it's about being in love and showing how much love there really is.

It's a game-changer in a relationship, it really is. And it breaks the spell. Because here's where the pain of what happened really lives: that a woman at some point or another cannot always distinguish between the people who have hurt her and the people who mean her no harm. It's not always clear in our heads; sometimes everything is gray and everyone is suspect. And we feel horrible that we can't see the difference between our predators and our partners. But that's not your fault, guys. And if you stay patient, if you listen, if you love us the way we need to be loved, everything can change.

I'm living proof. As are a lot of my friends.

the kids are alright

I know that last week I wrote a deeply personal post about what I'm going through right now and then just sort of left people hanging - I didn't mean that to be the intention, but sometimes, when something FINALLY gets out of your system, you just sort of sit back and let the arrows hit what they must. As a result of my post my family is now going through some pretty dramatic changes, none of which I feel the least bit sorry about. It was change that needed to happen because it was the sort of change that happens when the truth is revealed, and too many families with experiences similar to mine drown under the weight of what is not being said, what will never be said.

A couple people emailed to ask how I was doing, and my very honest answer is: I'm doing great. I'm doing better than great. I feel freer than I have in ages. And I have many of you, both my personal and blogger friends, to thank for that, as your support and love and kindness and understanding has traveled through the wires and onto the keyboard and into my heart. Thank you, each and every one of you: thank you so much.

Although I would like to ask some of you who called me amazing and incredible and strong and beautiful that you know I once closed the refrigerator door on my head, right? Right then, moving along. Nothing to see here.

Some of your comments were so incredible, in fact, that I am writing another post in a few days just so I can directly address them. But I wanted to write a quick "Hi, I'm alive and well" post first so y'all didn't worry.

Before I take off, quick anecdote on how to tell if you're an A-Type like me:

I got food poisoning late Saturday night (did you know that you're not supposed to eat a bleu cheese burger with mayo after it's been left in a hot car for four hours? Why didn't anyone tell me this? Sometimes I'm such a guy) and as I'm leaning over the toilet, knowing that I'm about to lose my stomach any minute, I notice...

...that my toilet is way too dirty to throw up in. So (and I am not making this up), I grab the toilet brush and promptly scrub down my toilet and then clean the seat with some moistened toilet paper to get it all pristine-

- before promptly throwing up in it. A girl's gotta have standards, people.

I'm feeling much better now!

Tracy: 1 Mayo: 0.

riot proof

Well, here we are.

Apologies to all of you who, when I wrote that I was prepping for some serious change in my life last week, were thinking, ooh, haircut, yeah! while I was thinking more along the lines of ooh, unveiling my emo drama that I don't even talk to my closest friends about...yeah.

I'll just come right out of the gate with the fact that I'm much, much, MUCH better now.

I came to a realization a few weeks ago that I was Very Not Okay. I suppose you want the back story; I suppose you want to ride along with me on the journey. That's okay, today I can do that. Not many days can I let myself take people's hands and say let me show you all of it, the whole big mess, but today is different and the sun is shining and last night I fell asleep feeling brave. Today I have strength enough to outshine the stars.

I am a victim survivor of sexual molestation. It started when I was young, very young, long before I knew what words to call it but the wrongness of it still settled in my tiny body and troubled my small heart. It continued on and off during my teenage years with a relative of mine, until my situation changed and that relative no longer had the same amount of access to me. It took me until my freshman year of college to call it by its true name and start learning to take the anger and numbness that had built inside me like a wall and start dismantling it, brick by grieving brick, and turn it into tears. It took this girl physically taking me by the hand my senior year of college, after three years of public meltdowns and panic attacks and nightmares, to get me professional help. Lira, thank you. You saved my life.

I am not on any medication. I exercise 2-3 times a week to keep the darkness at bay. Most of the time the endorphins are enough. Sometimes they are not.

I have confronted my abuser, who is now getting on in years. Each time I tell him what he has done, he is humbled, he apologizes, he says he is a changed man, and that he is deeply shamed. I do not doubt the genuineness of his remorse, but what I doubt is the capacity for this man to change. For here is where it all goes even more wrong.

Each time we have a conversation where I inform him of what he has done to me and then politely and respectfully ask him for the only thing I have ever asked of him in my entire life - to simply be left alone to live my life in peace - a couple months of silence go by. And then the phone calls, emails, and letters resume. Why aren't we talking? they all beg. What did I do wrong?

Turns out, this person wipes their memory clean of any conversation we had regarding what was done to me. I relive, again and again, my loss of innocence while my abuser conveniently forgets what part he played in it. Again and again, we did our hellish dance, abuser and survivor, me reminding him, him apologizing, then him forgetting and picking up right where he left off, trying to get me back into his life, the never-ending persistence of phone calls and heart-broken letters.

So I ended the dance. I stopped responding, I stopped playing the game altogether. My sanity was at a breaking point, my heart was heavy, my appetite non-existent and my sleep occupied with terrible, terrible nightmares. In order to survive, I chose me over him. I've never regretted it.

But I still protected my abuser - from himself. I stopped confronting him and instead let him name the terms and try to step over boundaries while I turned myself into a ghost, drifting this way and that to avoid the inevitable confrontation that gives no closure, only opens the wounds that cannot heal because he will not ever let them close.

I am done with that too, now. Because what drove me to the edge and parked me on the cliff, what made me stare down into the deep, dark pit of what I'd created for myself, given my non-existent ability to say no and to keep letting others walk all over me, is that my tormentor found my blog.

And he began reading it and sending me emails commenting on it and telling my family about the pictures he saw of all of them on it. Every time I sat down to blog I felt like a piece of tape was over my mouth, knowing that whatever I wrote he would read, and I would feel violated all over again - hunted, trapped. Angry. Very, very angry. Fucking furious, you might say.

And here we are. Backed into a corner yet again, I contemplated flight, I contemplated shutting this blog down permanently, I considered turning it private (with Blogger that's a pain in the ass) and I considered moving to Hawaii where no one could ever find me ever again. (Okay, not that last one, but that's because of my budget.)

Or I could stand and unfold myself. Because here it is, here's the huge thing I was missing, the perspective I was so badly lacking:

I am not a child anymore. I am not backed into a corner because there IS NO FUCKING CORNER. There is only huge sky and I'm the one with wings, not him. Trapped down there by his own limitations with his limited view of the world, stuck in the past ... I'm not down there with him unless I choose to be. And I choose not to be ever again.

Childhood trauma hurts us in so many ways, but the way in which it hurts the most is that we can be 47 years old, eating cereal one morning, and someone can say one thing and suddenly we are four years old and helpless all over again. The trigger is pulled and the gun goes off and we are so, so small and wounded and helpless and angry about all of it. And that feeling doesn't go away until we let it. But we are never trapped with those triggers, nor do other people have power over us, even if they once did. I used to think that only death would give me peace.

I got it so wrong. Love gives us peace.

Love of self, love of others, love of this stupid gorgeous world and how incredibly beautiful and ridiculous it is. I have never sought revenge, never meant to hurt this person anymore than they set out to hurt me, but it is not my job anymore to take care of him at my own risk.

So I'm changing the way I look at things. If I'm not trapped in ANY thing I do, how much power do I really have? I don't have to be in relationships or friendships that suck... I don't have to feel trapped by a job or a certain situation... I don't owe anyone anything except to take care of myself.

I just got that. I just got that for what feels like the first time in my life a couple days ago, and I feel so old and so young at the same time because I want to laugh and cry.

It's all going to be okay, people. I promise you - it's going to be okay.

desperate acts of magic

So I kind of stole this post title from the name of a low-budget film that's auditioning actors right now. I saw it in my email alerts that notify me which projects are "right" for me on a casting website and then saw that the girl they wanted to cast needs to be in her 40's (um, not me) and be able to juggle chainsaws on fire and other cool stuff like that. Also not me.

But I liked the phrase, and I opened up my blog today and couldn't think of anything to write about, as things are kind of quiet in my head today, so I figured a good title might help. How many of you guys do that? Do you ever think, if I could just have a really great title, or opening line, I could muscle through everything else? If things start out perfect, it'll do all the work itself from here on out...

Of course, life doesn't really work that way. Life is never hitting the top of a mountain and then putting it on cruise control as you sail down, windows lowered, music blasting as your hair whips around your face and you grin into the sunshine. Life is a steady, uphill climb with a sometimes crappy view, not to mention the fact that you spend about half of it studying various rocks and leaves and wondering if you haven't been in This.Exact.Place before. Many, many times before.

My life continues on with its challenges, just as it does in everyone else's. I'm very happy with my tattoo, although it's now in the itchy phase and that's driving me nuts; I'm going to be in a Steampunk-themed wedding on Saturday where I get to fulfill my lifelong dream of wearing combat boots with a dress to a wedding; and my Easter celebration with my family on Sunday was, in a word, perfect. It started off as a sort of wish-list that we all made of how we have always wanted the holiday to be: my middle older brother wanted to dye Easter eggs, my cousin wanted to have an Easter Egg hunt, I wanted to give everyone Easter baskets. So here we are, this pack of weird grown ups with messy childhoods, creating perfect memories when we are in our twenties and thirties and fifties. Life may be uphill but it doesn't mean that at any moment you can't branch off to the side and create something beautiful that you may have missed the first time around.

The problems I spoke of way back when I took a blogging break are still very present; it's just that my attitude toward them has shifted. I'm never going to have a life without problems; that's absurd and honestly, more than a little boring. So instead of whining about them I just adjusted and made room for them in my life and pushed a little more love their way. Because there isn't much that can be done to fix these kinds of problems, and lord knows I'm a fixer. I'm a first degree fixer that takes my hammer and nails to my own and everyone else's problems and hammers away until I'm exhausted and there is nothing left for me to do. And when I'm told that I can't fix it...that I can't fix someone's finances, or get someone a job, or bring someone's pet back...

or (::deep breath::) find a cure for someone's cancer...

Well. Anyways. Desperate acts of magic are in order, I suppose. And while I remain an optimist, while I believe in a universal intelligence that my particular belief system calls God, who is loving and good and kind... I'm long past thinking that the universe owes anybody anything. So the desperate acts of magic don't include me bargaining with any higher power or asking for favors. My acts of magic come from sitting down in the middle of the chaos and continuing to laugh and smile and breathe and eat cheeseburgers. It's our unbreakable, unflinching human spirit with the capacity to find joy in the smallest of things in life, even amidst the darkness, that is the real magic. And if I have a choice, which I do...

I'm gonna choose to do that one.

Someone who knows all too well what I'm going through gave me a poem last week by one of my favorite poets, Rumi. It's been folded up carefully and sitting in my back pocket for a week, giving me grace and strength when I had none left to give:

Rumi - Guest House

This being human is a guest house
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all.
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

"Meet them at the door laughing" - this is what I am doing. Magic indeed.