Me Also: A Non-Active Participant's Story

It's been about 12 years since I sat down and wrote about my first sexual assault. It's laughable to think back on. It was more or less a two page, overly-abstract essay about an affair between a high school freshman girl and her then English teacher. In hindsight, of course that's the story I wrote when I was 19. I think that was about as much of the experience as I had processed at that time.

I was making the bed this morning, and for some reason going over the story in my head. I don't know what triggered it today, it comes and goes when it wants. But normally I would outline the story of what happened, maybe to keep working through it - going painfully point by point in my head to remember and re-remember for myself what actually happened. For whatever reason I have developed this new method of processing the event, I found myself starting to choke on it. They've welled up into a knot and the words are just holding themselves tightly in my chest.

So here we are. I know exactly what I am going to say, but I am terrified to say it. I would say still terrified, but I don't think I have ever come this close to sharing this story publicly. I genuinely worry about the ramifications of my words personally and professionally. It's a silly little blog and I have no intention of naming names. And I have shared this story with many people over many years. But something about putting it in words requires owning it. And I think my hand is being forced to own it now. By my heart.

Last year when the #MeToo movement started to pick up steam, my depression came at me strong and hard. It wasn't any particular victim or person being accused that triggered me. It was the whole weight of it. Everyone had an opinion. People were debating openly on social media what qualified as sexual assault. And even worse, what didn't qualify as sexual assault. And I think it was that idea that brought to life the reality of what had happened to me when I was 13. Because for years I had written it off as not being a molestation or rape or anything forced per say. So it just wasn't that bad.

My psychiatrist and I have covered the fact that many victims will blame themselves for being active participants in their own abuse. Because we didn't say no, or we feel as though we invited or encouraged the behavior. An understanding of this, in addition to the constant conversations about it around me, starting bringing to surface details of this experience I must have repressed. Details that made me finally feel as though I wasn't a willing participant, I was a child who couldn't have or shouldn't have been forced to make the distinction between affection and abuse from someone that should have known the difference.

When I was 13 years old, a then 29 year old teacher started an emotional and physical relationship with me. We were around each other all the time. During school where he taught classes to my peers, and after school where we would spend more one-on-one time in drama class, show choir, and speech team. He was always around, not only myself, but all of the under age school children just trying to be involved in the arts. Left with him after 3pm when the other teachers have gone home, the school empties out, and you can trust your children are in the safety of their after school programs.

At the time I had a really big crush on him. How could a 13 year old girl getting attention from an older man NOT have a crush? I grew up on 90210 and Dawson's Creek. This was the teenage drama story-line of my dreams. We would sneak phone calls late at night on my home landline and he would come pick me up at the end of our cul de sac so know one would see it was him. We went out swing dancing once, a few towns over where we most likely wouldn't run into anyone we'd know. He made me mix CDs, and I still even have a poem he wrote me when I turned 14 about how we were closer to finally being together publicly.

These are the things I remembered for so long. Because I did participate in them. I could own that happening because it wasn't a bad thing I let happen, it was inappropriate - yes. But I was there too. It was consent as much as consent can be given at the age of 14.

But there are big parts of the picture I had cut out and kept from myself for years to not see the situation for what it was. He lived with head of security for the whole high school at the time, a cop, the irony not lost on me. Through this he had access to her office in the school and learned where all the security cameras were. He learned the corner angles of certain hallways he could touch me in without being detected. The doors he could pull me behind in the middle of practices, rehearsals, classes, when he wanted, to touch my child body.

I remember the smell of the gymnastics mat he brought up to the dusty choir robe closet that he laid on the floor for us to "fool around on". I had only had my first kiss a few months prior to this, and so fooling around for me was making out. But now I can remember him pushing my hands down his pants, or forcing his mouth up my shirt - to my resistance. And worse, all the times I didn't resist, but I now vividly remember the feeling in my stomach that I didn't want it to be happening. But I was afraid he wouldn't like me if I made him stop.

The reason it stopped wasn't because he was caught, or he worried what he was doing was wrong. The reason it stopped was because after a few months of trying to push my hand down his pants, and me resisting doing anything more than letting him touch me while I lie there, he got bored and didn't want to try any more. I remember the words verbatim, "Whats the point?"

I think of the calculated 30 year old man, looking for dark corners to hide in, trying to make a physically uncomfortable 14 year old girl do things she told him, trusted in him, that she wasn't ready to do. Then the mix CDs and poems don't seem like something I signed up for. They seem more like tools that were used to keep me on the line for him to sexually abuse a student, a child. I was a child.

It's been 17 years since this happened. And I honestly feel like I am just now starting to process it in any real way. It's required acknowledging that my body has held onto physical trauma from that situation. That I was emotionally manipulated in a way that directly impacted (impacts) relationships I have had with every male in my life to this day. Not just males, but any person in a position of authority or mentor-ship. He reshaped my entire life of academia and involvement with the arts, negatively. But finally after 17 years I don't see that teacher that broke my heart when I was 14; I see my sexual abuser.

I knew sooner than this it was a fucked up situation. And I have carried a lot of guilt with me even since 16 or so that I didn't speak up or tell anyone. The first excuse was that I didn't want to cause my family the embarrassment. I would see stories on the news of the girls that brought down teachers, I knew the teachers were obviously in the wrong, but it always kind of felt like they vilified the girls that "brought them down". And I didn't want to be that.

I finally wrote a letter to the then superintendent of the school when I was 25 years old or so. Being apart of my school's drama club alumni page on Facebook I saw that he was teaching at the school again. And I felt strongly enough at that point that they had a right to know what he had done. I wasn't looking to press charges or do anything about it - I just didn't feel right knowing he was in those hallways with more classes of children who shouldn't have to write these blogs in their 30s. I never got a reply.

So here I am, years later, telling the story as it was then and as it is now. I am secretly glad 20 somethings Katie was able to protect herself from some of this. She was already going through so god damn much. I feel way more equipped to handle processing these memories now than I could have then.

But even now I am taken aback by how profoundly the need to write this down came over me today. Maybe I am tired of processing it alone. Maybe I am tired of people defining what sexual assault looks like and doesn't look like. Maybe I just need another version of this story to exist so someone else who has been here with a line-cook when they were 16, or any older boy or girl (17 is still old enough to assault someone Mr. Kavanaugh) can know they didn't participate. That they didn't ask for it. And that they shouldn't have had to be the one to stop a sexual assault.

This Blog is My Hobby

I have had depression my whole life. (Can someone check and see how many times I have published THAT sentence in this blog?) I like to preface stories with this because it's important to know anything you are thinking in response to this story, I already know. I am not a depression expert, nor am I a doctor. I am simply stating that this has been my normal long enough to not be alarmed by it, but simply to work through it as it comes. As it always comes.

I started a new job just shy of 2 months ago. It is the most ambitions position I have ever accepted, and I knew I was going to have to step up my game significantly to hold my own in this new environment. And what gives me confidence to walk into roles like this is my undying passion to do good. To be good. To produce good results and be successful. It's that mentality that assures me I can do anything in time if I work hard enough at it. It's that same mentality that has made this job a huge trigger for my depression and anxiety.

You see, that undying passion to be good has a tendency of taking up more brain space than it should. And while wanting to learn and be effective in your position is certainly not a bad thing, when that desires creeps into every aspect of your life and starts to blend into everything you do, you can't ever do enough to feel like you are doing good. It never turns off long enough to see the accomplishments behind you. And the standards you hold yourself to professionally become very unattainable standards you hold yourself to in personal relationships or emotionally. You can look at the whole picture objectively like this. Acknowledge what those feelings are, and how unfair they are to put yourself through or hold yourself to. But depression gives no fucks. All it knows is your aren't doing good enough.

Here's a value-add for those of you playing at home: now that I am settling into a job that provides me more money than I've ever made, freedom to work from home, freedom to be creative and excel in a prestigious environment filled with opportunity; I feel guilty as hell being depressed. It is unreasonable to have my emotional reaction to success and monetary stability be stifling sadness. It is unreasonable that after 15+ years of depression and anxiety, and medications, and cognitive behavioral therapy, and in-patient stays, that I still can't just be fucking happy in this moment with everything I have. It's a great cocktail, the depression + anxiety + guilt that I assume I learn from Catholicism. 

I have been more sensitive to things I shouldn't be. I find I have more triggers in this particular shade of depression than others. I get really sad when my boyfriend gets excited about Marvel films. Hear me out. I don't get upset that he loves Marvel films, I love that he loves Marvel films. I hate that he has something to get excited about and to look forward to because I don't. I hate that I don't have Marvel films. I am basically triggered by anyone with a hobby. Or that can stay up past 9pm to do social things. Or that don't feel sick to their stomach looking at pictures of themselves. Essentially I am triggered by every representation of what I am not doing for myself in my own life. That's exhausting. Especially because all I have the energy to do is hold myself to unrealistic expectations and put myself down for not being great all the time. And that's a full time job. Who has time for hobbies? 

My job is challenging. I am proud to tell people what I do. And I am proud with how much I have learned in 2 months. I know I will find balance again. I know when I have settled into this position my hobbies will come back, and I will be able to make moves without being terrified of failing or letting myself down. I also know that when that happens my depression may manifest itself into new form to meet me there. And that's fine. I'll just come back and write a blog about it.  I feel better, thanks for listening.