processing
I'm thinking maybe it must be close to Halloween, what with all these skeletons running amok!
Whenever a repressed or denied memory comes up, I have to go through a process. I've had some amazing mentors and life coaches and teachers and role models, who have walked me through the paces enough times that I've gotten pretty good at going it alone. Every once in a while, though, it's nice to have some assistance, which came today from two places.
The first was from a message I got from an old but new again friend. We've been learning how parallel our lives actually were, and she disclosed to me yet another tie we shared. She put this feeling of being empowered ever so eloquently: "Though I was decimated at first, now - I feel like a warrior. They couldn't take me down [then] - they don't stand a ****ing chance at 34. Hear us roar, indeed. And the roar...it's a warning, a**holes."
With most things I end up dealing with after the fact, the first stage of healing is anger. Guilt, shame, being the victim are all passive - anger is the first step towards action. The tricky part is knowing when acknowledging the anger becomes needlessly hurtful to people around you. Lashing out at my friends and family right now would be detrimental, so if you all hear me growling in the next few days, leave me space - I don't want to bite you. The other tricky part is knowing when to push the anger out, so you don't become embittered by it.
The second came from another old but new friend, who pushed some buttons for me. This person has NO idea where my buttons are, but they were pushed anyways. The gist of what was implied was how unfair it was for people to get a bad first impression of Popular Boy via my blog, and that maybe saying it in a public forum was maybe a little much, since he's a nice guy now, and something like this could put his good life at stake. What I heard was, "This boy is more entitled to his privacy than you are to your voice, so you shouldn't have said it out loud, where people might hear you." Not what she *said* but what I *heard* Very important distinction there.
I'm in full agreement that Popular Boy doesn't deserve to have his life pulled out from under him for having really crappy judgment as a teenager. On his part, it was a pretty minor infraction in the grander scheme of things, and I've said already that it wasn't the kissing or groping that haunts me. It's what happened after, but as we've seen illustrated here, everyone wants to hone in on the kissing and groping part. I'm not about to be made the victim here - I chose to go to his house, I chose to stick around after learning his parents weren't there, I let him take my hand, I followed him downstairs. I was sort of OK with the kissing part, and if I'm going to be completely honest, I'll admit that as unattractive and repulsive as I found the boy, as it was happening, I was debating how it would be socially advantageous of me to establish some sort of alliance with this boy. I decided it wasn't worth it when the hand went in the pants.
Now - I need to clarify a little something here before we continue, about me, and my understanding of sex back then. I think I mentioned I was painfully naive. Though I thought I understood sex, generally speaking, and how it involved two people, the bearded nun who spoke to us of the evils of intercourse from under her habit really didn't do a very good job of explaining the mechanics of it. The religious slant to our Catholic lesson in the birds in the bees went something like this: sex is for procreation not enjoyment. If you enjoy sex, you will got to hell. If you have premarital sex, you will go to hell. If you use protection, you will go to hell. If you have protected sex before you get married, you will DEFINITELY go to hell. Etc. I only knew that if you did sex right, you got a husband and a baby, and if you did it wrong, you were going to hell.
Sitting around listening to the girls talk about going bases with boys, I played along. "Second base, yeah, wow - cool." I'd seen people kissing and holding hands - I figured that was pretty OK - and I did understand that the bases lead to Going All the Way, and that Going All the Way meant having SEX, and that having SEX meant going to HELL. But no one ever defined the bases to me. Now, frame the hand-in-the-pants incident with someone who equated SEX with HELL, and who didn't realize that genital contact was required for 'procreation' ~ and you might begin to understand exactly how shocked I was...
(Stop laughing, Babzy.)
I've been very careful and considerate about keeping the identity of this boy anonymous. I buried the old me pretty deep, in name and in spirit, a long time ago - it'd be a bloody miracle if anyone other than the three of us who know his name now ever figured it out. But of course, that comment set off a chain reaction of buttons for me. My initial response was to rush over here to the blog and delete all these posts to appease the person who had expressed concerns about the boy's reputation. My next response to feeling like I had been told I was wrong to speak up was to rush over here, post the boy's name, address, phone number, picture, and license plate number, and show his reputation the same consideration he showed mine. Now that I've calmed down a bit (I love riding my bike home - it's so therapeutic...) I've come to the conclusion that I'm going to leave things exactly as they are. I have neither hatred nor sympathy for this boy, and if he grew up to be a nice man, then good for him.
I still think maybe I'd feel better if he were to come over here and say, 'Sorry for dragging your name through the mud.' But I'm working towards the most important part of this all - forgiveness - knowing I probably won't ever get asked for it. Forgiveness is closure. It's the ending, the part where the skeleton actually dances off into the sunset, leaving me with nothing but a distant, neutral memory, a simple recollection of facts that requires no energy to recall or repress.
As I rode home, I contemplated what I would ask if I ever had the opportunity to come face to face with Popular Boy. I thought of 3 questions: 1.) Did you like me or did you just think I was easy? 2.) Why did you tell everyone that lie? 3.) Did you ever feel bad about it?
Whenever a repressed or denied memory comes up, I have to go through a process. I've had some amazing mentors and life coaches and teachers and role models, who have walked me through the paces enough times that I've gotten pretty good at going it alone. Every once in a while, though, it's nice to have some assistance, which came today from two places.
The first was from a message I got from an old but new again friend. We've been learning how parallel our lives actually were, and she disclosed to me yet another tie we shared. She put this feeling of being empowered ever so eloquently: "Though I was decimated at first, now - I feel like a warrior. They couldn't take me down [then] - they don't stand a ****ing chance at 34. Hear us roar, indeed. And the roar...it's a warning, a**holes."
With most things I end up dealing with after the fact, the first stage of healing is anger. Guilt, shame, being the victim are all passive - anger is the first step towards action. The tricky part is knowing when acknowledging the anger becomes needlessly hurtful to people around you. Lashing out at my friends and family right now would be detrimental, so if you all hear me growling in the next few days, leave me space - I don't want to bite you. The other tricky part is knowing when to push the anger out, so you don't become embittered by it.
The second came from another old but new friend, who pushed some buttons for me. This person has NO idea where my buttons are, but they were pushed anyways. The gist of what was implied was how unfair it was for people to get a bad first impression of Popular Boy via my blog, and that maybe saying it in a public forum was maybe a little much, since he's a nice guy now, and something like this could put his good life at stake. What I heard was, "This boy is more entitled to his privacy than you are to your voice, so you shouldn't have said it out loud, where people might hear you." Not what she *said* but what I *heard* Very important distinction there.
I'm in full agreement that Popular Boy doesn't deserve to have his life pulled out from under him for having really crappy judgment as a teenager. On his part, it was a pretty minor infraction in the grander scheme of things, and I've said already that it wasn't the kissing or groping that haunts me. It's what happened after, but as we've seen illustrated here, everyone wants to hone in on the kissing and groping part. I'm not about to be made the victim here - I chose to go to his house, I chose to stick around after learning his parents weren't there, I let him take my hand, I followed him downstairs. I was sort of OK with the kissing part, and if I'm going to be completely honest, I'll admit that as unattractive and repulsive as I found the boy, as it was happening, I was debating how it would be socially advantageous of me to establish some sort of alliance with this boy. I decided it wasn't worth it when the hand went in the pants.
Now - I need to clarify a little something here before we continue, about me, and my understanding of sex back then. I think I mentioned I was painfully naive. Though I thought I understood sex, generally speaking, and how it involved two people, the bearded nun who spoke to us of the evils of intercourse from under her habit really didn't do a very good job of explaining the mechanics of it. The religious slant to our Catholic lesson in the birds in the bees went something like this: sex is for procreation not enjoyment. If you enjoy sex, you will got to hell. If you have premarital sex, you will go to hell. If you use protection, you will go to hell. If you have protected sex before you get married, you will DEFINITELY go to hell. Etc. I only knew that if you did sex right, you got a husband and a baby, and if you did it wrong, you were going to hell.
Sitting around listening to the girls talk about going bases with boys, I played along. "Second base, yeah, wow - cool." I'd seen people kissing and holding hands - I figured that was pretty OK - and I did understand that the bases lead to Going All the Way, and that Going All the Way meant having SEX, and that having SEX meant going to HELL. But no one ever defined the bases to me. Now, frame the hand-in-the-pants incident with someone who equated SEX with HELL, and who didn't realize that genital contact was required for 'procreation' ~ and you might begin to understand exactly how shocked I was...
(Stop laughing, Babzy.)
I've been very careful and considerate about keeping the identity of this boy anonymous. I buried the old me pretty deep, in name and in spirit, a long time ago - it'd be a bloody miracle if anyone other than the three of us who know his name now ever figured it out. But of course, that comment set off a chain reaction of buttons for me. My initial response was to rush over here to the blog and delete all these posts to appease the person who had expressed concerns about the boy's reputation. My next response to feeling like I had been told I was wrong to speak up was to rush over here, post the boy's name, address, phone number, picture, and license plate number, and show his reputation the same consideration he showed mine. Now that I've calmed down a bit (I love riding my bike home - it's so therapeutic...) I've come to the conclusion that I'm going to leave things exactly as they are. I have neither hatred nor sympathy for this boy, and if he grew up to be a nice man, then good for him.
I still think maybe I'd feel better if he were to come over here and say, 'Sorry for dragging your name through the mud.' But I'm working towards the most important part of this all - forgiveness - knowing I probably won't ever get asked for it. Forgiveness is closure. It's the ending, the part where the skeleton actually dances off into the sunset, leaving me with nothing but a distant, neutral memory, a simple recollection of facts that requires no energy to recall or repress.
As I rode home, I contemplated what I would ask if I ever had the opportunity to come face to face with Popular Boy. I thought of 3 questions: 1.) Did you like me or did you just think I was easy? 2.) Why did you tell everyone that lie? 3.) Did you ever feel bad about it?
Comments
Loved the comment about the bearded nun.We had those in Quebec also.
Take note everyone: I did not focus on the kissing and the groping. It's all about healing. Furthermore, I was not laughing, much.
I tend to cut teens and young people a lot of slack. They screw up all the time. I certainly did. It's easy to forgive teenagers. They're not even half-baked yet. The kid you're writing about was only 13 .. and so was the boy. :)
You've written four posts on this experience evolving from wishing castration for this grabby little boy to considering forgiveness.
Way to process. {{ high five }}