Fighting Back
Having a midnight internet trance. Clicking through to links that linked that linked that linked to my posts. Reading awfully sad things. Stories from survivors who didn’t “fight back,” and struggle with what that means to them, and what it means to others. “Fighting back” always seems to mean something physical, audible, or legal.
Personal resolution:
To expand my definition of “fighting back,” and share it, when appropriate, with the survivors who disclose to me.
If you’re alive, you fought back. Staying alive then was fighting back. Being alive today is fighting back. Being alive tomorrow will be fighting back.
Continuing forward, day by day, while carrying this attack within you, is fighting back.
Doing whatever needs to be done to survive, in the face of those who do not care very much for your survival, and sometimes do what they can to actively thwart it, is fighting back.
I do not mean to say that only those that live are fighting back. There are victims who “fight back” in the immediate physical sense and sometimes lose their lives. They were also doing what they felt was necessary to survive, were fighting for their survival in the face of somebody who wasn’t concerned with their life.
They did something no better or worse, stronger or weaker, harder or easier, more right or more wrong, than the survivors who must not fight physically, or scream loudly, in their attempts to survive. Some of those people will lose their lives, too, but not for a lack of trying to live. Not for a lack of fighting back.
Survival contains more than the one moment in your life when you wish you’d thrown a punch. Survival is the decision to prize the continuation of your life above all other things, all other people, all other beliefs, at all moments in time. “Fighting back” is as much a dramatic physical fight that lasts two minutes as it is the daily boring drudgery of getting out of bed, putting food in your mouth, and staying awake for 16 hours, day in and day out. “Fighting back” is prioritizing yourself above others, whether that takes the form of a very dramatic gesture or the form of a banal daily interaction that you soldier through with what energy you can muster. “Fighting back” is believing that you deserve to live, and live well, when very powerful forces are telling you that you do not, and threatening action if you continue to prize your life above all things.
I am so sad when I read the stories of survivors — people who have at some point or many points confronted and sought to change the very fundamental structure of their personality, their family, their friends, their society; people who have had the bravery to face a horror and then attempt the unthinkable, to make peace with it, whether or not this takes a lifetime; people who have been willing to dig down into the most rotten places to uncover the most rotten things; people who live each day with the knowledge of their own intense vulnerability and fear, and still get up and make breakfast and walk outside and speak to others about the weather — and hear these people define themselves as ones who don’t fight back.
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I knew I needed something and I wasn’t sure what it was.
I needed this. Thanks
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This is a message all survivors need to hear at one time or another. Thanks!
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This post reminds me a lot of one of mine; thank you for sharing it. If you’d like to read, have a stop over here.
http://oniongirl13.wordpress.com/2009/07/01/do-something/
Either way, thank you for sharing. I’ve been reading on and off for the last few days when I could spare the time, and it’s nice to find a voice for things I feel and cannot articulate at times. You’re very honest, courageous, and I’m glad to read what you’ve written.
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Thank you.
A year ago, I would have been convinced that if the unthinkable were to happen, if I were to be raped, I would – but of course, naturally – call the police, ‘fight back’ in every way available to me. Although that’s not quite right. I couldn’t have been convinced of it, because I would have assumed it so automatically that to think of anything else would be a betrayal, and little feminist me would never do anything to betray the sisterhood.
It never occurred to me that I would be so depressed that I could hardly think about it, that it would take me three months to admit that anything had happened at all, that by the time I could start to come to terms with what had happened, I would be left with absolutely no evidence. And it never occurred to me either that if I had the means to pursue the case, I would be so sickened by the thought of it having to be a daily part of my life again, and in particular by having to tell my parents that the thought of going to the police would make me want to die.
The guilt that I felt over the relationship and thus the rape itself was surpassed only by the guilt I felt – and still feel – that the guy who did this to me is still out there and is still a danger to women, especially women who are emotionally vulnerable. Every day I get up and spend ten minutes rationalising my inaction to myself. But it isn’t about logic. It’s about survival.
Thank you.
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A few months ago I was on a study abroad in the Middle East. During my time on this program, I learned that people become incredibly close and share very personal things when put out of their context in that manner.
During a vacation in Egypt, one of my new friends and I got into an intense discussion. I don’t remember what started it or what it was about, but I remember my friend telling me that another girl on our program had been raped when she was young and had shared this with her. After stating this my friend turned to me and stated with passion “I couldn’t believe that. I would want to DIE if that happened to me. I don’t know how someone can live their life after something like that.”
My friend didn’t know that I had been a victim of rape too.
I vehemently disagreed with her but didn’t bring up my experience with the topic. At the time I was kind of annoyed at her, at how sheltered she was and the way in which she withdrew from this girl after what she had shared – because in a way her comment was her way of denying a world in which victims and survivors of rape are all too common. You have another post in which you touch on this, where you talk about how media never shows the survivors of rape as people that live and go on to do all sorts of mundane things.
This post says a lot of what I wish I could have articulated to her. Because after what I went through, surviving was really hard and really miserable for a long time. Functioning in normal society was impossible and I spent a lot of nights up in my room being angry/crying. But even then, I wanted to live. And every day it gets easier and I get stronger. I’m proud of that. And sitting at dinner that night in Egypt was one of those nights I could have burst with cosmic gratitude (and personal pride) that I had lived through what happened to me, to get to this awesome place where I was kicking butt in a foreign language and swimming in the Mediterranean.
Thank you so much for expressing this.
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This. I always used to imagine that if someone “tried” to rape me I would fight back physically and die before I “let” it happen. In my mind I never got to the point of going to the police because I would never *be* raped, somehow I would become superhumanly strong and prevent it by sheer force of will.
I actually had forgotten that I thought that when I was younger until I just read your comment.
A little over a year ago I was raped and didn’t fight him off physically. I didn’t die. I also didn’t go to the police. I still don’t want to go to the police. I don’t think it will do any good because I don’t know where the guy is or his whole name and I don’t think I can bear their reaction. But I struggle with the guilt over not “stopping him” from doing it to other women. As if I am responsible for his behavior, not him. But I’m not. It would be my word against his (I did go to his room willingly) and it’s not like he would go to jail with no evidence. Part of me just wants him to know that it was rape. But there’s no guarantee that even if I stood in front of him and told him so, or pressed charges, that he would even admit it or acknowledge for one second that it wasn’t consensual. So I have to get over feeling like I can change or control his behavior. I can’t. I can only work on myself, and try to change my own guilt into something more healthy for me.
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