I'm Back Part I

Prepare for a long post of introspection concerning the nature of this blog, the purpose of my writing, and some navel-gazing about my abilities on this earth. Fair warning – the shit does go on.

So!

I’ve been gone.

Quite honestly, for a while, I had decided I wasn’t going to come back.

That time was a nice time. I was all entranced with this huge new bundle of free time that I had. I’d walk around thinking about stuff, and not immediately find a way to verbalize, defend, and explain it, so it could be picked apart later. I looked at bullshit on the internet and did not have to interact with it. I was an unidentifiable, unremarkable, unknown person. Of course, that’s who I am in my real life. Very few real-life acquaintances of mine know that I write this blog, and even fewer of them know the URL. But it causes some degree of a mental divide when you go through your day as a completely unknown, boring person, and then come home to dozens of emails and comments accrediting you with really enormous incredible stuff, like fundamentally changing an entire life. It felt good, for a while, to have my life be consistent again. I started and ended my day as a midtwenties white girl of no interest to anybody.

But none of that was why I had decided I wasn’t coming back; it was just a bonus prize that came after I’d made up my mind. I decided to quit the blog because it had turned into something I wasn’t prepared for, hadn’t expected, and didn’t know if I wanted. But before I get into that, I want to tell the full story of what propelled me to start this blog in the first place.

After I left Flint, I had to deal with friend fallout. Everybody does after a break-up, no matter how good or bad the break-up was. It’s crap no matter what, but there’s this narrative that you can avoid most of the bullshit just by acting with dignity: don’t talk heinous inappropriate shit about your ex, don’t “force” your friends to choose, and just generally move on with grace. That all sounds reasonable enough, if what you had was a reasonable relationship and a reasonable break-up. If what you had was years of abuse and a rape to top it off, doing something reasonable like seeking out crucial emotional support from friends is seen as talking heinous shit, forcing them to choose, and refusing to move on – which also makes it easy for your friends to dismiss you as a vengeful lying bitch, fucking up their ethics. All your rapist has to do is cry a little and say, “I really hope the best for her, she’s a great person,” and suddenly he’s this awesome guy that you, the rape victim, should really shut the fuck up about.

Still, it wasn’t just a choice between “talk about it” and “don’t talk about it.” If it was that, I could’ve easily chosen to remain pent-up and traumatized, because shit, I was used to that. No, the problem was, I had some serious, immediate safety concerns that couldn’t be ignored. Such as, how do you ask your friend not to tell Flint where you live, not to even mention the neighborhood, without telling them why? How do you explain why it’s so fucking important that Flint does not hear even the tiniest detail of your life – innocent as they think it is – without using the words “rape”, “fear”, “abuse”? And then how do you explain that you’re really not trying to make them choose, not trying to talk shit about Flint, but yeah, now that they know, you will kind of probably not want to ever speak to them again if they want to stay friends with Flint, because you can’t trust their judgment? How do you explain, without sounding hysterical or psychotic or paranoid, that your friend’s ethics and ability to keep their mouth shut is maybe the one thing between you and getting raped again?

How I did it was ugly. I used a lot of kinda sort maybe could you I guess the thing is not that I’ saying you would and I don’t really care but what I mean is you know? I had almost no skills in standing up for myself, and didn’t really feel like developing them during an argument about whether or not I was really raped, and if so, whether or not I ought to just shut the fuck up about it already. I was determined to be some dignified picture of you-can’t-tell-I’m-a-rape-victim-because-I’m-so-strong, hoping this would gain me some kind of foothold against Flint.

I mean, I had no interest in playing little power games by trying to steal all our mutual friends away, but Flint did. Fighting back by not fighting sounded like the noble way, but it also sounded and felt a lot like abuse.

I asked my friends, over and over, not to relay messages from Flint to me, good or bad. They didn’t realize they were participating in abuse by proxy, that the innocuous thing Flint had told them was quite obviously a veiled threat to me – ex.: “I told Flint you were interested in that play going on. He said it sounded cool, too, and he would probably show up. It’s good he’s getting out of the house.” I couldn’t explain to them the terror they kept putting me in by acting as an extension of Flint’s abuse, faithfully doling out the abuse he could no longer serve directly. That is, I couldn’t explain it unless I explained that Flint was abusive, and I didn’t want to disclose my rape and abuse to somebody who had already proven they couldn’t keep their fucking mouth shut around my rapist and abuser. I knew any explanations that way would filter back to him, and become part of a “break-up” narrative, i.e. “Flint and Harriet broke up and now he says she’s a psycho bitch and she says he raped her. Break-ups are tough.” My narrative was different, of course; for me, it was a survival narrative, as in, “Flint and I broke-up and I really need you not to tell him where I live because I don’t want to be raped again.”

I wanted to take the “high road” — I was very, very adamant about this. The “high road” was not disclosing my abuse or rape. The “high road” was requesting, over and over again, to have my friends respect my boundaries, and the “high road” was refusing to explain why my boundaries were important, and knowing this would lead to them not being respected. At the time, I thought that was a normal expected way for friends to act; I had not yet decided that it wasn’t worth it to be friends with people who refuse to respect boundaries if I refuse to request validation. The “high road” was asking nicely, in polite tones, over and over, to not be told what Flint was saying about me, to not be told anything about him at all. Basically, the “high road” was keeping my mouth shut and hoping nobody hurt me again, and if they did, never bringing it up, because that would necessitate opening my mouth. I can’t explain why it’s so desperately important that you do NOT tell Flint that I am attending a play on this date on this time without explaining that Flint abused me and I am afraid of him, and that would be forcing friends to take sides, which would make me the least credible person alive. So instead I just smile, make up a lie about how I don’t have time to go to the play, and give the tickets away, asking again quietly and politely that you don’t tell Flint my whereabouts.

There was no way for me to keep this up permanently, but I didn’t know that. I’d kept up the extraordinary conflict of an abusive relationship for seven years, often using the same platitudes: you just need to give people time, you can’t demand everybody sees things your way, you have to have compassion, you can’t have everything you want, you have to take people as they are, and blah blah pukeshit. So, at first, this all seemed perfectly reasonable. I would maintain our mutual friends, regardless of all the intense personal sacrifices this caused me, regardless of how much of myself I had to hide. To do otherwise would give Flint a victory — “Well, you know, after we broke up she started spouting crazy shit and demanding people choose between us, and now nobody wants to hang out with her” — and, more importantly, leave me alone during a period where I felt I very much needed support and company. I didn’t want to have to start my whole life from scratch, so whatever I could keep of my old life I held onto white-knuckled.

The first sign that everything was breaking was Gregory. He had been one my closest, favorite friend for years. The fact that today that doesn’t mean much, relatively, is irrelevant; at the time it meant the world. I loved that guy. Hard. I told him about the rape, and he told me he was moving in with Flint. I didn’t talk to him for weeks, and when he finally confronted me, I told him how fucked-up it was that, after disclosing my rape, he tells me he’s going to live with my rapist, and expects me to just be okay with that. He told me it wasn’t rape if I didn’t call the cops. And, just like that, my best friend was dead to me.

After that was Polar. There were always problems in my relationship with Polar, but she could be fiercely loyal and fiercely giving, both things that just about saved me when I was leaving Flint. Polar knew about the rape, though we didn’t really talk about it. I gave her a very dry play-by-play, without naming it, and Polar said, “You know what that is, don’t you?” I said I did know what it was. We didn’t talk about it again, but that was okay with me – this was during a short-lived but significant period where I couldn’t even say the word “rape,” so I appreciated that she was respecting my boundary. In any case, I knew Polar thought Flint was an asshole, that she supported my leaving him, that she believed me. Problem was, Polar was in an abusive relationship with Flint’s best friend. She was caught in the ethical wasteland I used to be in, where she knew something was wrong, but to act on that wrong thing brought her in direct confrontation with her abuser and rapist. She believed Flint was an abuser and a rapist, and she didn’t want him in her life, but to admit that would be to “pick a fight” with her husband, and possibly admit that if what Flint did to me was abuse and rape, maybe she was being abused and raped, too. With her husband’s abuse accelerating, and with his continual attempts to get Polar to “seduce” me for him, I had to end that friendship. I couldn’t protect her from her husband, she couldn’t protect me from her husband, and with Flint in the picture there was just too much danger.

After that, the floodgates were breached. I was depressed and angry, sure, but I couldn’t help but notice what an enormous burden of pain, fear, and anxiety dropped out of my life when my friends did. The place where my terror had been was like a cavern, with a big whistling wind within. I was now willing to end any of my friendships. It just wasn’t worth the intense and drawn-out pain of wondering wondering wondering if this person is going to be safe or is eventually going to cause me to take a day off from work, having flashbacks and panic attacks, because they told me I wasn’t really raped and if I keep acting they can see why Flint left me. I made the decision that if I ever hesitated to tell somebody about my rape because of how I feared they would react, that in and of itself was enough reason to end a friendship – I didn’t have to wait for the reaction and all the fallout to justify myself. My safety was its own justification.

That sounds very cut and dry, but of course it wasn’t. There were various people I hesitated to tell about my rape not because I felt they would react like Gregory, but because I felt they would react not at all, and that would be just as bad. I told them anyway, because I still believed that I couldn’t refuse to do a thing unless there were unbelievable consequences I was trying to avoid; smaller, bothersome, obnoxious consequences weren’t enough, they had to be fucking apocalyptic.

So, against my better judgment, I told Connie. Connie was a nice girl, intelligent, friendly. I liked her, but (if I’d been able to verbalize it this way at the time) I knew that she wouldn’t be able to handle the concept of rape and abuse. Connie projected a very normal, boring, girl-next-door personality, but I always got the sense that she had experienced some shit she refused to talk or think about. Don’t ask me why; it was just a sense. Either way, girl-next-door or secretly-hiding-abuse, I fully expected a big blank stare from Connie. But since I wasn’t expecting the “shut the fuck up about your rape” that I got from Gregory, I felt it wasn’t “right” somehow to end a friendship with her without giving her a chance to act shitty to me. Listen, it all made perfect sense at the time, and I fully believe that most people maintain at least some relationships in their lives based on the same faulty principle: it could be fucking worse.

So, I told Connie about the rape, and I got a big blank stare. Whatever. I would maybe like a little more support or sympathy or understanding, but nobody’s obligated to do that for me (I didn’t believe that the people I chose for my friends should be the kind of people who gave me support or sympathy or understanding). She at least didn’t call me a liar, or try to get me to sleep with her abusive boyfriend, so I guess that means we’re still friends.

Then I found out that Connie had been hanging out with Flint.

I thought about calling her up and explaining why that was fucked-up, but I came to the same conclusion that I did with Gregory: if I have to explain that hanging out with my rapist is a fucked-up thing to do, we do not have enough common ground to be friends. Eventually, Connie asked me what was up. Since she had made the effort to ask, I made the effort to explain. To Connie’s credit, she took it very well and we had a nice conversation about it. She emphasized that she believed me, but she wasn’t sure how to handle any of this, and felt like since Flint was “making an effort” to be friends and I wasn’t, it would be shitty for her not to reciprocate. To explain what “making an effort” is: after our break-up, Flint called all our mutual friends and harassed them (if they needed harassing, and many did) until they went out for coffee with him. Over coffee, he apologized for being a drug addict and an asshole for all these years, but he was now trying to turn his life around and really really needed them. Maybe he’d cry a little. What he wouldn’t do was give detailed examples of the things he’d done wrong and was sorry for; he was just generally sobbing and sorry and clinging to your arm, needing you because you’re his friend and he’s so alone. In comparison, I was being very timid and withdrawn among our friends, obviously hiding a lot, obviously judging them against some measure they weren’t privy to (the “Will you contribute to the next time I get raped?” measure). Flint made a very good gamble, considering who his audience was. He’d surrounded himself with people who tolerated abuse, so these were also people who felt obligated to respond to sobbing vague apologies without substance. It’s a lesson about the dynamics of manipulative personalities and abuse that I haven’t forgotten; if I’d apologized for being victimized instead of declaring it angrily and without apology, I would’ve kept more friends. Ignoring an apology makes you a bad person, and we disdain victims so much that the person who apologizes for abuse is elevated above the unapologetic victim they abused.

Connie and I concluded our conversation nicely, but I realized I was left with the same nagging feeling I’d always had about Connie. Connie was the kind of person who could have her guilt triggered and be strong-armed into a friendship she didn’t want; she’d had one with Flint all these years, and all it took to rekindle it was a harassment-based insincere and non-specific apology. Connie had apologized to me, but I didn’t feel okay. I still felt like Connie had needed me to explain rape to her, and even if she apologized, even if she now “got it,” maybe I didn’t want to be friends with anybody who needed that shit explained in the first place. And if that was the case, I didn’t really feel like explaining that to her either.

In fact, it suddenly occurred to me, I didn’t feel like explaining anything to anybody anymore. I could cold shoulder Connie, drop her off Facebook, but somebody would inevitably ask me why. And then I’d judge that person’s merits against how much I cared to explain the obvious – Flint abused me for years and you watched, motherfucker – and come to the conclusion that they were not my friends anymore.

And yet, just because I didn’t want to defend myself didn’t mean I didn’t want to talk. After the enforced silence of constant abuse, I wanted to describe everything I felt, everything I saw, everything that was important to me that once used to fall under the category of “Harriet’s Crazy Private Thoughts” I wanted to rediscover my writing again, since Flint had nearly abused it out of me by standing over my shoulder while I wrote, sighing and scoffing and making disgusted noises. I had started writing long sprawling blogs on my Facebook and MySpace, but suddenly those became way too complicated of spaces. I was still trying to figure out how apocalyptic to be about my friendships. As in, what about this kid I knew in 7^th grade who was nice enough I guess but I think his brother is friends with Flint’s brother? What about this girl who I know hates Flint but who I’ve also heard blame rape victims for their rapes? What about this dude I barely know who I am pretty sure would believe me but would be completely unable to deal with this or talk about it? Do I want any of these people to read my very personal thoughts about rape and abuse? Do I want any of them to do the weird social dance of wondering why I posted this blog, if it was a secret message to somebody else on my friends list, if they’re obligated to respond, etc.? Do I want to put this much effort into thinking about people I barely know?

The answer was no. The answer was an apocalyptic end. I dropped everybody. I shut down my Facebook and MySpace and started an anonymous blog. The anonymity was about safety, obviously. I knew Flint was actively looking for info about me. For a while I had left my MySpace account public, because I was taking the “high road” and had nothing to hide, and Flint couldn’t resist coming by to make weird and creepy comments on every blog post, including a tut-tut about “our private life together” when I revealed some specific details of his abuse. I thought I was giving him enough rope to hang himself with, until I realized that when it came to the people who had been our friends, there wasn’t enough rope in all the world. So, I didn’t want Flint coming by and being weird and creepy at my new blog, or dragging all our weird friends in to harass me and make me want to live in a cave. At the time I started the blog, the divorce wasn’t officially final yet, and I was also concerned that he would find my blog and find some way to drag it into court. It was a longshot that he’d bother, or that a judge would care (since I didn’t use names and didn’t give the blog name to anybody who knew us, so a libel charge was a hard case to make), but I wasn’t going to gamble my divorce on longshots. My bear mentioned casually to me one day, while driving, that if we got into a crash and I died, Flint would get to paw through all my stuff. That by itself was enough to force anonymity.

Secondarily, the anonymity was just about having a quiet space of my own. The only parts of my life that get talked about on this blog are the parts I reveal. The only people who get to talk about my life are the people I allow to talk. When I was still learning how to be assertive in real life, how to speak up and explain myself and describe my experiences as if they were worth something, I could mouth off without fear of (unbannable) retribution here. That became an incredibly valuable and therapeutic tool for me; when I put my thoughts down with the safety and honesty of anonymity, I had to admit that they didn’t look half as crazy as I thought they must be. I could admit wholeheartedly that I believed the things I believed. That sounds strange and small, but it was an amazing freedom that I had never had before.

As time went on, and my blog got more popular, the anonymity became more complicated. When I started this blog, I thought to myself, “Harriet, what if your blog gets super-super-popular, and you, who have had this goal of being a writer, are suddenly faced with this unfortunate irony where the most popular things you have written you can’t put your name to?” And then I laughed and said, “Way to be obnoxiously arrogant about your livejournal, Harriet! If you get popular. For writing about your therapy sessions. Pfffffft.”

Ha ha ha. Yes.