After writing the post on Monday, probably the hardest one I have ever published, I did the following three things: listened to Choral Evensong on BBC Radio 3, made an unsuccessful batch of cookies (subsequently tossed out, rare for me), and then spent an hour curled up in bed with a stuffed animal. I regrouped somewhat later in the day, but the waves continue to hit, waves I had hoped were over when I returned to "the water" a few months ago!
Of course, there is a little part of me wishing my memories would all have gone away, making writing or thinking about them unnecessary. And there is that voice continuing to say to me, as it has my whole life, you're making a big deal about nothing. All the brave women coming forward right now were actively attacked. You were not, so what is your problem? (Comparisons, begone!)
Well, that's the whole thing. Breathtaking lack of humanity doesn't always come in the form of rape, violent beatings, shootings, knifings, torture, kidnappings, gas attacks, etc. It does not always come in the form of violence foisted upon you or into you.
It can be silent, a black hole that pulls in everything around it. It is the opposite energy, a pulling in rather than a lashing out. If you are at the receiving end of it, you spend your life in an abyss so deep that when you attempt the Sisyphean task of clawing yourself out, just as you reach the event horizon you fall back in and start the process all over again. All those qualities that human beings so dearly want to experience -- love, support, respect, visibility, a sense of home, a sense of hope, a sense of connectedness, validation of your uniqueness, abundance, fulfilling work -- are always just beyond the horizon. You know somehow deep in your bones that you deserve them as much as every other person on the planet, but they are always out of reach. The black hole is, indeed, "nothing," but a person with that energy needs to pull in everything around them to survive, to seem like "something." The resulting chaos to those of us around them is very real.
As of now, anyway, I am not angry about my experience because I know my soul chose it for a variety of reasons (more on that another day). Yes, I wish I could have continued to sidestep talking about it so that I wouldn't risk having it define me. Those beautiful things beyond the event horizon still feel far away, but one thing feels better today -- I know that out in the world, there must be many women and men who have had similar experiences, and perhaps my imperfect attempt to articulate what it is like will help them, too.
