*** Trigger warning, discussion of rape. Details changed for privacy.
She sat in the corner chair in my office. It’s the chair everyone in deepest pain chooses. It feels safe there, with a wall on each side. She didn’t cry. She didn’t smile either, and she didn’t meet my eye. She stared ahead and told her story. The story of her rape, not the first one, and not the last one. Not the one that sent her for an abortion either. She told the story of the one where she realized that allowing rape was safer than saying no, and coming to terms with that just made her want to die.
She was twenty-three, and she could drink. Like a handle of vodka, easy. She didn’t like to drink, she needed to do it. She had to temper the rage inside of her, it was like it was its own personality, burning her alive. If she didn’t drink, she couldn’t control it, the rage. She couldn’t trust herself to not kill herself if she wasn’t drinking. When she drank, she wanted to die too, and secretly she just hoped she would. She was caught in the cycle of running against her feelings, and drunk or sober, there was no escape.
That’s the thing about rage, or any kind of scary feeling, really. We think we can escape it but we can’t, we just move it around in more and more destructive ways, becoming sadder and more alone. We are conditioned from birth, as a society, to not feel. Why are we so afraid of feeling? Because you can’t control a feeling if you don’t understand it. We are never taught to pay attention enough to be able to actually understand what we feel, and then take that knowing and find control. We run and fear and fake it instead.
We chain ourselves to the rock of never sharing emotion and the people pleasing hard place of never saying no. We paste the smiles on our everyday faces and create the “I’m fine” narrative. We link feelings with instability, when in reality, smothering ourselves is what causes instability in the first place. The most stable people I know are the ones who know how and what they feel, and they let it give them power, not take it away.
Girls are taught to use their bodies for attention, to stifle their intellect and heart, the very things that make them interesting and unique. Boys are taught emotions are weak, and to stifle their love and protection, the very things that actually make them strong. We are taught, as a culture, to pretend to not care, rather than to care. We use drugs and alcohol to get away, instead of to feel more. What if it was a rule, you only use a substance to feel deeper rather than to numb. Imagine if we could all learn to want to feel more, not less, and never let those big emotions be feared. We are living at a time when one in five Americans (www.nami.org) are suffering from depression, anxiety, personality disorders or addiction. We have to rethink this lesson plan.
Girls are raped. Boys become numb. Boys are raped and girls are numb too sometimes, there’s never one way that everything is broken. Kids have shaky grounds for developing their identities. Nobody knows how to care, to be confident, to be perfectly imperfect. We use filters and social media and beers and bongs and material things to spin the narratives of perfection and control, while on the inside we are overrun by shame and turmoil. We are all about control as a society because the reality is we are totally out of control. Chaos leads the day and the ones who are brave enough to stop, and stand up, be vulnerable out loud, and say, “I LOVE you,” are chided by the ones racing from their own hearts, for being weak. It’s brave to be real, and it makes the world a very rewarding place. The backwards thing about it all, is that everyone wants connection, to be really loved, but so few are willing to openly admit it. There is safety in knowing your heart, in trusting yourself, and being secure enough to express yourself regardless of how it is received. We need the world to know that, the safety.
There are the brave ones doing it, living real. Strong people fighting against their own fears of being rejected for being willing to be gracefully themselves. Willing to walk away from relationships that don’t nurture their intellect, their heart and their bodies. Willing to stand up for kindness and hard and honest conversations. Willing to be direct and gentle, all the time. When I listen to the stories that come from the corner chair in my office, I know the change I demand for my own life is helping those around me too. I know I have to be brave, I have to be willing to show that knowing my own heart truly does make my life better and safer, and that trickles down. I have to be willing to know myself, so I can help others know themselves too. We can’t change our pasts but we can heal how it hits us. It’s a beautiful place to be, feeling. It’s a powerful place to be, healing. It is not weak to understand and to show strength though composure rather than strength through stifled fear. The only way we can reduce the abuse in the world, and increase the power inside our own children, to protect them from society forcing them to be small, is to learn how to stand in the integrity and wisdom of emotion. To be willing to say something when we know something is wrong. To be willing to be wildly in love, and wildly independent, all at the same time. The more we lead with this example, the stronger and safer and stable and creative we all will be.
#lovewins #hope #healing #strength #courage #wecandohardthings