Dear A — Freeze

Dear A,

Just hearing your voice makes things better somehow. I just rang you. Twice. You’re busy. I’m hoping you’ll call me tonight but please don’t let me mess up things with your girlfriend. Something bad happened to me and somehow just knowing you’re there to hear it, even if you miss my ring, matters somehow. I see the icon of your face on my screen and it helps.

Last night I wasn’t raped, but it feels like I was.

And I wasn’t.

It was consensual until I couldn’t say no, or stop, or I’m not sure, or can we slow down? or I’m not your little girl and you’re definitely not my daddy, or this hurts.

I froze.

I am hearing voices in my head of being dramatic and overly sensitive, as if I might be throwing a normal guy, and likely a good man, self-indulgently under the ‘me-too’ freight train. Because I wasn’t raped. Like I know I wasn’t, but hours later I am still surprise-attack-crying so I know my mind doesn’t want to admit what my body is saying.

I feel used.

I am invaluable.

I was flesh.

I’ve been trying to figure out how I got to that place. Contorting my body on the bed and burying my face into the top covers, seeing nothing but white noise through my ears. Some people leave their body in these situations, I don’t. My shattering discomfort reminds me I’m still here and I’m not as lost as my eyes think I am.

You probably remember that I’m navigationally challenged. I get disoriented when I walk out of a bathroom at a party. I have no idea which direction to turn to find the living room. I wonder if this is the reason. I freeze and then lose my ability to self-locate.

I’m not going tell you what happened because I don’t want that story-print on my brain. I have a few sounds, a few phrases, textures and images, but mostly moments of emptiness still choking me, and that’s enough. Right now I’m trying to drain them out of my body as I see them, so I won’t say them. Just know they’re not worthy of words.

And you know what? I could’ve called it. Fuck. I do this work with clients. I fucking know this shit. I breathe it. I’m a fucking professional listener. The only thing I do is track stories. But in this one particular area of my life, my ability to hear feels like I’m trapped beneath a thousand pound bookshelf in a white man’s privileged library. There are words everywhere, being stuffed into my mouth, trying to ram their way inside of me. I am suffocating and completely immobilized.

Remember when I told you ‘I may have met someone’? — That’s the guy. Oddly enough, the reason I decided to go out with him is because within the very first date I could feel a small slice of you. You occupy the ‘poetic’ in my heart. I can speak to you in metaphor and you get it. Simplicity. I fucking crave that simplicity. When I hear your voice, I trust it. If you’re 100% familiar, then this guy felt like 10%. He was totally date worthy.

But this guy likes surprises, and did a dance of playful shocking moments with me all day. I fucking hate surprises. Like I fucking hate surprises. I’m not sure if you even know that.

Mystery — yes.

Shock — no.

A, you and I know each other, but not every story do we? Not all of them anyway. We’ve never spent enough time in one physical space together to hear them and become bored of each other’s justifications as to why we do the things we do.

Well, I do freeze really well.

I do it so well I don’t even notice it’s happening until my body is shaking an hour or two, or even weeks later.

I had a step-brother who terrorized me from the time I was nine to fourteen. He had a bad temper and he touched me. In both areas of our messed up non-family/family bond, I would freeze. When he would yell at me, tease me, call me out to fight back, or fondle me I would simply stop moving, stop thinking, stop seeing, stop hearing, stop feeling and stop breathing. Stop stop stop stop stop. Freeze means no.

I don’t understand how stopping isn’t the same as no. If disorientation is the same as being lost, for me, freezing = no.

But I lose my ability to form words when I’m disoriented and I simply can’t speak when I’m frozen.

Where are you? — I don’t know.

Which way do I turn? — I don’t know.

Do you like this? — I don’t know.

Is this okay? — I don’t know.

The truth is as soon as I stepped into his apartment I wasn’t okay. I went to the bathroom, flushed, and then couldn’t remember where I put my hat. He kissed me, full on, before I could count the books on his shelves, gather the faces of his photographs, or read the labels of his aromatherapy collection. Surprise, we are in the bedroom. ‘Let’s fuck tonight, cuddle and fuck again in the morning’. I heard the words, but I couldn’t hear the meaning. I was in full ‘stop’, which meant so had my words.

I have three sons. Two of them are sexually active and I’m a single mom. A single mom with a lot of packed, unpacked, and repacked baggage about sex. I know every article of experience in those bags. I’ve done the fucking work. Sad to say, I’m just your average woman. Raped. yup. Molested. yup. Disbelieved. yup. Blamed. yup. Ridiculed. yup. Torn, pushed, pulled, pressed, and played with, yup yup yup, by guys I still believe don’t think they’re doing anything wrong because maybe they’re in their own version of freeze. And If I may say so, the fucking entitled kind.

I want this. I wonder if I can have it.

She has it. Can I have it with her?

I want this. I’m going to go for it.

I better check if she’s okay.

Is she okay?

Can I have what I want?

Because I really want this.

She is okay — check.

I can have what I want — check.

Because I want this.

I can have what I want with her.

Check.

Is she okay?

Check.

Can I have what I want?

Because I really want this.

She is okay — check.

I can have what I want — check.

I want.

Can I have?

I want.

I want.

I want.

Repeat.

Repeat.

Repeat.

I’m just an average woman who has been positioned constantly within the game of want-domination. And I’ve learned how to maneuver my way through it in order to have a seat at the table. It has looked like: I’ll give you the power play in order to find you after you get what you want. I would guess every sexually aware, active and healing woman out there knows this game.

And lots of us have stopped playing it.

There’s that word again. Stopped.

I’m a single mother to three boys and they come to me to talk. I can’t believe this navigationally challenged woman has been asked for directions on the sex and intimacy map a few times already and here is what I always say to them:

Honey… what someone truly wants and is ready for is not always in their words.

Ask a different way.

Their truth is not just in the words.

The truth is not just in their body.

The truth is always in her eyes.

The truth is always in the space between you.

It’s always in the sensation of sound which has no words.

Consent is not yes or no.

Consent is following the story of both of you.

And I know they get it, but I do simplify it again just in case. I say: When you’re not sure honey, bring her face up to yours and look at her.

Just fucking look at her.

Seriously. Just fucking look at her.

And listen.

Listen to what she’s saying with her eyes. She will tell you what she is ready for.

Don’t ask her for permission, listen to her answer instead.

The fact I even get the privilege of having this conversation with my boys gives me hope.

A, I’m fucking 49 years old and I’m single. And it sucks. Like I really fucking hate it. Dating feels like bringing my most beautiful, tender, romantic, exotic and delicious self out onto a battlefield, and I really don’t want to have to be a warrior out there — because I’m not one. I’m really not. My adrenals are so tired.

And men wonder why we cry sometimes after making love. It’s relief. It’s fucking full on relief when ‘surprise-fucking’ changes to surprise ‘love-making’ as both of us have surprise-removed our familiar set of warrior-attire, that exhausting armour we keep putting on and sometimes taking off. I know for me, when the weight of my breast plate hits the floor I’m usually fucking shattered.

Last night, I wasn’t raped but I was definitely pierced, numerous times and I’m still bleeding, but I think I’ve finally stopped crying.

In this barren land of post-divorce, I’m really working on staying soft, which is also healing. But it’s also exposing.

I feel like a target all the time. In this perilous place of telling myself I deserve to be happy, to be loved, to be held and seen and heard and fuck me, even cherished, yes cherished, there are gaps in my armour, and it’s fucking freezing in here.

I don’t want to be the woman on the battlefields freezing in her white nightie.

But I am.

Love you. Thank you. I know you’ll get this letter when you have a sec. I kinda waxed on poetic today, but when things are busted apart like this, thawing out requires more words, not less.

xT

no p.s. today, I think I’ve said enough.