GRAY AREAS

TRIGGER WARNING: talk of SEXUAL ASSAULT.

When I was in middle school I had a teacher fired.

NOTE: The school did everything by the book.

It was reported, he was investigated and down the line - let go by the school district.

They didn’t risk any missteps, they were not giving him room to fight back.

Thank you to those adults who made the effort to show me I was still safe there.

‘Shame dies when stories are told in safe spaces.” - Ann Voskamp.

That teacher had slid his slimy hand up my thigh and wrote on me: “LOVE those bare knees.” 

Now, the word “LOVE” was written by me. I was in my first depression and I felt so dark, so cold and so very alone but online communities like Fueled by Forum and the nonprofit To Write Love on Her Arms were my life line. I would copy down the logos and the mantras in effort to live by them. These communities were a main source of hope those days.

I had already been in a dark place. I didn’t need another shade of gray. But when my teacher walked by, I hadn’t finished this mantra yet and he took the sharpie and the (weirdest) opportunity.  

It happened in class with two boys looking on -

I think of the way they acted around me after that/

/wonder what they may have taken away from it all these years later/

/I can’t help but hope they learned a lesson that day.

After a few class periods to process everything, I brought what happened to the attention of my principal.

And that was that.

The school told my parents before I did. I had already scrubbed the evidence from my skin by the time my mom and dad sat me down. It may have actually been the next day when the three of us spoke about it. 

My parents biggest question was: 

Why didn’t I tell them as soon as I could? I could have called from school, or when I got home.

They wanted me to know I was safe to call it out, I was safe with them.

I guess I hadn’t told them for two reasons -  

it was an awkward story to tell anyone. 

 I was still uncertain of where it landed in the world of wrongs.  

I only remember speaking about it once more back then. It was when the letter the school board made that teacher write arrived in the mail. My parents asked if I wanted to read it. I said no, throw it out.  I thought it was because I didn’t care and it wasn’t that big of a deal.  I told myself those things.  Really I didn’t want to know anything about the why and I didn’t want to read any sort of apology. 

But about 6 years later, thunder roared and lightning struck me: I wanted to read the letter. I called my mom asking for it. 

“We don’t have it, you told me to throw it away so I did.”

I can still see myself in the mirror, sobbing on the phone asking my mom - 

why it had happened, it was so weird, what did it mean and why me? 

why did this feel so heavy so many years later?

My mom didn’t have the answers but she rode out the bad weather with me. It was concluded that those questions will never be answered to my satisfaction and I began working on acceptance.

And I got there, sooner or later, I accepted the raging winds were temporary and that storm settled, and then one day I noticed those gray clouds had drifted away. 

But now- after the most recent event, more than a decade later -

My therapist asks me:

"do you feel like you struggle to use the term “assault?” 

I thought back to this exact piece I started days before and how I wrote the term sexual assault, crossed out “sexual” and felt the need for a follow up to explain it. I thought back to when this happened, -  how it was a gloomy and dark topic - it was gray to me and it still is. It crossed a line for sure, it’s violation obviously  - 

Don’t you know that others bodies are invitation only.

But how does it compare to all the other awful stories I’ve heard? 

I wasn’t in physical danger, I didn’t suffer through unspeakable acts…so…it, wasn’t that bad, right? 

I’ve always felt it was up to the survivor, or victim, however they felt they identify the details. 

I just don’t know how I identify those details of my own stories. 

I can confidently call them violations. 

I can confidently identify the underlying sexual nature of them. 

I can’t confidently call them sexual assaults because I don’t want to choose between identifying as a survivor or victim. 

I felt robbed,

as if items of just my own were taken away. 

One man took my sense of safety when he assuredly touched me in front of my entire class. 

Another took my sense of privacy when he set up a camera to watch me in secret - and he went on, perpetrating the deciet by hiding himself even more, in order to see anything he wanted - gradually cutting holes in the net of comfort I had placed below - then he took my sense of comfortability.

These thieves left paths of destruction on their way out.

Emotional theft rips away the ability to be vulnerable with others.

If I couldn’t feel safe with the adults at school, what kind of adult was worth my trust? 

If I can’t feel safe at home, with my most trusted inner circle, where could I go?

After the camera was found it felt like it was Stockholm Syndrome because what else was I to do, where else was I to go? This was what should have been a safe space. Who was I to cause a fuzz and say it’s not ? 

I let the storm come back, with the wind speed of a hurricane, covering my world in thick, dark gray clouds.

So I said nothing and as I began to spiral, that man got sneakier, became more conniving, forming into a monster dressed in his Sunday best. That monster found me online, that monster created a mask behind his keyboard and got exactly what he wanted without me seeing anything other than a gray fog. One day the fog lifted, and his mask was down. This time, I screamed feeling as if this was the one that would take me out.

I had made it through a similar storm before, and I was going to make it out - again.

I reached out to people, some of those adults who comforted me long before, some strangers in bars - I began telling the story with comedic undertones to lessen the traumatic pull it had on my heart. I went on to create my own safe spaces to share.

This blog is it. My apartment is it. My therapist office is. My heart is a safe space for myself.

SAFE SPACE ALERT

〰️

SAFE SPACE ALERT 〰️

So in this safe space, I am ridding myself of these thoughts full of grief :

When you lose your foundation of trust, it’s hard to look at yourself in the mirror. 

When you know someone saw you in your most private space, saw everything from your morning sing along in the mirror to applying lotion in every crevasse, it’s hard to feel comfortable alone again. 

I have struggled with being alone because that’s when feeling watched is paranoia and less of a possibility…

Thank you for sharing this space with me.

 I appreciate your presence here.