Insanity

I had an unfortunate conversation with my dad. I was melting down last night. Forgive the rawness of whatever I say next, I just needed to write and have someone listen.

It was a simple conversation. My dad asked if I was ever considering moving back east. I cited my allergies and the fact that they were so bad I couldn’t leave the house in May without my face swelling shut when I lived in Maryland. Then I said this whole thing with {D} has made me really look at and love Vermont — it seems like such a cool place to live — but I can’t because {D} is there. He said something about how I would hate it in the winter, and I said, speaking of, I might be going out there in the winter, and then proceeded to try to explain my questionable theory on the disbarment.

He got mad and said, “I wish you hadn’t done this. Why did you have to do that?” And I was like, I did it in December, and you knew about it. Then he said my favorite thing: “Why do you insist on doing this? Why don’t you just let it go?!”

I am so fucking tired of being told to let it go. Trust me, I’d fucking love to just forget it and go back to my old life. I would fucking love that, but that ain’t how this shit works.

No one seems to understand or care what that fucking man did to me. This isn’t about sex. It isn’t about just the incident and it should fade. It’s the fucking video. I don’t think people can understand what that did to me.

If that had happened and it wasn’t on video, I would have just moved on with my life and forgotten about it as a shitty night with a shitty man that hurt me, but pain doesn’t last.

That fucking video though. I have had similar situations of not wanting to participate in sex and trying at least to say no, I was never very good at that. I remember, but not really — but I can’t not remember this.

Watching yourself be raped. Seeing it from that perspective is a horrifying, disturbing thing, especially when you realize you have been through so much that you literally did not know how bad it was as it happened. You didn’t realize the violation of your own self. Coming to the realization that you screamed and begged and he just kept going. And in the other videos, it’s like bargaining, trading, just trying to make the pain stop.

And on top of that? No one heard you scream. They were right there and they did nothing to stop it. Two grown men. My friends. They didn’t stop him. They helped him. They joined him.

How did I not see how bad it was that night? How fucked up am I from the trauma I’ve been through in my life that I didn’t run out the fucking door and never fucking look back — I fucking stayed with him. What the fuck?

I remember I was scared, but not like horror-movie, running-through-the-woods-from-the-bad-guy scared. I was like going to the dentist to get a root canal, scared. It hurt and it was going to hurt more, but it would be over eventually. I wasn’t going to die. I just needed to get through it. Pain doesn’t last. I just needed to survive the pain.

I want to go back. I want to be who I used to be. I want to not think about it. I want to sleep at night. I want to be myself again. I want to stop fighting. I’ve been fighting non-stop for a fucking year and I want a break. I want to fucking let it go.

I can’t. It won’t go the fuck away. And for all the therapy and medication and the trauma-informed yoga, I am still struggling.

I’m never going to be the same again. That person is dead.

{D} did kill me, I just hadn’t realized it yet.

And somehow other people can see that video and say it’s not enough proof. He is still free. He gets to move on with his life after what he did to me. I am gone. I’m almost afraid I never really existed because no one seems to care what he did to me and who I used to be. I asked {D} at one point why me? You know what he said? "What does it matter, you had one foot out the door on life already."

You know what my dad and I used to talk about? Politics. I knew everything that was going on. I could recite the latest poll numbers. I read every news article, I knew it all and made sure I knew first. My dad and I barely talk now. When they put Charlie Kirk on Air Force 2, I was going nuts trying to remember who the vice president was. Me. The fucking vice president? That’s how far gone I am from who I used to be and what I used to love.

I ask myself often if I’m just crazy. Like everyone is ignoring me — the AG and whatnot. No one responds to inquiries or emails. It’s like they can’t see me or hear me. And I ask myself: am I seriously just this fucking crazy? Is it crazy thinking this is a serious miscarriage of justice and it’s disturbing to know that a woman, even with it on video, can still be raped and it’s not enough to prove it? That’s fucked up. I’d be up in arms if it was someone else I saw this happening to. I’m worried about other women it is happening to.

But I have no support. I have no backing. I have no voices behind mine. No bodies. It’s just me. Why? Why isn’t anyone helping me if it’s as bad as I think it is?

But that loops back into the video. To begin to heal I had to admit what was on that video. I had to see with my own eyes myself being raped to accept it. And if I am to accept it, I have to not blame myself for it. It wasn’t my fucking fault. It was {D}’s fault. {D} lost control, not me. {D} should not be free from punishment.

How is it fair and equitable for me to just lose myself and be this damaged and violated and no one has to pay a price for it? How is that a reality in the American justice system, and why the fuck won’t anyone hear me and help me?

So either that video is real and I have no value to anyone at all because no one cares, or that video isn’t real and I did it to myself.

It’s real, right? You can see that what he is doing is clearly defined as penetration. You hear me say no and beg him to stop. It is clearly defined as rape over and over. It has to be real. But why won’t anyone do anything about it?

This is where my head lives. It’s in this space of self-doubt. If I stop fighting, I will be saying it wasn’t real. But you can watch it. So by saying it’s not real when it clearly is real, what kind of insanity is that? That is the delusional, irrational thought. Not me fighting — me submitting would be the insanity.

Postscript

As I was reading this over today, I want people to know that I realize how crazy I seem at times. I realize how crazy I have actually been at times. The really fucked up part of that is that the institutions and the failsafes for people, eg the police or the attorney general's office, choose to ignore someone so clearly in crisis. I get I seem like a walking red flag to the counterterrorism unit, but instead of talking to me and offering help, they make me feel crazier and watch for something to happen. Instead of mitigating and preventing me from being pushed over an edge, where I could have the potential to be dangerous, not just to myself but also others, they push harder. Where is the logic in that?

What is wrong with this state?