I was so ready to go with this book idea and I have a ton of it done. I’m going to print a few pretty hardbound volumes to send to some very special people. I think it might be too much for them though. Like I’ll put together a primer and get them cheaply softbound printed and send them to prosecutors all over the country. Like I’ll get it to someone who will use the information. It’s not in-depth legal research, but if you have a case of rape within the relationship it would come in handy. I don’t know.
It is making me emotional though. I can’t do the case study. Hell, I can’t watch the video let alone narrate it and fucking present it and point out every step in the process of my life collapsing. I don’t think I could handle it. I would hand it over to a PhD who could and would put it to good use. Shop the video around some behavioral health academics. That’s just funny in the most morbid of ways.
The thing that is getting me right now is reading case law. Like the psych — easy, it’s science. I can look at that academically and clinically. It makes sense. Statute is great; I can read it all day, no problem. I understand it theoretically and how it would be applied.
But fucking case law — reading the story of what the fuck had to happen to a woman before something changed. Have you ever been thinking there is a spider on your arm and you overreact and smack yourself? It scared you. I was reading State v. Ciskie, which is a landmark case about relationship rape and the use of expert witnesses under 702 to use battered-women-syndrome expertise in rape cases. Same basic concepts of why the women don’t leave, whether they are being hit or raped.
So anyways, I was reading and he told her he was going to kill her, and I literally threw my phone. Like what was on the screen scared me to the point I had the involuntary reaction of needing to physically get away from the words.
The part of it is the more I read, the more I see how my case can be tried. I am so pissed off because I have cases that were tried when I was a child — why the hell am I still fighting these same perceptions thirty years later? That’s bullshit. We know. We have known. The statute is there, the science is there, and case law is there. These landmark cases in intimate-partner sexual assault that definitively answered the questions about what happened to me were decided last fucking century. What in God’s name is that?
People are so afraid of rape. Not being raped — but just the idea of it really hits a nerve with people. Men can’t talk about it. Women don’t want to think about it because they’ve either been a victim and they’re living with some shame because we shame the women, not the men who, you know, do all the raping and shit. Women feel shame.
Fuck that. I’m not ashamed of it. The other half of women know someone who has been raped or have the misconception of rape being about violating virgins in a dark alleyway that makes them buy rape whistles to protect themselves. Because that would have helped me that night — a fucking whistle. They ignored the screaming, but if I only had a fucking whistle.
I don’t know. I’m tired. I want my case tried. I want something out of this. You don’t go through the shit I’ve been through in the last couple years because of this and have no accountability and no closure and no safety. And not try to make — force — something positive happen. That kind of suffering, I can’t let others go through what I’ve been through. I can’t. I have to change something in the world because this shit isn’t fucking okay.
So if I have to throw my phone across the room because the words on the screen scare me, so be it. Maybe some won’t have to because I’m doing it for them now. It’s just hard.
I will also say this endeavor is pretty badass of me to do. I know I’m not an expert, nor are any of the topics — law and psych — my specialty. You want a rape history book about rape’s prevalence in American society in the twentieth century? I’m your motherfucking guy. I can make that happen. This is coming out of my soul, not my mind. I mean, the mind is helping. And I do have mad fucking research skills.
I just need to give myself credit on this. I’m doing a good job of it. I felt kind of embarrassed posting that chapter. Like you guys were going to grade it and make fun of me for writing it. Luckily no one seems to have read the PDF except one. But I am doing a good job, and I’m not embarrassed by my work on this. And I won’t be embarrassed to share it as widely as possible. I’m going to be proud of it. Just need to convince myself of that. But talking some fucking sense into me is difficult for most people. Especially me.
And maybe the fact that I’m doing it at all is enough. Maybe pushing through the fear and the shaking hands and the memories that hit like landmines is the whole fucking point. I’m still here. I’m still writing. I’m still fighting. And even if the world never gives me the closure or justice I deserve, I’m not letting this story disappear. That has to count for something.
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