If you are just tuning in to my inconsequential life, here's what you missed: On May 7, 2001, when I was 19 years old, I was raped by two men while a third man sat and watched. I knew the two who raped me, but had never met the third guy. I believe the second guy to rape me was a ringleader, and that the event wouldn't have happened if he hadn't been there. I waver between being really angry with that third guy, and understanding him because I was too scared to fight for myself so why should I expect more of him?
Today has been a hard day. I felt a bit dramatic this morning, being so effected by the testimony of Christine Blassy Ford. As the day went on I learned through social media that I wasn't the only one, that this was a trigger for a lot of women. Coincidentally, I was scheduled for a counseling appointment at noon, before Brett Kavanaugh had testified. She told me many of her clients had shared similar feelings in the last couple of weeks.
I'm having trouble because I want to believe them both, and maybe they are both to be believed. Maybe she misidentified her attacker, or maybe he really doesn't remember and if that's the case, and if he's never done anything like that again, then I don't think he's a terrible person. And I don't think I'm a terrible person for thinking that.
This is the problem, right now. If I say I don't think he's terrible if that's what happened, I feel like a traitor. Like I am supposed to want him to suffer forever for what might have happened 36 years ago, before he was even an adult, but I can't say that is what I would want. I went to law school because I wanted to be a criminal defense attorney, I love criminal procedure, i love the checks and balances of due process, I love the presumption of innoncence, and I believe our flawed system to still be the best in the world. In some ways, I think I will never be able to give him a fair shake because I was able to catch at least part of her testimony live, and on television, and his I have still only heard over the radio.
But here's where I get tangled up - If he's guilty, I can forgive him, but if he's guilty, I want to hear him say it. I want him to admit to what he did, and I want him to promise that he has never done it again and never will.
He hasn't done that.
So either he is deceiving us all, or he is telling the truth, and she's lying, or she is incorrect in her recollection. And especially if she is lying, then I will feel like a fool for saying, "There's many reasonable explanations as to why she did not tell." She was scared. She was ashamed. She just wanted to move on. It wasn't rape. It's something she should get over. It's not worth the fight. I'll feel like a fool for saying "There's many reasons she waited until now." He is about to be appointed to the highest court in the land. It is unlikely his reach will ever grow beyond what it would be from that bench. Better late than never.
I believe all of those things.
Most people don't know the identity of the men who raped me. I only know the first name of the first guy, but I know him when I see him - And I've seen him. I could tell you the first and last name of the second guy, the ringleader. I've shared it with a few people, but I once made the mistake of sharing it with the wrong person. The next thing I knew, he was sitting in my bar, ordering a screwdriver from me, chatting with me as though we were old friends. So why did you serve him, you ask? I;m either really weak or really strong, because I just couldn't, or wouldn't fight with him. I guess that all depends on how you think I am supposed to act as a victim - or a survivor - of sexual assault.
Today I looked up his criminal history on the Kern County website. Since he raped me he pled no contest to an unrelated violent crime, and he has had one domestic violence restraining order. I feel guilty, because I wonder how things would be different, and for whom, if i had reported him. I wonder if he had hurt someone before me. I've recently read that women who don't report should be considered guilty of a crime too, but the law doesn't really work that way. The law doesn't generally tell us what we have to do, it tells us what we cannot do. We can't go around raping people
Did you read that? You can't go around raping people. It's not okay. Its illegal. It's illegal because it infringes on the rights of another. You don't get to intentionally put your hands or your penis on or in someone who says no, or someone who is resisting you, or someone who hasn't expressed to you that she or he wants your physical contact. Your right to your bodily autonomy ends where mine begins.
Speaking of, that's the whole concern for prolife advocates. Your right to your body begins where another's fragile, voiceless, defenseless life begins. I wanted Brett Kavanaugh to be our next Supreme Court Justice, because I believe he will rule consistently in favor of the rights of the unborn and that issue is critical to me. I don't want him to be guilty, but if he's not, I am afraid of what that means for me.What if the day comes that i have to tell?
People standing at either extreme are going to say that is exactly what the other side wants.
I'm just seeking the truth, and I don't think we'll ever get it here, but what I think is that we have to be honest in our search for the truth. Reasonable minds might reach different conclusions but I suspect the journey is what matters.
Throughout the day I had a lot of thoughts on what I would write tonight, but most of them couldnt make their way to my fingertips. So in the next few days I plan to look for the two most honest pieces I have written about being raped. One is called "Orange Dreams" and one is called "The Night I Died." I wrote them both in the two years following my rape. I had moved away to San Diego - Knowing I was going to move soon was one of the reasons that I chose not to report and in some ways I escaped, but in other ways, lost in a big and unfamiliar city, I had the freedom to be honest. I love those pieces because they show a pain that hasn't been demonstrated here. Being raped changed my life. It didn't just hurt me, but it hurt my family. And I don;t just mean my parents and siblings then. I will never know how my relationship with my husband and daughter today would be different if that had never happened. I don't get to know that, because I was raped when I was 19 years old, and you don't know who those men are, or where they've gone, but they did it. I had my chance to report them, and I didn't take it, and the consequence is that they have not been punished for what they did to me and I run the risk that i have to encounter them at any given moment. I respect - I love - the process enough to protect their names, and I am not sure what it would take to make me give that up. What I do know is that 17 years have passed, but what they did was as wrong today as it was yesterday.
Thursday, September 27, 2018
Friday, September 7, 2018
Me & A Gun
If you haven't heard the song, take a few minutes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RN3zdTXOQAM
It still makes me cry and maybe doesn't seem to make a lot of sense, unless you;ve been in a situation where you have had to check out, go somewhere else, just to get through it.
But that's not really what I want to talk about today.
About three months ago, I took a ladies' handgun course as part of the 10 day celebration of Gabriel's life. The challenge for the day was to step outside of your comfort zone. I had never fired a gun, only held one very few times, and to say the class and the opportunity to fire 8 different handguns took me outside of my comfort zone is an understatement.
I'm not asking you to think it's rational, but I hate guns. I am not asking you to agree, but I know that if Sean didn't have a gun in his home, he wouldn't have died the day that he did. And you can give me the perfunctory response, that people who are suicidal will find a way to kill themselves, but I will give you my perfunctory response, which is that suicide by gun is one of the most effective ways to kill yourself - More so than hanging, overdosing, slashing your wrists, or jumping from high places. People who shoot themselves are dead before they even know they've pulled the trigger. So yeah, maybe someday Sean would have killed himself anyway. But if he didn't have that gun, he'd have to set up a noose, and that's a pain in the ass. Or he would have to make up his mind and then go out and find an adequate number of drugs, and in the interim someone might say something to talk him down. And slitting wrists just wasn't a very Sean thing to do. Guns were a Sean thing, and a perfectly legitimate thing for him to have in his home. How very poetic for him to be holding it when he died.
These were the things running through my mind as I sat in class on a Friday evening for approximately two hours of lecture and one hour on the range, including dry shooting 12 handguns followed by live shooting of 8 handguns. More than once during our class, the instructor looked at me and asked me if I was okay. Somehow, during a break, it was revealed that I identify as a "liberal" and I was asked what brought a liberal to a handgun course. I told him that maybe people who identify one way don't have to fit his stereotype, and he seemed to accept that. I was an excellent student in the classroom, taking diligent notes that I still have on a legal pad.
When we got to dry shooting, I struggled. There was a lot to remember and a lot to coordinate with my body and that kind of stuff doesn't come naturally to me. The guns were heavy. I had a hard time remembering to keep my finger off the trigger, which is still strange to me because it seemed to be instinct to slip my finger on to the trigger even though I have no experience with guns. And they tell you to always assume a gun is loaded, which meant around me there were 11 other loaded guns and a bunch of women who had no experience in using them. But, I managed.
Then it was time for live shooting. We were able to select a stall with the gun we preferred for dry shooting. It all happened really fast. Through my ear protection I could hear the muffled sounds of the instructor telling us to square up, aim, and fire, and the next thing I knew, faster than I realized, I had pulled and there was a bullet hole well above the shoulder of my target, missing the human outline completely, and the tears were streaming down my cheeks. A ring hovered in the air, probably not for very long at all, but long enough to take me back to that day that I pulled into the parking lot of Sean's apartment complex, ran to his studio apartment, peaked through the blinds, and began pounding the window and tearing it open.
"I have to get out of here."
"What? Why? Are you okay?"
"I have to get out of here."
I was directed to a booth where I could observe the rest of the live shooting, if I wanted to, and I chose to do so.
Later, the instructor told me the gun I had fired was the most powerful of the eight we were shooting. It was a Glock 23 in 40 caliber. Maybe I should have started with something more manageable.
But that wasn't the problem. The problem is, I hated holding the ability to take a life in my hands. I have seen too many lives end to want that kind of responsibility. I've brought life into the world three times, and that's what I prefer to do. And I don't want to drink myself into a stupor and blow my own head off someday and when considering the possibility of A) Live shooter, B) Armed intruder, or C) Drunken Suicide, C seems the most likely to arise.
Maybe someday I will find myself in a situation, wishing I learned to fire a weapon and had a permit to carry one concealed. I hope not, but it's not outside the realm of possibility. Maybe I would be a different person today if I had a gun back when it was me dreaming of Barbados and the soft sweet biscuits of Carolina and the Senior Prom and whatever I had to think about to survive being raped.
What I do know is that who I am today, is not someone who wishes to carry a gun.
My mom asked me I would do something, knowing it would upset me. Well, I didn't know it would upset me as much as it did. I also think being afraid of something isn't a good reason to not do something - Even though there are a lot of things I don't do because I am afraid.
I don't get to say anymore, "I've never fired a gun," and that's changed me because that fact was such a significant part of who I was. For the first few days after, I thought I had compromised myself by undertaking that experience but I don't feel that way anymore. I chose to challenge myself and I what I've thought for years I now know with certainty: I hate guns, and I don't want to shoot one again.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RN3zdTXOQAM
It still makes me cry and maybe doesn't seem to make a lot of sense, unless you;ve been in a situation where you have had to check out, go somewhere else, just to get through it.
But that's not really what I want to talk about today.
About three months ago, I took a ladies' handgun course as part of the 10 day celebration of Gabriel's life. The challenge for the day was to step outside of your comfort zone. I had never fired a gun, only held one very few times, and to say the class and the opportunity to fire 8 different handguns took me outside of my comfort zone is an understatement.
I'm not asking you to think it's rational, but I hate guns. I am not asking you to agree, but I know that if Sean didn't have a gun in his home, he wouldn't have died the day that he did. And you can give me the perfunctory response, that people who are suicidal will find a way to kill themselves, but I will give you my perfunctory response, which is that suicide by gun is one of the most effective ways to kill yourself - More so than hanging, overdosing, slashing your wrists, or jumping from high places. People who shoot themselves are dead before they even know they've pulled the trigger. So yeah, maybe someday Sean would have killed himself anyway. But if he didn't have that gun, he'd have to set up a noose, and that's a pain in the ass. Or he would have to make up his mind and then go out and find an adequate number of drugs, and in the interim someone might say something to talk him down. And slitting wrists just wasn't a very Sean thing to do. Guns were a Sean thing, and a perfectly legitimate thing for him to have in his home. How very poetic for him to be holding it when he died.
These were the things running through my mind as I sat in class on a Friday evening for approximately two hours of lecture and one hour on the range, including dry shooting 12 handguns followed by live shooting of 8 handguns. More than once during our class, the instructor looked at me and asked me if I was okay. Somehow, during a break, it was revealed that I identify as a "liberal" and I was asked what brought a liberal to a handgun course. I told him that maybe people who identify one way don't have to fit his stereotype, and he seemed to accept that. I was an excellent student in the classroom, taking diligent notes that I still have on a legal pad.
When we got to dry shooting, I struggled. There was a lot to remember and a lot to coordinate with my body and that kind of stuff doesn't come naturally to me. The guns were heavy. I had a hard time remembering to keep my finger off the trigger, which is still strange to me because it seemed to be instinct to slip my finger on to the trigger even though I have no experience with guns. And they tell you to always assume a gun is loaded, which meant around me there were 11 other loaded guns and a bunch of women who had no experience in using them. But, I managed.
Then it was time for live shooting. We were able to select a stall with the gun we preferred for dry shooting. It all happened really fast. Through my ear protection I could hear the muffled sounds of the instructor telling us to square up, aim, and fire, and the next thing I knew, faster than I realized, I had pulled and there was a bullet hole well above the shoulder of my target, missing the human outline completely, and the tears were streaming down my cheeks. A ring hovered in the air, probably not for very long at all, but long enough to take me back to that day that I pulled into the parking lot of Sean's apartment complex, ran to his studio apartment, peaked through the blinds, and began pounding the window and tearing it open.
"I have to get out of here."
"What? Why? Are you okay?"
"I have to get out of here."
I was directed to a booth where I could observe the rest of the live shooting, if I wanted to, and I chose to do so.
Later, the instructor told me the gun I had fired was the most powerful of the eight we were shooting. It was a Glock 23 in 40 caliber. Maybe I should have started with something more manageable.
But that wasn't the problem. The problem is, I hated holding the ability to take a life in my hands. I have seen too many lives end to want that kind of responsibility. I've brought life into the world three times, and that's what I prefer to do. And I don't want to drink myself into a stupor and blow my own head off someday and when considering the possibility of A) Live shooter, B) Armed intruder, or C) Drunken Suicide, C seems the most likely to arise.
Maybe someday I will find myself in a situation, wishing I learned to fire a weapon and had a permit to carry one concealed. I hope not, but it's not outside the realm of possibility. Maybe I would be a different person today if I had a gun back when it was me dreaming of Barbados and the soft sweet biscuits of Carolina and the Senior Prom and whatever I had to think about to survive being raped.
What I do know is that who I am today, is not someone who wishes to carry a gun.
My mom asked me I would do something, knowing it would upset me. Well, I didn't know it would upset me as much as it did. I also think being afraid of something isn't a good reason to not do something - Even though there are a lot of things I don't do because I am afraid.
I don't get to say anymore, "I've never fired a gun," and that's changed me because that fact was such a significant part of who I was. For the first few days after, I thought I had compromised myself by undertaking that experience but I don't feel that way anymore. I chose to challenge myself and I what I've thought for years I now know with certainty: I hate guns, and I don't want to shoot one again.
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