Another excerpt from the book:
I have learned a few things from Katherine’s reaction to my story. As a victim herself, I know she meant well by insisting I needed to tell someone what happened. But honestly, I would have preferred she just tell me that she’s there for me. I would have rather she not inserted her own story into mine, as if hers is the only valid one.
Granted, Katherine did not realize she was
doing this. I was blamed once for being “too hot” for a guy to keep his hands
to himself -- the last thing I need is to be told I am to blame if the same
thing happens to someone else, because I refused to talk about it. I have no
control over the choices other people make.
Furthermore, what if I’m not ready to talk about it? What if I still
need time to make sense of things, and by the time I come to a conclusion and
formulate a plan of action, another woman is harmed? What if sharing my
experience is enough to trigger a flashback for someone who just wants to
repress her humiliation and act like it never happened? Maybe it would be a
mistake to bring it up if it means shattering someone’s carefully constructed
illusion of normalcy. But would that really be my fault? Will the cycle of
blame ever end?
You know, it’s not so much the backlash
from people who have never been assaulted that worries me. It’s expected for
them to be ignorant about something they have never experienced for themselves.
Rather, it’s the potential of backlash from other victims, victims like
Katherine, which will be the most damaging to me. I fear being told once again
that my experience is not as tragic, not as damaging to be counted as
legitimate: that invisible scars don’t matter. I fear that more than anything.
I fear never being able to know what is real, what is true, and being dictated
the truth from people who weren’t there, who don’t know me or John.
If nothing else, this much I know is true:
I am not to blame for John being the way that he is. I’ve tossed and turned
late into the night trying to come up with reasons: was he abused as a child?
Did he never learn right from wrong? Is he a sex-addict in denial? A sociopath?
An ordinary, ignorant college guy who got his signals crossed?
We are so deeply entrenched in a culture
that puts pleasure on a pedestal, it's no wonder there are people who see
coercion as just a means to a self-gratifying end, nothing more.
As much as I long for answers, the only
ones that matter are the ones I can
answer. If I am to blame for anything, it’s for having too positive an outlook
on people. All my life I’ve tried to believe the best about everyone; the
crazies you hear about on the news always seemed too far away to affect my view
of people around me. Certainly I wanted to believe the best about a guy who
told me he loved me. I wanted to believe that a guy who studied my quirks and
silly habits for several months would pick up on the hints that I just wasn’t
ready for anything sexual. In many instances, I honestly didn’t think I had to say no; doing so would be
admitting there is something happening that shouldn’t be.
What girl in love wants to admit that?
None that I know.
There is much to remember, too much in fact, to remember in the contemporary world of anything goes. One notorious song from the past, a country song that I've never bothered to listen to or track down or acknowledge whom it was written or sung by, that featured a woman asking the question "when you say no, do you mean yes?" That was a controversy before even the Dixie Chicks incident wherein the Dixie Chicks paid ill service to America and were instantly removed from the musical rotations of country music radio stations...in the north and the south, the east and the west. One way to forget about the proper rules of the 'freedom of choice' crowd is to behave like a one hit wonder. Consider if you will Big and Rich, since this is a country theme. There were u.f.o.'s and electric guitars on that tune of theirs that made the hit list. Perhaps you would be interested to know another diversionary tactic in the contemporary country music industry? Why not find a Charlie Pride album on vinyl (and not listen to it)? Not that I have any problem collecting compact disks and music, but I do have a problem with the one-genre format. Christian rock radio is like those Charlie Pride albums, the Big and Rich one-hit wonders, and the Dixie Chicks controversies...here today, gone tomorrow. Concise, to the point, precise writing can go on for thousands of pages but a rambling idea on paper may be very briefly contained in one paragraph. For instance, the USA Today. I have read an issue or three of the USA Today over breakfast when I was at Kent State University. Wide ideas and bullet points AND a standards editor make for a digested-in-advance "feel" to the 'paper' almost like it were meant to be studied and not read? Reading might make one jump out of his chair and take action if not for the fact that he has been prepared to do his daily work. What action gets taken on a pre-digested, pre-decided basis? Reader's Digest, a big, rich magazine of the past once abridged novels, and scholarly works for a popular audience. It was a project disliked by the 'literati' of the time but appreciated by those who read not the whole library that backed up the scholar's writing used by the magazine. Sort of, in my mind, the equivalent of the top of the hour news on the radio (not television.) There is far to much news so called around today. Information is not free but if anyone dares to recall that the television news prior to the decade of the seventies was broadcast in fifteen minute segments in the evening they will also remember morning, evening and afternoon editions of newspapers delivered to READERS of news reports. Readers of news reports shared an interest with readers of Readers Digest. Where is there an equivalent today of the informed mass audience? Music magazines? Film magazines? Special interest weeklies or magazines? It is a bit of a pain to find enough printed material to distract my mind from a days work. Sincerely, Consumer reports.
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