Your Eyes are Cut Glass and You Stay Covered Up

 I have to get this one out before a blink of it fades in my memory. It did take me a while to decide if I even could write it. It's bad. It was vivid and traumatic enough that I woke up and immediately began crying and shaking and kind of stayed that way for a couple hours. Then off and on for the rest of the day. I hiked eight miles trying to burn it off. I fell on the trail for the first time in my life after hundreds of trail miles, including a trail half marathon and a trail half marathon with obstacles plus all the running to train for them on trails. I understand what it's about and why I dreamed it, but I mindfucked myself. Because I did. I absolutely did this to myself.

This is the worst nightmare I have ever had. Worse than the grizzly bear. Worse than the riptide. At least both of those killed me and I did all I could to save myself. Now it's just drowning in a tide pool and I can't even seem to stand up to save myself.

TRIGGER WARNING

This is a huge trigger warning for all sorts of stuff, so if you are at all fragile, do not read this.

I dreamed there was this true crime show that featured caught on tape kind of stuff. I had something I thought was worth submitting for it. I don't remember what I wanted to send. The dream didn't go through the process of sending it. Only the process of watching it air. My recent tendency towards a little sliver of literary voyeurism has bitten me on the ass. I suspect my recent tendency to show more skin than I ever ever have also comes into play. We never do get past our raising.

My bit aired and then following that was this dark, grainy scene of a room full of people apparently all sleeping in sleeping bags around the floor of a large room. I recognized it for some reason. I almost immediately picked myself out on the far side of the room, diagonal to the camera with my head to the wall. I would never sleep like that, but something in me knew myself. I don't recall if it was my hair, or the position, on my stomach, like I tend to sleep when I'm alone. But I knew me.

I don't remember this being part of the clip I sent. I don't remember the event. I don't remember ever seeing this footage prior. I don't remember anything.

Two figures enter the frame from the right side. I don't know what tells me how big they are. But they are big men. Their faces were blurred out. Mine was not, but you couldn't see it anyway. I guess the faces don't really matter at these times. How very Margaret Atwood of me to think that way.

In waking life, I know exactly who these two men are. Beyond a doubt. I questioned myself for too long, but I know who they are. And just like the video, I have to blur their faces because even that saves me a little.

They appear to be looking for something and they are on a mission. I don't know what they want, but I don't recognize them and I know they want something. It's strange to me that I didn't rouse. That is also something that would never happen. I know when someone walks in while I'm sleeping. I can feel them and know where they are with my eyes closed in full dark. That, folks, is a trauma response. I do not feel safe sleeping. But I didn't move. Don't trust anyone who dulls your self-preservation instincts. Better yet, just don't trust anyone.

Of course that's about the time my spidey sense started tingling. I wanted to go save me. But you know you can't go back in time and save anyone. So I just had to watch it play out. The one man on the far right picked me out. Sauntered right up to me. I have to wonder in retrospect if he knew me before I knew him. I watched him unzip my sleeping bag. I never moved. I never had any idea of the danger. Past paralysis watching it happen and feeling it happen all over. I was completely defenseless. I'm helpless.

It was entirely graphic. I watched him yank at my pants and watched him jerk side to side until he got them down far enough, I suppose. Then I watched him unzip his pants and get on his knees. I watched him never move me. I watched as he raped me right there, prone on the floor, and I never moved beyond his force.

It was rough and it was violent. Even writing about it makes me feel like that motherfucker is ripping out my heart through my trachea. He didn't have to  restrain me. I never fought at all. That is another thing that would never ever happen. I would not let someone violate me that way and not take every piece of him I could get with me.

At about that moment, my memory cleared. I remembered lying there. I remembered how much I had to drink. I don't drink that way. I haven't since I was old enough to know better and I certainly would never in a million years drink that way and then allow myself to be vulnerable like that in a crowd of people with evident strangers. 

Experience has led me to believe in my whole soul that men are monsters. Even the ones we think are evolved have violence in them. There are so few exceptions. There are exceptions. There are a very few that I would be say that I could be in a stairwell with no cameras and feel comfortable. I remembered lying on the floor. I remembered not being able to stop him. I remember it feeling as if I didn't care to try. How strangely unlike me. But sometimes we let people do things and we don't fight and we can't ever explain why. I remember the feeling of my hipbones against the hard floor.

I'm watching this play out on video at the same time as I am remembering it happening when I had previously no recollection. In that moment, I was raped twice. That's what was the worst part, not only was I raped, but I then watched it happen on video. I let it happen once and then I watched myself let it happen again. With the whole world as audience. Everyone saw. And I know none of that was my fault, but I still felt all the guilt and shame that have been ground into me since birth. I was humiliated. And I wondered if he would show that video and brag to his friends about "taking her down."

And the slap in the face that was blurring his features. Maybe I would have recognized him if I could have seen his face behind all of that unfamiliar. I didn't recognize his body language. And I recognize those things most of the time. That's some different kind of predator. But he could have been anyone. Certainly no one that I ever really knew, even if I thought I did.

TRIGGER END

I can't bring myself to give this one a lyrical title. I can't think of a song that makes any of this feel better. I also can't think of a song that makes me feel like writing this does. That's another first. There's always something. And at that exact moment it came to me and I sure do wish there had been somebody with a damn Weatherby. I thought for a second there might be. Turns out that the man hurting me was the one I'd hoped would protect me.

I think that was the second song I ever heard by my now favorite artist. It came to mind a while back when thinking about what they call "skip tracks." Not because it isn't a flawless song, but it hurts me so much to hear it. Makes me feel sad and violent and fierce. Shit, I may need to buy a Weatherby if that bastard ever makes parole. He just watched the night of my dream, but it was the same.

https://youtu.be/f3Rg1CC9H8s?si=ilE-QnG6UevaQtlf

I'd apologize for this whole story if I didn't feel like it was one I needed to tell. One that maybe someone else needs to read. I'm reluctant to even actually publish it. I've sat on it for four days. I've meditated and I've prayed and I've burned everything in me trying to kill it. But "there is no greater pain than bearing an untold story inside you." I bet it's practically erotica for some animal. And that thought made me want to vomit. At this point, I've spent four days wanting to vomit.

This dream is the culmination of so much that my heart is feeling in the past week or so. As I sit typing, it feels like that motherfucker is reaching into my chest and squeezing my heart even now. I'm still shaking. I still have this lump in my throat. I am angry like I can't remember being angry. I am hurting like I haven't in a very long time. I hear everyone telling me to feel my feelings. Well, here they are. And they are full-frontal. I'm crying again.

This isn't a  real experience. This didn't happen in reality. Dreams are always heavily metaphorical for me. And this one wasn't about a real event, but about how I feel. Feeling as if someone took something from me that I did not freely give. Coercion. Feeling violated. Feeling helpless. Feeling unsure and adrift and terrified and completely alone and unable to save myself or anyone else and thinking that any moment I'd be safe but just never quite getting there, try as I might. About letting myself be vulnerable and getting punished. About reaching out and thinking I had something to say and even if I was heard, this is not what was supposed to happen. About drinking too damn much. I can't even tell my therapist about this yet in full context. Of course, I'm not writing all the full context either. Blur their faces. I guess the faces don't really matter at these times. I'm drowning in a tide pool and I can't even stand up.

I've fought myself for four days about whether to publish this or not. I feel sick at the thought of people reading it. People I know. People I don't. That's apparently been a thing recently. That makes me want to scream. Makes me want to look them all in the eyes and ask if they feel that way looking at me or only behind the safety of a screen. I hear I'm scary. Grown ass men are scared of me. To my face. I understand it's a misquote, but it's true "write hard and clear about what hurts." Well, this is hard and clear and goddamn, it hurts.