Will This Make Things Better?

 It's weird to think of the things we have to "come out" as. Because there's a set of defaults. Presumptions are made that you're "normal" and fit neatly into the categories people are supposed to have fit neatly into since people became a thing. 

Of course, there never has been a neat set. There are always "outliers", but should they really be considered outliers if they were truly part of the standard the whole time? Being gay isn't new. It was a default. Just something that had to be kept in secret.

This isn't me coming out as being gay, bisexual, pansexual or transgender. I'd rather be considered non-binary, but this isn't about that either.

I've been watching I May Destroy You and recently finished a great documentary called Audrey and Daisy.

So this is me coming out as someone who has been sexually assaulted. Which is a very normal thing, that shouldn't be a very normal thing.

What else is there to come out as? Does it all revolve around sex and gender? Is it always steps away from violence? There are a lot of different minorities that face a lot of violence, but you can't usually come out as a person of color. There are exceptions. There are always exceptions. It's funny to be exceptional in a way that makes you a threat to the majority.

I guess you could also come out as having some sort of mental illness. "Struggling."

I recent read a piece about the idea of being a "survivor" of rape or sexual assault. It was why I watched Audrey and Daisy, actually. Daisy Coleman recently committed suicide. So, what does that mean to her legacy? What does that mean to her having been a "survivor"? Am I surviving?

I May Destroy You is a really good show, but I don't think I understood the ending. And I wonder if that's partially because I don't understand the ending to my own experience. I wonder if that's because it's hard to understand the ending and neatly identify yourself when something happens that is traumatic.

How it happened is sort of fuzzy, which is similar to the stories I've recently encountered of rape. But I wasn't drugged, and I was an adult, so there's a part of me that feels incredibly guilty about the whole situation. There's a part of me that is convinced I should have known better. There's a part of me that like the everyday neurotic person that I am that wants to have been in control. That thinks I really was in control. Even though I don't remember anything that caused the pain I felt when I woke up. And the shame associated with that pain because I knew the person and I knew that was something I never wanted with that person. And they were still in my house. So I had to ask them what happened. So I had to say that I wasn't sober enough to consent and be countered with "you asked for it" when the only other foggy thing I remembered was saying no to being pressured into oral sex. 

So if that's the only "no" I remember, even if I know I had absolutely no attraction to this person or desire to ever participate intimately with them, does anything else even count?

The blurred lines seem easier to fit into a narrative as a teenager. I can easily state with conviction that the girls who are assaulted, drunk or not, do not deserve what happened to them.

It would be easy for me to say to a friend that there was something wrong about this experience. It would be easy to say "It doesn't matter how often you went on sexual walk-abouts and what experimentation you've done, if you were blackout drunk you were not able to give consent." But it's something I go back to constantly, and it's something so hard for me to forgive myself for experiencing. It was so hard to break off that association and tell the person that assaulted me that I was now living a reality I never wanted to be a part of. I tried to be diplomatic. I started with, "I think there was a fundamental misunderstanding as to the nature of our relationship and what I would be comfortable with," and was met with a non-apology that finally brought me to being truly upset with this person for what they had done.

I keep wondering when things will fall into place. I thought in explaining how I was hurt to this person that something would be fixed. I thought when "coming out" to my close friends that something would settle. But he was a friend, so they were his friends, and while they apologized for my experience and said they believed me I could only wonder whether it was selfish to possibly alter their opinions of this person.

Which really sucks.

I again go to the reference point that I do not believe that people who commit rape and sexual assault should feel less changed by the event than the people who were raped or assaulted. I don't care that Louis C.K. missed paychecks. I do believe in rehabilitation. I don't think people should be punished forever. I don't know if it is productive to society to write off a person. But I think that in some ways the people who are raped and assaulted are written off as well. Not everyone is going to say "I believe you." Not everyone will think it is a story worth telling. And a lot of people, like myself in reference to my own experience, will wonder if it's worth it to have anyone else be hurt by the event. Isn't it enough that I'm living with this pain, guilt and confusion? Does it really need to be spread around? Do I need to know that this is something this person truly regrets and will regret for the rest of their lives? Probably. I mean, that's what I think I want out of Louis C.K. Regret for what was done, not for the consequences he had to face for his actions.

As of right now the consequences this person has had to face I think has been relatively minimal. I don't plan on shaking up their life anymore than I have in telling my closest friends. But I don't know what else I need to do to move on. And all I want to do is move on the same way they seem to have.