if you only believe

I was taught
if you only believe
when it costs you
nothing
you don't
really believe.

What it costs to believe

My mother said

she

believes

me.

It costs

her nothing

now to say

she would have

given up the church

that helped keep

her alive

if I had told

and the church

had not

believed me

then.  When she said that,

I believed

my mother. 

I

believed

my mother

until we talked, and I

discovered that

my mother

does not believe

a woman coming

forward now with

nothing to gain and

everything to lose,

a grown woman

telling now,

when it costs

this woman

something

(maybe everything). 

Believing this woman

would cost

my mother something

that she is not willing

to pay, and I wonder

if my mother really

would

believe

me

if it cost

her something,

and I find

I don't know

if I believe

she would.

This is a well-written, short prose piece from Rachael Denhollander on the same topic.  I highly recommend it.

Dear family member

Dear family member,

I know that, to you, this situation is wholly political, that in your mind, there is no way this person could be telling the truth.  I know that’s where it starts and stops for you.  I know that you cannot imagine that any of the controversy is NOT political, that any of the anger and sadness is genuine, real, and not motivated by anything related to party lines.  I know that your party would rather have you believe in a conspiracy that seems rather incredible than believe that someone would see it as their duty to tell the truth about someone who is being considered for a position with one of the highest levels of power in our country.  I know that your party has convinced you that no one, after years of silence, could possibly choose out of a sense of duty as a citizen to speak up about their pain, knowing that

• they would face harassment, doubt, and  judgment outside a court of law
• their life would be at risk
• they would never be safe again wherever they went
• they were giving up the normal-seeming life they had pulled together over the years

unless it was part of conspiracy formulated by the other party.  (I fail to see that she has anything to gain here except more pain made extremely public, but you seem unable to even consider this.)  I also know that you are not trying to hurt people, that you are merely trying to clearly state your opinion on a very fraught topic.

I suspect that there may be a sudden silence about this issue among the female friends who have agreed politically with you on everything in the last few years; I suspect you don’t know what that means.  You seem so blinded by party politics that you don’t see the situation with anything approaching openness or compassion, that you don’t understand how personal it is for people who have been through the same thing.  (I’m pretty sure you have not been through the same thing because I would find it hard to believe that anyone who had would be able to be this blind just because of political affiliation.  I’m sorry if I’m wrong about that and am assuming too much.)

I know that it’s likely you are unaware of the psychology of sexual assault victims / survivors*.  I suspect you have never sought to educate yourself about it. I even suspect that no one has ever personally confided in you their story of their own sexual assault.  My reason for believing this is that you can still react in a way that asks the question: "Why speak out now?  Why not when it happened?"

(CONSIDER SKIPPING THIS GRAPHIC IF YOU HAVE EXPERIENCED SEXUAL ASSAULT)

You posted this on Facebook today, without awareness or irony, and, as far as I can tell, without any shred of understanding or empathy.  It is an answer to the question, "Why don’t victims speak out?"

Family member that I thankfully only see once a year, YOU are part of the problem, part of the reason why victims don’t speak out.  This kind of blind, politically-driven opinion is a slightly different (and much more repugnant) flavor of the same old story that leads to only a fraction of assaults being reported.  When you say what you said above, what people who have survived or will survive sexual assault hear is, "It's safer not to tell the truth.  Even when it matters.  Especially when it matters."

I can now add your view as expressed in this Facebook post to my list as a perfect example of why I would never disbelieve someone’s assault story simply because they didn’t file a police report at the time.

Here’s another list, for you, of some of the reasons why I didn’t report it when I was sexually assaulted

• I was in 6th grade.
• We grew up together in a smallish town and attended the same church and church school, a place where we were never taught anything about sex or consent or anything even vaguely related to the two, and my dad and his dad were friends and my sister and his sister were friends.
• I was mortified and disgusted and had no idea how to deal with the overwhelming feelings and confusion. 
• I knew it would cause trouble, and my mom was (I was pretty sure, though no one would TALK to me about it) dying at the time.The principal hated me and had shown clearly that the consequence of me reporting observing anything having to do with inappropriate sexual stuff was for her to scream at me in her office for what seemed like hours, accusing me of being a liar, troublemaker, and all-around evil human being who was just successful at hiding behind a good girl mask. 
• My father had expressed that old-school sentiment of, "What did she expect when she _______? (She had it coming)" when we heard about some poor girl being assaulted after drinking or being alone on the sidewalk at night or wearing makeup and a short skirt.
• I knew it would cause trouble, and my mom was (I was pretty sure from objective physical evidence, though no one would TALK to me about it because I was only in 6th grade) dying at the time.
• I didn’t even know I had other options.  (See: "I was in 6th grade")

I know it’s not exactly fair to put you on that list of why I didn’t report as a 6th grader because I didn’t know then that you held such a poisonous view, and I know that this present, particular instance is surrounded by a political cloud due to the nature of the situation and the players and seems somewhat exceptional (or was until 2 other people stepped forward to also volunteer to have their normal lives destroyed), but that’s honestly chaff to me at this point. 

For whatever reason, you don’t want to look or listen, you don’t want to see or hear this person’s claims, and you say you want to see their life further destroyed simply because it is politically inconvenient for you that they are talking here and now, that they are saying that someone your political party chose sexually assaulted them.  When you post things like this on Facebook, when you express these sentiments in real life in person, you are encouraging others, especially the young women in your life, not to tell you or report to anyone, and you are hurting people who didn’t report at the time.  People like me.  Your relative.  It may seem simply political to you, but to me it’s personal.  And because you are related to me and likely by blood or friendship to others who have also been or will someday be sexually assaulted, it really is personal to you, too.  Please keep that in mind.





*Today, right before I saw your post, I learned that "being triggered" doesn’t just mean being offended by a difference of opinion from this one.  It’s a physiological reaction, not a difference of opinion.  It’s surprisingly related to a lot of the current research on chronic pain that I’ve been looking through.

as long as you believe

chiropractor visit two resulted in
pain and less sleep as my body tried
to relax and curl up in its usual ways

and failed most miserably because bones
and joints were properly aligned for the first time

in years, but only once did I wake
in actual terrifying minor agony; after that,
I was on my back all night, twitching

or gasping myself awake when I did
fall asleep (I was recently tested
and found not to have the twitchy leg

thing or sleep apnea).  Pain today
like bands of fire and joints wrapped
in flaming compresses, headaches on

and off and on.  Still I choose to believe
this is pain like the pain of the caterpillar
turning to goop, so it can become

a butterfly, as Miles once said
--maybe in the Warrior's Apprentice, probably
when he was hustling a crowd of unbelievers--

or as I more practically phrased it
to the chiropractor in my head,

"As long as you believe
this will lead to healing,
I will believe in you."

being attentive

.
I watched the rainbow as it started to disappear,
but then the kids started yelling, so I turned away,
and when I looked back, it was gone.

Have you ever seen a rainbow disappear all the way
to the bitter end?  Maybe rainbows are like fairies
in that Peter Pan play, fueled by belief, killed so easily

by distraction -even a moment- that results in (if not
disbelief) unbelief or something like it; not active
disbelieving but passive not believing not focusing, not
being attentive
.

In some countries rain during a wedding is considered a blessing

.
Today the outdoor
wedding photographer prays:
cloudy skies, no rain
.

Why I hope the Ultimate Dinosaur exists

There was no snow when I woke up.  :(  Why do I even bother to believe the meteorologists anyway?  I know they're only right about 2% of the time, but I still get excited when they promise snow.

One of my former-co-workers, who constantly lit up my life while we worked together because he had the strangest sense of humor and loved to say inappropriate, weird, off-the-wall-and-sometimes-apparently-from-another-universe things, used to talk about how when he would take over the world with his Ultimate Dinosaur, his first victims would be career politicians and meteorologists because of how useless they both were.

I like my snow to fall on days I don't have to drive in it (such as Thanksgiving), so I hope it doesn't come tomorrow.  I don't want to fight crazy traffic on the way to and from work on "Black Friday," and I especially don't want to fight crazy traffic driving on snow.  I like going to work at 5:30 because there's usually no traffic since what store in its right mind would open at, say, 3 am?  (I mean, besides the one right next to mine.)  I hope there's room in the parking lot for the employees . . .

Happy Thanksgiving!  May you survive the upcoming "Holiday Season" with style and grace!