Pieces Of Me...

I came to a recent realization.  With the final milestone of acceptance about what happened to me as a child, things started to come into stark contrast to how I used to view them.  Life choices began making more sense with that added piece of the puzzle…

The nights spent so drunk that friends had to find me a ride home, laughing about how it was just the way I was.  The birthday where I spent a majority of it sleeping on a bed made of bar stools.  The countless one night stands and meaningless sex that had been happening for over a decade. 

It all came to me like the lightbulb to Edison (and probably took as many tries to perfect and fully understand its value): I had chosen years ago to not value myself and so I hid myself away behind a façade of someone who was not only willing but happy to oblige…always. 

With this realization, certain encounters began to come into an almost scary focus.  The time when I was basically passed out drunk and woke up in the middle of an encounter with a man and was so startled by what was happening that I ran out of the apartment so fast, I actually left my underwear behind.  The period of time when I would spend every weekend drunk with a friend and when his friends showed up, it was like I became the bottle they could pass around on a nightly basis.  The time that I was so drunk after a few whiskeys that I laid down on the sidewalk and had to get put into a cab to get home, had to basically be carried inside and woke up in a heap of blankets on the floor with no recollection how I got there, only to later realize that someone at the bar had roofied my drink.  Feeling trapped because I knew no-one would believe that I was roofied because I already had the label of “drunk party girl” permanently tattooed on my person.  The conversation with a “friend” after the fact when she told me, “It doesn’t matter how it happened, you ruined so-in-so’s perfect day.” 

All of these are situations where someone had chosen to take advantage of me.  All of these situations are moments in time that I am blamed for.  All of these stem from one simple idea: victim shaming.  In all of these scenarios, I was a victim.  I was not someone who should be judged, but treated with the same respect and dignity that is afforded to all people.  This is, however, not always the case, especially when, “she should know better”.  The worst thing about these situations (and these are only a very few examples of things that happened in the last 10 years), is that I carry these moments with me and feel guilty about the way people see me because of them.  It hurts to the core of my being that there are people in this world who see me as a piece of meat.  That see me as some trashy slutty party girl who will never grow up.  Who see me as a perpetual hurricane that just needs to be ridden out. 

And in these situations, it’s not just the fact that people see me as some sort of constant natural disaster of epic proportions.  It is also the fact that for brief moments in many, not all, of these encounters when I felt like perhaps this person was willing to take on the task of caring about me for who I am.  Of, maybe, just maybe, loving such a damaged and tumultuous being.  Even for a brief moment, the hope was more intoxicating than any alcohol or drug.  The hope that someone would possibly choose me, and love me, just because I exist as I do and not in spite of it.

So I write today to say no more.  I will no longer be the missing piece in whatever puzzle you have created for yourself.  I will not be the one to silently fill your void unless you are someone who is willing to fill mine.  It is not selfish.  It is self-preservation.  I cannot continue to feel guilty because I was not enough. 

I was enough.  I will always be enough.  I will always be a sum of parts that doesn’t always fully add up to 100%.  I will constantly be a basketball player that will be good but will never be legendary, despite their best effort.  I will be the person who seems to live with perpetual nightmares and seems to carry the weight of the world on her shoulders, but I will not bow, I will not bend, I will not break. 

I will no longer go quietly into the night, spending hours or days or weeks or months or maybe even years feeling guilty about how you see me.  I will no longer try to help you fill the voids that your own life and your own damage have given you while you completely choose to ignore the choices I have made with my life and why.  If you choose not to really see, that is your prerogative.  Mine will be to continue to carry that weight and to walk through life like the champion I am, and never, like a victim again.