Emoting and Trusting

I generally tend to wear my heart on my sleeve as far as my general mood and emotions are concerned. I actually find it pretty difficult to contain myself, really, when I’m excited about something, upset, angry, and so on. Though angry is an extremely rare occurence–as Leonard described Penny in an episode of “The Big Bang Theory” once:

Leonard: Dont take this the wrong way, but you do seem to have that overexposed-to-gamma-radiation thing going on.
Penny: Excuse me?
Leonard: Its just that usually you’re sweet Bruce Banner, but when you get angry, you get all… Grrr!
Penny: I turn into a bear?
Leonard: Seriously? Gamma rays? Bruce Banner? How can you not get The Incredible Hulk from that?

I can also get Shakespearean when angered. When a co-worker at my last job commented once on how I’m always so cheerful and pleasant that he’s become convinced I simply don’t possess the ability to become angry, I explained that it’s simply a rare state of being for me, but when it does happen–look out, because I can craft some pretty confusing-on-the-surface-but-truly-vicious-once-you-get-it insults. He subsequently took it upon himself to find a way to make me get Shakespearean on his ass. Alas, he never succeeded…testament to how truly difficult it is to anger me, if someone dead-set determined to do so never could!

Anyway, I digress a bit.

From a combination of things, while I have actual trouble containing my general moods, I find it quite near impossible to express things I’m feeling deeper. Things that are a result of a lot of thinking or that just have more significance than my current overall state-of-being.

It takes a lot of building up for me to mention things I want. Even when directly asked, I deflect the question and leave decisions up to the asker. In most situations at this point, that can be explained by my easy-going nature, and I am a strong enough person that if I have a really solid opinion on something, I’ll voice it. But there’s a definite grey area wherein I have a slight preference for something that I find difficult to mention.

I know exactly what this primarily stems from: the emotional abuse of my first relationship. It was fundamentally manipulative, and one of the most prominent manipulations was belittling and obliterating my wants and preferences. If I asked for things, no matter how truly significant or insignificant they were to me, I was berated for being “needy,” “silly,” “stupid,” “inconvenient,” etc. Over time, I learned to simply stop asking for things or voicing preferences, because if they weren’t the same things my boyfriend wanted, then they were on some level Wrong.

It’s been the most difficult thing to overcome from that abuse. While I’m sure plenty of people would say I haven’t improved by virtue of the fact that I still have trouble talking about wants, desires, preferences, and the like, it’s not obvious from that how much I’ve progressed since ending that relationship. I have recovered quite a bit–at first, I couldn’t voice things at all. Getting an opinion out of me on anything was a full-on process. Trivial preferences still are, but at least I do now talk about things I feel strongly one way or the other.

Other feelings equally suffered blows at the hands of my first relationship, but they were easier to recover. It didn’t take much for me to bring up liking, missing, or even loving people shortly after that relationship ended. However, at this point in time, a long string of friendships and a couple of relationships that have ended in me being hurt and feeling tossed aside after a lot of effort and vulnerability seem to have turned that back around. The only people I now feel comfortable telling how much I miss them are ones who’ve been there effectively forever: my sister, other family, and friends I’ve had since high school or even longer. People I’m quite confident won’t be dropping me like a hat, because they’ve quite obviously had plenty of opportunity and haven’t done so.

Living alone for the first time in my life, I’ve gotten to missing people more. I definitely need social contact; I get quite hard on myself and overly-critical when I spend too much time alone and have too much time to think. I’m in a much better mental state when I interact with friends, even briefly, as close to every day as I can. And I’ve made some pretty cool friends here in Australia, but I have trouble telling them that I miss them or like them or anything else I feel because I’ve become so terrified of being vulnerable to people.

Admittedly, I’ve put myself in some of the most vulnerable positions possible with respect to interpersonal relationships the past year or so. Moving to another country with someone, relying on them for my ability to stay in this other country. Having that all dashed to pieces and trying to find my own way to get by as a result… That’s some pretty tough shit. Immigration, in my opinion, is right up there with American student loans as some of the worst things a person can have to deal with.

Beyond feelings and emotions, even my ability to trust has been whittled down to a toothpick. I’m finding it so hard not to be cynical about people’s motives. My immediate internal reaction has gone from thanks and appreciation and warmth to questioning what it is someone wants from me when they’re doing something nice. I’m starting to expect strings being attached to everything people do and say, and I can’t get over the disbelief when people are genuinely nice. I keep wondering what I did to deserve such treatment and when it’s going to all be turned upside down; I’ve lost my ability to accept that anyone can be kind to me without expecting something in return, and the few situations I’ve been in recently where it’s quite simply impossible for me to interpret them as motivated by something darker have left me thoroughly confused and on edge. It doesn’t make sense to me, and I can’t make it make sense in any way.

I don’t like that I’ve become jaded over my emotions. I don’t like that I used to just tell people what I think quite freely and now I just can’t. I don’t like that I can’t trust that people will be nice to me without wanting something out of me in return. I don’t like that some careless and thoughtless people have managed to affect me so deeply.

How do you get over things like that?

Tags: abuse · emotions · expectations · expression · friendship · mood · motives · relationships · trust · vulnerability

Written by Melody @ 7:14 am Categories: No Photos · Personal Reflection · Quotes

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I Love Hyperbole!

I do indeed love rhetorical hyperbole. Anyone who regularly interacts with me in person and gets me telling stories or otherwise talking about virtually anything will experience my innate excitability and penchant for utilizing phrases like “[superlative description] in the HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSE!” Yes, I do indeed talk in all-caps. I’ll have to work on a valid scientific means by which to prove this… I also posses a deep appreciation for alliteration and litotes, but those are devices for another day.

While my boundless love of exaggeration has gone on for years, if not decades, my love for Hyperbole and a Half has only been apparent for the past few days. Mostly because I discovered the blog just three days ago, as I’m quite positive that my adoration would have been similarly immediate if HaaF had entered my life sooner.

I am particularly enamored of Spaghatta Nadle–to the point I was compelled to friend him on Facebook and print out strips to hang at my desk at work. The last inspired a veritable giggle fit, confusing the hell out of my coworkers until they reached the point of announcing that Spaghatta Nadle was only becoming funny because I was thoroughly cracking up! They didn’t get the randomness of Spaghatta Nadle and how that makes him so entirely hilarious, but at least they enjoyed my extreme laughter!

The random sense of humor is so perfectly suited to mine that it has had me reflecting on similar characters of my own born of obtuse conversations in the past. Namely: Dumblings. They were the source of much talk of the creation of comics, and definitely inspired some cute knitting and sewing projects created by myself and my sister. I’ve decided, though, that their comics should no longer be merely a topic of conversation. Dumblings in graphic form need to be shared with the world.

With that, here are Dumblings:

If their introduction garners any support, I may be inspired to make them a regular feature. Because Dumblings are so the best characters ever invented in the HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSE!!

I am also generally in a super-crazy-silly-excited mood right now, and due to my state of living solo and having no company to speak of at the moment aside from the insect that is probably hiding steathily someplace in my apartment biding its time until I fall asleep and it can take another delicious sample from my arm like it’s been doing the past couple of nights, I am forced to expend some of this random ridiculousness here. Because unless I wanted to bounce around my apartment talking to myself in the dark, I’m sure someone at the gas station across the street would see me and feel the need to do something about the insane woman acting like a giddy five-year-old. And if I did decide to indulge my inner five-year-old in the dark, I’d probably wind up crashing into something and injuring myself because I’m also a total klutz and thus giddiness + darkness = badness!

Clearly it’s a good thing I can easily talk myself out of drinking alone, because if I were to add some of my insane Thai rum to the mix right now as I had been contemplating earlier, the result would surely be Hyperbolic Badness. And nobody wants that. Or maybe they do, but I am totally going to deprive them of experiencing it vicariously right now. Mwa ha ha!!

(I think this is the officially epiphany point I’ve been hoping to reach with this blog revival. It is finally taking a turn for the random! It is totally becoming ME. )

Tags: drawings · dumblings · giddiness · hyperbole · hyperbole and a half · inner five-year-old · spaghatta nadle

Written by Melody @ 7:52 pm Categories: Linkage · People

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Victim-Blaming and Rape Apologists

I’ve been mulling over this post for a week now, and most of the waffling has been over the fact that posting here is public and much of my opinion on the subject of victim-blaming is grounded in the fact that I am a victim, have subjected myself to internal victim-blaming, and these are things I haven’t ever admitted publicly. In fact, I’ve only admitted them privately to very few people.

I think part of being the victim of anything, though–whether it be rape, emotional abuse, a disease, or anything else–is by not talking about it you allow it to carry far more weight on your life than whatever inflicted the violence on you deserves. You internalize more of the backlash from the event than is healthy.

The few times I’ve brought up my experiences to people, it was a very stressful decision. Actually admitting the truth took so much effort, so much thought, and every time the result was the same: quiet digestion of what I just said, and acceptance. Part of what makes admitting the truth so difficult is sifting through all of the potential responses I expect; you hope for what I’ve been fortunate to receive, but you fear much worse.

So in an effort to relieve a lot of the internalizing I’ve done and continue to do, I’m going to discuss my thoughts on rape apologizing and victim-blaming here. The first step is admitting that I’ve been raped. Three times, twice by the same person.

The most difficult part of dealing with it is first recognizing the fact that what happened was, in truth, rape. Because of the fact that our culture treats women as instigators of sexual violence and all men as perpetrators just waiting around to be incited by women that are “asking for it,”* my initial reaction to all of the cases of rape I’ve experienced was to blame myself–for not recognizing the potential the situation had for me to be raped, for not putting up enough of a fight in response to the attack, for essentially allowing it to happen. I convinced myself that in some way, shape, or form, I’d been one of those women “asking for it,” and how could it be rape if I was at least partly to blame?

It wasn’t until I had input on a breakdown of the things that have happened from a third party that I was able to realize that under no circumstances was I ever “asking” to be raped. First of all, the very essence of that sort of violence stems from the fact that it is unwanted–how can you be asking for something you vehemently do not want? And in response to my particular set of experiences, the following would have to be made Potential Victims’ Rules for Not Getting Yourself Raped:

1. Do not fall asleep around your boyfriend. If you do, you’re asking him to rape you.
2. Do not ever consent to doing anything with your boyfriend. If you do, you’re asking him to take it further, do things to which you are firmly saying “No!”, and then rape you.
3. Do not ever go someplace alone with a male friend. If you do, he will suddenly and out-of-the-blue pin you down, lift your skirt, and rape you.

I think my anecdotes are perfect examples for refuting the logic that women can actively do things to prevent being raped. This concept is at the heart of victim-blaming; you can’t blame someone for having caused something if there was no way for them to prevent it. As soon as you can come up with supposed means of prevention, then if someone doesn’t follow those rules to a T, they must be to blame for what happened.

As I’ve read elsewhere, the only surefire way to not “get yourself raped” is to not be in the vicinity of rapists. And since last I checked, being a rapist doesn’t go hand-in-hand with having a neon sign above your head flashing “I AM A RAPIST” in big, bold letters for all the world to see, I don’t see how a potential victim is supposed to know they’re in the company of a rapist and subsequently take steps to avoid them.

The men who raped me were a) a boyfriend and b) an acquaintance-type friend; both relationships that have a certain degree of inherent trust. Implied is the simple fact that I am not expecting them to be rapists, and I am trusting them to not rape me. The only way I could possibly avoid the scenario of placing this level of trust in someone who is actually a rapist is to by default assume that every single man is a rapist, and I should never spend time around any of them.

I don’t think it’s a far stretch to say that would be a pretty ridiculous and unfair attitude to have. However, this is what victim-blamers expect women to do: treat all men as though they are rapists, otherwise if you don’t, it’s your fault if you are raped by one.

My experiences clearly illustrate that skimpy clothes, alcohol, and hanging around with strangers have no real correlation with being raped, and directions for women to avoid those things or else accept the fact that they invited the attack are just abhorrent. Every time I was raped I was clothed head-to-toe (the skirt in the one instance was floor-length), completely sober (as were my rapists), and in the company of people I knew (in one case, a boyfriend I was dating for years). This is absolutely not an exception to the rule: most victims of rape are attacked under those same supposedly safe circumstances. And for all the times I have been scantily clad, drunk, and hanging around a bunch of strangers, I was never once the victim of even attempted rape.

The only person to blame for rape is a rapist. The only thing a victim can do to put themselves a risk for being raped is to be in the presence of a rapist. And since as I said, it is not mutually inclusive for someone to be a rapist and simultaneously conduct their lives while announcing that they are a rapist, there is absolutely nothing anyone can do to prevent getting raped. It doesn’t matter if a woman is running around the streets stark naked, drunk, and high, if she never comes across a rapist, she will not be raped. It doesn’t matter if a woman is dressed in full hijab, stone-cold sober, and never leaves her home, if a rapist is in the room with her, there’s a chance he might act on his intentions.

There is absolutely no excuse for claiming someone instigated a rape. There is no excuse for a man who commits rape. The victim was attacked, and the perpetrator is a rapist–plain and simple, end of story. All of the responsibility for the crime lays with the person who committed it, and people seriously need to get over themselves, stop telling women that things they do “invite” being raped, stop mitigating the crime by giving the men excuses for their dispicable behavior, and start telling men that they shouldn’t be rapists.

* Worth noting: I only refer to adult, male-on-female instances of rape here because that is all I have experienced and what gets the most attention in our culture. I recognize that men can be raped, women can be perpetrators, and not all victims are adults. It doesn’t matter the exact circumstances of the people involved, rape is rape, it is always a terrible crime, and no victim is ever to blame at all.

Tags: anecdotes · asking for it · crime · personal · private · public · rape · rape apology · victim-blaming · violence

Written by Melody @ 11:38 am Categories: No Photos · Opinions · People · Personal Reflection

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Giving a Damn

I’ve signed up for the Give a Damn campaign. Because not only do I hope for a day when other people can be themselves without being judged, restricted, and even harmed by others simply due to who they are, but I’d like to see that day for myself.

I don’t like having to censor what I say here, to think of topics I’d like to discuss and then toss them aside for fear of what certain people reading will think. I can relate to the people the Give a Damn campaign aims to help. It would be indescribably wonderful to be able to write freely at some point, either because I have the confidence to stand up to the judgments and be myself in spite of them, or because–even better–the judgments are no longer passed.

I Give a Damn.

Tags: censor · confidence · give a damn · hope · judgment · personal rights

Written by Melody @ 7:49 pm Categories: Linkage · No Photos · Personal Reflection

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Chivalry vs. Respect

Yet again, a fantastically entertaining and insightful piece by Jill is serving as the backdrop for some of my own musings. The topic of the day: chivalry, its relationship to feminism, and the ever-hilarious Plight of the Nice Guy™.

At this point in my life, I can say that I’ve had both the pleasure and displeasure of experiencing a great variety of points along the spectrum of male-female interactions. I’ve been subjected to both emotional and physical violence, I’ve been treated with traditional notions of chivalry, and I’ve been the recipient of respect.

Given the choice between all of those, I would hands-down chose respect any day or night.

Why discount chivalry so easily, you ask? After all, isn’t that something women so often go on about as a key lacking quality in today’s men? It’s really quite simple why I have no interest in a man professing his chivalrous ideals to me: inherent in chivalrous acts is the belief that women are intrinsically more fragile and delicate than men, thus requiring exceptional support and protection from the men in their company. Essentially what it boils down to is sugar-coated, low-level misogyny. Chivalrous men espouse a view that women are by nature not equal to men on very fundamental levels and therefore in need of men to stand between them and the rest of the world. Which, don’t get me wrong, does lead to a man behaving “nicely” towards women, and quite obviously that means they would not be inflicting the sorts of emotional and physical violence I’ve experienced in the past. I can’t argue that, superficially, that’s not a good thing.

Jill does present an extension of this hypothesis on chivalry that I don’t entirely agree with, though. Unlike her, I do not believe “[i]t always demands something in return.” Oftentimes, yes, it does operate on the assumption that doing chivalrous things deserves a reward. However, some men do extend chivalry without a constant expectation that they will receive a token of appreciation from the recipients of their gestures. I had an interaction with such a man; I never got a sense of expectation from him that his Knightly behavior warranted something in return from his protected Princess, but I did still feel…small, in some way. As though some quality tied to my pairing of X chromosomes left me wanting for certain aspects of being a fully realized human being, and that all I needed was for him to come along and make up the difference. He could insulate me from the terrible effects of my shortcomings, ensuring I am always safe and comforted, and this was such a “nice” thing to do!

Evidently, “niceness” is not necessarily inclusive of respect. And respect is infinitely more appreciable than simply, say, waiting for a girl to broach the subject of coming home with her instead of just inviting yourself. Ahh, the Nice Guy™…always there to listen when their female friends need a shoulder to cry on after their latest escapade with an eternal jerk of a guy, and then also always there to complain after the fact that their ceaseless openness to the tears never culminates in them getting laid by those same poor, damp-cheeked women. Why, oh, why do those girls never realize what a Nice Guy™ he is? To quote Jill’s incredibly appropriate summation of a good, solid Nice Guy™ whinge:

Dear [friend],

Please touch my penis.

Yours,
Josh

See, he says please! Because, you know, by not point-blank taking what he really wants, that makes him an advocate for all the mistreated women in the world! If he wasn’t a Nice Guy™, that’s exactly what he’d do! And since he didn’t, that clearly means he must be Nice!

The only guy to ever openly profess his Nice Guy™ status (along with the requisite whining about how they always finish last and never get girlfriends) is the same guy to whittle me down with extreme emotional abuse to the point that it took me years to recover any semblance of self-respect and to this day has left me with a certain fear of asserting myself in relationships. Thinking about his sense of entitlement thoroughly disgusts me now; by simple virtue of the fact that he asked instead of outright taking, I was obligated to comply. While he didn’t qualify as chivalrous for the fact that after belittling me enough, he nurtured a tolerance in me of blatant abuse and disrespect, he still attested to his membership in the Nice Guy™ Club because of his lack of stereotypical Bad Boy behavior. He never cheated on me, and he didn’t pretend to want a relationship or string me along in that vein. And so, apparently, a Nice Guy™ is defined by virtue of his non-participation in a specific assemblage of negative qualities. Not, you know, by virtue of actually being nice.

Now, this isn’t to say that I don’t believe there are genuine nice guys out there. I wholeheartedly insist that there are, and I have the pleasure of being able to name a few I have in my current circle of acquaintances and friends. For me, the distinguishing mark of a truly nice guy is this all-important respect I keep bringing up.

My second relationship was loaded with it. He was both respectful and decidedly nice. While he would open doors for me if I happened to linger in the car gathering my things long enough for him to get to my side before I got out or if he reached a door before I did, it was always motivated by veritable politeness, and he likewise didn’t think twice of leaving me to my own devices quite confident I could look after myself just fine without his ever-protective presence. He was so entirely respectful, in fact, he was 100% honest with me: the end of our relationship came about when he truthfully acknowledged he didn’t miss me when we were apart. While I wouldn’t say that’s exactly a nice thing to say to someone, it’s actually far better than merely being nice. Rather than sparing me the hurtful truth, knowing that withholding the information was a surefire way to maintain the relationship and all the benefits of it, he gave me the honor of respectful honesty.

If it wasn’t for that fact, I’m certain that after recovering from the pain of that loss, I wouldn’t have been able to move on to consider him a friend as I do now.

To illustrate the nice/chivalrous vs. respect dichotomy quite plainly, I have an anecdote concerning riding as a passenger on motorcycles. For a certain amount of time after first getting a motorcycle license, the licensee is prohibited from carrying a passenger with them. Quite reasonably so, as it isn’t terribly prudent while the new motorcyclist is him- or herself still getting used to riding.

Aware of my penchant for being a passenger, a guy offered to take me along on his motorcycle a few times. While exhibiting a certain level of concern for my safety by ensuring I had a helmet and proper jacket and clothing to wear, I found out by coincidence that he was still on his Provisional license and thus not actually permitted to have me on the bike with him, but only after I had pillioned on more than one occasion. He is quite positively a victim of being a Nice Guy™: under the banner of treating me to something I enjoy, while simultaneously impressing me (*hint hint wink wink* chicks dig dudes with motorcycles!), he also broke the law–discounting my safety while also putting himself at risk of at least getting a ticket and at worst losing his license altogether.

In direct contrast, I recently was discussing riding with another male friend who was completely transparent about not yet having an unrestricted license. In light of the opportunity to take me riding, despite an opportunity to Impress a Chick, he was honest with me about not actually being allowed.

And that is the difference between niceness and respect. It would have been perfectly nice of him to offer the chance for me to do something I enjoy. To take a chick for a ride on a motorcycle, such a stereotype of Bad Boy impressiveness professed to be a surefire way to Get the Girl. But no. He respected my right as a passenger–as another person–to know what I’d be getting myself into. Morever, he paid me this honor so nonchalantly, so naturally, that it carried even more weight; not only was I fundamentally deserving of this respect, it was so patently obvious that responding in any other way just wasn’t an apparent option. That’s simply the only manner in which you behave with another person.

And that feeling like a person thing? It’s a really damn good feeling, and it’s exactly why I think respect is worth entire universes more than chivalry (or supposed niceness).

Tags: abuse · belittle · chivalry · esteem · expectation · feminism · honesty · honor · knight · manners · motorcycle · nice guy · niceness · passenger · pillion · polite · princess · respect · reward · violence

Written by Melody @ 10:20 pm Categories: Linkage · No Photos · Opinions · People · Personal Reflection · Quotes

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