Reweaving

Probably most people have seen something about the I was raped t shirt and lots of women have written about it.

Lots of people think it’s a great idea, and something all rape victims should take part in and I think if someone finds that to be a healing empowering experience then all power to them, but I personally hate the idea, I hate the idea that the first thing a stranger will see about me is that I’m a rape victim, some of this is about shame but it isn’t all, there are lots of parts of my identity that I wouldn’t want emblazoned across a tee shirt, If I wear a tee-shirt saying “I was raped” (or “I am asthmatic” or “I am adopted”, “I am bisexual” or even “I love my dog”) then people are going to assume that that is the defining thing about me, about my identity, that being a rape victim is all I am, that it is the centre of myself. And that is so far from what I want, so far from empowering for me, rape and its after-effects are a thread running through my life but it is not all I am, it is not something I want people I hardly know to focus on

Outside of the internet and away from people I trust I am quite an emotionally closed and reserved person so there are lots of things I am not comfortable telling strangers or even acquaintances and my history of rape is one of them

If I make the fact I am a rape victim the defining thing about my self, my life then the rapists have won, the patriarchy has won.

And I hate the “yay this is awesome! we should all wear one!” cheerleading that I’ve seen, we all heal and deal in different ways and I don’t like the insinuations that If I don’t want to wear one of these then its because of shame or because I’m not dealing with my experiences of rape in the feminist approved way

This project, this reweaving thing scares me, I have always loved passionately but stepped lightly, being ready to leave when things got too dangerous, too complicated, I left things behind, important things, I jettisoned parts of myself as a barter for my survival. and I have to go back for the bits I dropped, that I still miss, that I still need, that make me me.

I came to adulthood, to coherence, to an understanding of social rules late, after a traumatic adolescence and early twenties that included abandonment incest rape prostitution homelessness and psychiatry. Learning to be linear adult is an important trick that helps me move through the world with an aura of protection, of camouflage but I’m not willing for that to be all I am. I lived with multiple personalities for a long time and since integration I am learning to rejoin, to reweave myselfs, to become neither several people nor one totally linear person but a many faceted crystal.

And this is about honouring the edges, the flimsy boundary lines that enabled me to survive,  that yes my articulateness and intelligence  are part of who I am but so is the girl with solid concrete street smarts under love me look after me eyes. She is the girl that SURVIVED and has so much to teach me.

and this is about connecting all I am, my politics, spirituality, sexuality ,creativity, intellect, sense of self

and it wont come easy, I think by doing this I will loose people, people that really matter to me but people who are so tied to the “cause” that they forget that people are real and vulnerable and messy and beautiful and that I am one of those people and that I can’t stand and watch as other people who cross edges and boundary lines for their survival are abandoned and belittled

And this will be intense rambling, thoughtful, angry, heartbroken, joyful, grateful, wondering, questioning, searching, accusing, but most o all it will be honest.

I don’t know if anyone is reading this, and really this is about seeking and finding my voice but  if you are I would like to know who you are and how you got here