Into the Woods, Part III: Breaking

Elon Musk said once that there was only a one in a billion chance that we are NOT part of an alien simulation. Think about that for a minute. That's damn terrifying, is what it is. That means all the pain and heartache we feel in life is completely made up! The aliens are just playing with us while we exist in those dumb Matrix-esque pods.

If that's the case, Aliens, I want a refund or else a different pod and a different personality. I don't really know how that works. You're smart, you can figure it out.

This has been one of the Top Hardest Years of My Life.

To be more like the people around me and feel like a "normal woman," I asked my doctor if I could quit taking my medicine over the summer. If I couldn't change the conversation, maybe I could change myself, thereby controlling how triggered I felt.

Around the beginning of September, I began to spiral out of control. By mid-September, I couldn't even keep my shit together at school. By November, I could no longer tell what was real and what wasn't.

I felt incapable of making decisions because I couldn't be certain that what I was experiencing was actually happening. I began to wonder if I really existed. I suspected that I did not, that I existed only in the ether that floated around and between all the "real people."

Andrea became worried. Christie became worried. Something was very, very wrong. Amid all the loss and heartache, I came to a point where I could no longer move. I was put back on my medicine, but it was too late.

In December, I went to the hospital for a routine OB/GYN appointment. While I waited for the Nurse Practitioner to appear, I stared at posters full of information about safer sex, HPV vaccinations, and pregnancy risks. At some point, I became completely hysterical. It turns out conversation isn't the only thing that triggers me now, posters do too! Hurrah!!!

In utter humiliation, I was wheeled down to patient intake.

I made it 6 years between my last hospital visit and this one. I made it a year and a half without tranquilizers. On Monday, I will check in for the start of yet another intensive treatment program, as I prepare for yet another absence from school.

Why am I telling you this? It's embarrassing as hell and really hard to write about, to be honest. But I think it's important to be authentic in our struggles. I tried hard to be "normal" -- but it turns out that my normal isn't anyone else's normal. I think I require extraordinary amounts of grace -- and possibly also a smidgen of pot.

As I've struggled to come to terms with my new realities (at least until the Aliens grant me clemency), one word keeps emerging: context.

It's something that only comes with time. Once you have put in a lot of years with someone, you recognize what's out-of-character for them, when they are issuing a cry for help, whether they are doing or saying things out of fear or anger or distaste, or if they are putting up a front to cover pain or deal with trauma.

As I look back on the fading year and look forward to the coming one, I have a hard time seeing things in context. Maybe it's because the pain is still unbearable. Or maybe it's because I'm really scared of what's to come. 

I've lost a lot this year. I've been immobilized. I've broken down. I've lost my hair. And I've experienced a surreal amount of what these white-coat people are calling PTSD. I am weaker, sadder, and more in despair than I have felt in a very long time.

But...

* Christie literally forces me out on date nights with her and Kyle or the kids, sometimes with my blessing, sometimes against my will

* Carole asked if she could fly me out to Californa to see one of my 1st students graduate law school

* Sasha or the Bluebird girls text me every day to say they are rooting for me

* Miss Mary told me in tears not to worry about what other people think, "because no one can hold a candle to you, E. They can't even come close."

* Spike told me she will go to Norway with me this summer if I need a travel friend

In the face of loss and heartbreak, I am learning to be kind, to take risks, and that it's possible to hold more than one feeling at the same time -- in short, the world is not black and white. Maybe gray just requires context.

Into the Woods, Part II: Falling

When I met Beyonce and Shakira -- that's what I'm calling the new friends, because they were fierce as f*** -- I was person-less, as I said in Part I.

It seemed to me, "Well, these are Real People! Maybe I could be like them and then I will be a real person, too!" Plus, look at them. They're amazing.

They liked all the things the Religious Right scorned: women's autonomy and rights; all the sex; thinking for oneself instead of blindly following male leaders; gay people; immigrants; poor people  on welfare. It was like this whole other world, one that had always been barred to me.

I jumped in, desperately wanting to fit in with my new friends. I'd never had this kind of best girlfriend before, and now I had two, and we were inseparable!

In my effort to find personhood and fit in with my new friends, I think I did things I would not otherwise have done, talked about things I would otherwise not have discussed. They gave me courage. They also picked up the pieces when things didn't work out as planned.

(I was obviously Taylor Swift in this scenario)

Some of that was really beautiful. Most of that was really beautiful. But underneath it all there was still this yawning hole of person-less-ness in me. Where once a primary caregiver with rage issues and a personality disorder had definitively told me what was Right and Wrong, now two equally passionate -- if slightly more balanced -- women of strength and conviction told me what was right and wrong. And I just went along with it all, because I wanted to fit. I wanted to feel like I was a part of something.

I started changing. I got my nose pierced. I began growing my hair out. I started wearing kimonos and feather earrings and shopping at Free People and practicing yoga. I thought maybe if I did all the things my friends did, I would be as sexy and confident and free! -- all the things fundamentalism had stolen.

A couple of months ago, Beyonce and I were talking. I said, "I am changing. I got a tattoo because you are covered in tattoos. I got my nose pierced and took up yoga and feather earrings because Shakira likes those things. Do you think I've affected you in any way?"

Beyonce paused. "Sure," she said eventually. "We pack lighter now for trips. That's all you."

I know she didn't mean anything hurtful by it. And maybe if she thought for longer, she could have come up with some things they'd adopted from me. But it felt like I had irrevocably changed myself -- tattoos and nose holes don't just disappear -- and that I would keep on changing and morphing, trying to become like my friends so I could have their freedom, until one day there was nothing left of me, whoever Me was.

To be honest, I don't really know what happened. I think it's that my desire to be a Real Person with Real Thoughts caught up with me. I realized in this jarring moment as I was leaving a bar one night that I didn't agree with anything I was hearing -- and that even if I did, there was no way I could ever attain it because of my shame. I had tried so desperately to fit that mold, that they thought that was The Real Me. But really, it was me trying to belong. I can see why someone would feel betrayed by my suddenly freaking out and stepping back. But in my mind, it was like this:

I was in pain. I hurt. I didn't exist. I had tried to be brave a couple of times and say, "You are doing XYZ and I hurt when that happens." But eventually I thought, "If I loved the right way, I would stop trying to hem in someone else's experiences because they hurt ME. I would step back."

So I did. Or I tried to. I was in such discomfort that I didn't think through long-term ramifications. I knew I needed to not feel the way I did, I knew I needed it to stop. If speaking up for myself didn't work, I needed to try to draw back a little bit.

I just didn't expect the fallout from all sides. I never meant to betray anyone. I tried a couple times to connect, hoping to be heard, hoping a friend would look in my eyes and try to understand my pain or my motivation. It didn't work out very well.

So here I am now. I am a woman in my late 30's, trying to figure out what she thinks, believes, feels, and wants out of life. I have come to the understanding and realization that I will follow any leader who presents herself, healthy or not, until the dissonance between my emerging beliefs clashes so blindingly with hers that I panic.

That's a hard thing to live with and to understand.

Into the Woods, Part I: Fundamentalism and Cracking

I haven't been able to write for a long time. I've tried. No words would come. Or maybe pieces of words and sentences, but nothing that made any sense.

Maybe I didn't have anything substantive to say. Maybe I didn't want to break anyone's trust. Or maybe my life just stalled out.

The last post I published was in April. It was an acknowledgement of the shame I've lived with for 25 years. Perhaps the reason I haven't been able to write is because I am still frozen there.

Growing up, I often heard the term "right-wing fundamentalist." I have only just begun to realize that was me. I genuinely thought that all people who were "really Christians" believed the way I did.

• The earth is only 6,000 years old?
Okay. The rocks and fossils must be lying!

• The Bible is not only God-breathed but also requires almost no interpretation?
Okay. I just won't think about it too hard.

• Gay love is sinful by nature?
Got it. It's gross! Will "love the sinner, hate the sin."

• Sex before marriage splits your soul into a horcrux and renders you unfit for a husband?
Understood! Sex, dating, kissing, anything that acknowledges I have a body of any kind is bad.

• An old man says to try on bathing suits for him, and that he's your brother in Christ, and that it's sinful to be disrespect him?
Got it. Might cause me to throw up later, but the Bible says to respect your elders!

• The heart is deceitful and desperately wicked and therefore experiences and feelings and memories are not to be trusted?
Got it. Will repress rage at injustice and betrayal.

• It's possible to be struck dead instantly if you take Communion with unconfessed sin in your life?
I will just never take Communion again. Or I'll take it -- because the Bible commands it! -- but I'll be terrified every time.

• It's wrong to play basketball with the boy next door because it might cause the neighbors to think it's a prelude to sex?
No more basketball. All interaction with the opposite sex is bad! Unless they're your elders. Then I don't have a say, I have to obey.

• Sunbathing in the backyard may cause a neighbor to "stumble" into sin?
Okay, I'm getting the hang of this: all skin/bodies = bad. God + parents + religious leaders = good.

I need to tread the next part very carefully... I wrote it, slept on it, revised it, and ultimately deleted it -- I'm not sure why. I suspect it's because once it's out there, I can't take it back. I want to be truthful but not grotesque and that's hard when the pain is this deep. So I will write this instead...

You may wonder why I didn't rebel. Maybe if this were regular fundamentalism, I could have. But I was also raised by a parent with a personality disorder -- so in the middle of all the mandatory Bible reading, devotionals, prayer times, and sermons on how much God loved me but also might kill me, I experienced a great deal of violence and rage. There were multiple rods broken on my body, and violations too numerous to count.

There are some wounds you just can't undo. They go too deep. My parents taught a Parenting Teens class at the megachurch we attended. Mixed up in the pain and in the horror and in the unwilling blackouts after trauma, there was religious fundamentalism and the belief that I was inherently evil and bad. If they taught other parents how to do things, they must be right, and I must be sick in the head and sick in the body. My understanding of Christianity became interwoven with violence and fear about how evil I was.

All of this was the lead-up...

The foundations cracked for me in phases. The first phase happened at 17. My parents sent me to a religious training camp in the mountains of Colorado. (Side note: I still get sick whenever I am in Colorado.)

The camp promo is deceptively simple:
Summit Summer is a 12-day conference where students experience spiritual growth as they explore relevant cultural topics to help them think deeper about their personal faith and convictions. Students engage with like-minded peers, ages 16-25, and learn to think well about their faith, purpose, and identity with world-class faculty.

Let me translate it for you: 

Students at a malleable age will explore relevant cultural topics from an extremely narrow-minded and bigoted worldview that will destroy their personal faith and conviction in Christianity! Engaging only with people who look and think exactly as they do, students will be indoctrinated by leaders of the Religious Right as they learn just why Our Way is correct and everyone else is going to hell!

That was the first crack for me. Everyone else the drank the Kool-Aid. My bunkmates thought I had seriously lost my shit because I laid in bed crying and screaming about how this couldn't possibly be right, that anything this dogmatic had to have an equal in the counterculture that was convinced it was just as right. Probably Buddhist students were in bunkbeds on the opposite side of the world learning why their religion was the only true way and how to belittle anyone who thought otherwise.

It was seriously messed up. I didn't know if I could be a Christian anymore.

The panic attacks started after that. See, I'd never been taught how to think, only WHAT to think. I went off to college and just regurgitated everything any authority figure had ever told me.  But I panicked when doubt crept in. That was the second chink, and I was barely holding myself together as the rules of black-and-white thinking continued to pile on...

• Wearing spaghetti-strap tank tops is bad because it exposes too much of my body, and female bodies lead to sin? Okay. I feel gross, but that sounds familiar, so I'll go with it.

• A woman's place is as the submissive spouse of a Christian man, and her role is to bear him children?

Oh shit. I don't know how to date because I wasn't allowed to! Plus, I thought all dating and bodies were sinful!? How am I supposed to get married and be a submissive wife who bears children if I never interact with boys??!

It was an impossible system to live up to, and after awhile, and I sank further and further into despair. It was into this void that new friends stepped...

Sex and the City. Me Too.

One time early in our friendship, Rosa, Charlotte, and I tried to figure out which characters we'd be from Sex and the City. Rosa is clearly Samantha. Charlotte is Carrie because she is all heart. Plus she has curly blond hair and loves shopping. I was incensed when they named me Miranda, but I get it. Someone has to be the hard-ass who's probably better off single.

There’s this scene in SATC where Miranda slips in her bathroom and throws her back out. She freaks out because she’s lying naked on her bathroom floor and can’t move. In an utter panic, Miranda calls Carrie and insists her friend drop everything to come help her.

Carrie is busy. She sends her boyfriend to help Miranda instead. It is the lowest of Miranda’s lows: her friend’s boyfriend is scooping her naked body off the tile, and she is helpless to prevent it because she can’t even move her neck. The ultimate humiliation.

Aiden’s the consummate gentleman, but Miranda almost murders Carrie all the same. The episode ends with Carrie learning her lesson: “I will never again send a boyfriend to do my job.” 

Isn't that what we all want to hear? It’s my job to see you at your most vulnerable; I will never again expose your nakedness to the outside world.

I have been thinking a lot about vulnerability lately. What does that look like when you're dating? It's not as simple as exposing painful events from your previous life or the fact that you have a history of depression. It means risking letting someone see your metaphorical nakedness. Letting someone see your trauma and your fear.

It's taken me more than 20 years to deal with a traumatic event that happened when I was younger. I never jumped on the #metoo bandwagon because, frankly, I hate bandwagons and I think they run the risk of popularizing cultural touchstones that deserve NOT to be popularized.

But here's my story:

My mother grew up in foster care. When she was 14, she put an ad in a newspaper that she was a 16-year-old girl looking for a live-in nannying position. A family took her in to help them with their children. They soon realized she was a disaster and not, in fact 16; they decided to keep her anyway and raise her along with their kids.

My mother was beautiful and the "father" was a lecher. After 3 years, his wife kicked my mother out because she was jealous of Mom. The wife killed herself. My mom lived with another foster family. And so on, and so on.

My mother never recovered from the trauma she suffered as a kid. For as long as I can remember, she has longed to belong somewhere and to have a family that will never abandon her or kick her out. She has made some very foolish decisions in an effort to feel like she had that forever-family. One of those decisions was pretending like those foster families were real relations to her children.

When I was 15, my mother sent me to stay with her foster father. He was rich and single and flew his own private plane. I was incredibly young and naive. I'd been taught that sex was evil and dirty and sinful, and I came to understand that it wasn't something good Christians ever did or talked about -- unless they were married.

So what happened that summer, I never had the words to describe. I was sent to stay with a man in his 60's up in the mountains of Colorado by myself. And I was told that I should "be a witness" to him and help lead him to Christ (plot twist: he was hyper-religious already, but my parents were convinced he was part of a cult, not a true Christian. I was supposed to help lead him to the true faith).

While I was there, I became terrified and ran away in the middle of the night. I apparently went into shock once I was safe, stared at a wall for about 24 hours, and then threw up.

I didn't have the language to explain what I had been through. I was raised without words to describe what had happened. I think I could have said "rape," but I wasn't raped, so I didn't know what I was. At 15, I didn't have any words to tell my parents why I ran away from IT. So they listened to his side instead: I was rude. I was disrespectful. I was an ungrateful teenager who didn't know her place. They believed him and they told me that I had "ruined my witness" and there was no point in me staying in Colorado any longer. I flew home.

I carried the shame of that summer for decades. I carry it still. I carry the shame of knowing my parents spent years blaming me for the loss of relationship. I carry the shame inherent with culpability in damning a soul to hell -- even when I did no such thing. And of not being able to face my brother -- who rolls his eyes and tells me, "Please. Mom and Dad say that never happened." It is unbelievably shaming.

Years and years later, my mother called me bawling in the middle of the night, "I'm so sorry!" she cried. "I should have listened to you. I should have believed you. I shouldn't have let that happen to you."

And also after many years, I began receiving emails from IT, to whom my parents had given my email address:

"I am horrified by the accusation your parents have leveled at me."

"It is your duty as my sister in Christ to address these accusations and concerns."

"I need a complete list of the wrongs I allegedly perpetrated against you."

And worse --

"We must put this all behind us, as children of God. Here is my proposal: we must recreate the scene of the alleged trauma so that you can receive healing from it. I will be staying alone at my house in Montana this summer. I invite you to come and stay with me so that we can recreate the scene and circumstances in which you feel you were harmed."

I only remembered all of this recently, after nearly a year of therapy.

So why am I putting it all out here now?

I knew I was hurt as a kid. I knew bad things happened and that bad people did them. I knew my parents didn't protect me when they should have, and that they didn't believe me afterward. I just thought that someday, when I was older, I'd have a chance to live my own life. I didn't know that the trauma would follow me.

I have started to realize, finally, that maybe I will never completely heal. I tried really hard to have a healthy relationship. A few of them, in fact. I've worked like hell, too: doctors, a 12 Steps program, inpatient treatment for depression in '07, outpatient treatment for anxiety in '14, more pill trials than I can count, exercise, yoga, cognitive behavioral therapy, dialectical therapy, CBD oil, Vitamin D injections, being more spiritual, getting prayed over, you name it. I've tried everything. Even my doctor -- a multiple-award-winning psychiatrist -- told me: "Few people work as hard as you do."

But I'm starting to realize that it's not enough. Especially after the last guy I dated -- someone I was really into -- dichotomized my heart and body, too.

The most damning thing for me wasn't the abuse; it's that I was offered up on a silver platter, silenced when I tried to speak, and blamed for things I did to save myself. The reason those things are worse is because through them, I learned that my instincts were wrong -- that when I was scared, I just wasn't being holy enough; when I was angry, I was wrong and disrespectful. I learned at 15 to bury my intuition altogether and trust what other, more secure people said was true. And now someone need only tell me I am happy, and I will believe I am happy. If someone tells me I should be ashamed, I feel ashamed. I learned to disassociate completely from myself. I run away from things I should trust, and I go along with things I should flee.

At this point, it will take a miracle to reunite the 2 parts of myself -- the sacred and the profane.

I'm not ruling out a miracle. But I have lived in fear and shadows for a really long time: afraid to contradict my elders, afraid to lose my parents' love; afraid to embarrass my brother; afraid to expose my own vulnerabilities to the men I date.

I find that I need to say, however late: me too.

This started out being a blog about sex and what that looks like at 38, as a former pastor's daughter. And in a way, it is.

Love and Other Tragedies, 2019, Part II

Perhaps because of my recent experience sitting in a restaurant by myself, I was more than a bit dubious about the quality of men on these dating apps.

But at this stage in my life, dating has become more of a way to amuse myself than an actual hope-filled venture into romance. And I'm okay with that.

I swiped right on Scott's Bumble profile for the sake of nostalgia. We'd attended Wheaton at the same time, although our paths never crossed.

I hold a certain fondness for Wheaton, although I find some aspects of it disturbing now. On one hand, I met some strong, incredible women there, and I got to transcribe Madeline L’Engle’s lectures while working in Special Collections at the library. On the other hand, this was a college that wouldn't allow dancing because it could cause people to "stumble" into wickedness. But for real tho.

So when I swiped right on Scott's profile, it was from my gut, while my brain yelled, "WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU, he's probably one of those dudes who think women in bikinis at the beach are harlots or whatever!!"

When we matched and set up a brunch date, the closest I could get to explaining this impulse to Rosa and Charlotte was: "It's a common culture. You have to explain less about your own crazy background and shit when someone else has had similar experiences."

I decided recently that I need to stop talking politics on dates... I get all wound up, and to what avail? So maybe that was the reason my brain seized upon the ONE other topic you are also not supposed to talk about on dates: religion.

Yeah, I don't know what's wrong with me either.

Scott informed me that not only had he gone to Wheaton, but then he'd gone on to seminary.

WTF!?!

HAVE I NOT PERMANENTLY SWORN OFF ALL MEN WHO GRADUATED FROM SEMINARIES!?!?!? Four of them was my limit!!!!!

But I was already drinking a bloody mary by this time, so it was too late for me to bail. There was nothing for it but to talk about religion.

Turns out we not only went to the same Christian college but also to the same church here... before I was graciously invited to step down from the Welcome Team because I was experiencing doubts about the existence of God. After that, I quit going altogether.

At this point, I started crying. Yes, you read that right. I cannot talk about God, faith, or my apparent non-chosen status without bursting into tears, and what better place for that than a first date?

I don't think Scott knew what to do, and can you blame him? So I wiped my tears away. With my hand that had just touched the jalapeno from my drink.

Scott was in the middle of a story when I ran, screaming, to the powder room in back of the restaurant.

The more I scrubbed my eyes, the worse they burned...probably because I had not bothered to wash my hands with soap before I started dousing my face.

I glanced in the mirror. My eyes were bloodshot, my nose was running from the heat, and now I had giant circles of mascara all around my sockets. I basically looked like this:

I like to keep things classy.

Resigned to the fact that I would probably never recover from this, I headed back to the table. It was hard to look my date in the eye after that, mostly because I was half-blind, but I tried.

Scott was very compassionate. To make me feel better, he told me about the time he touched a jalapeno at a restaurant and then forgot about it and went to use the men's room...which was a mistake.

That did the trick. I figured, no matter how dumb I look or feel, at least I don't have a flaming dick.

Love and Other Tragedies, 2019, Part I

Ma thinks I'm elitist and that what I really need is to give some nice, uneducated, blue-collar frogs a chance. I can't help it. All the misspellings and camouflage and freshly-killed deer in their profile pictures make me shudder.

I'm really not trying to be elitist! It's just -- I read at least 50 books a year and love learning/discussing new things. It just seems very unlikely that someone with a high school education is going to want to discuss Chimimanda Ngozi Adichie's books with me. 

That's just about the only reason I agreed to go out with Bruce. When I showed his picture to Rosa and Charlotte, they said he looked smarmy... slicked back hair, arrogant stance, not looking at the camera.

"He went to college and spells all his words correctly. Plus, this says he's a money-laundering analyst. That sounds like an interesting job. It's just dinner."

The one thing that worried me: the app only gives you 200 characters to describe yourself and what you're looking for, and Bruce had used some of his for shameless self-promotion. "Catch me on episode X of the Netflix series, Dirty Money!"

That sounded a bit egotistical to me, but maybe I was reading it incorrectly. Either way, the fact remained that he spelled all his words right and didn't include any pictures of himself holding up an animal carcass, which was a WIN.

Everything was fine until the night before our date, when he sent me this message: "Good evening, Elle! I'm looking forward to our date tomorrow. In case you'd like to know more about what I do for a living, here's a link to my show, Dirty Money."

I was suuuuuuuuper repulsed. Was this dude even for real? He was sending me a link to watch him on TV in preparation for our date?!

I mean, Rosa, Charlotte, and I had already watched the episode because, come on, it's just common sense to Google someone nowadays to make sure they're legit...Otherwise you could end up dismembered in the back of a van in Idaho or something.

But still.

"DON'T GO OUT WITH HIM!" Jared told me. "What a douche!"

"I have to, I already agreed to dinner. It would be really rude to cancel now."

It turns out that while I'm kind of a hard-ass in most aspects of life, I'm a real pushover in dating. Plus, I'm practicing being tactful and gracious now, just as a general Life Skill.

So I responded to Bruce: "Perhaps we can just do things the old-fashioned way and you can tell me about your job over dinner tomorrow night :-)" 

See that? Gracious as shit. That's the new me.

In preparation for our date, I went back to look at Bruce's profile, which it turns out, he had updated. Now, in addition to telling women to please check him out on Dirty Money, he had actually changed one of his 6 allotted pictures to a picture he took of himself, on TV. 

It was captioned: "Screen grab from my appearance on the Netflix show Dirty Money"

Blog world, I just could. not. even.

I don't care how many words you spell correctly, 3 attempts to make me watch you on TV means you are too self-aggrandizing for me, cool job be damned.

I mean, I still showed up for the date, because like I said, I'm a pushover. I can't stand the thought of someone waiting at a restaurant for ME to show up!

But he never came, sooooo... It's one for the books.

There are definitely worse things than being single. And one of those things would be having to bolster some prick's ego for the rest of my life.