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.