Hey, Readers, remember this post? Yeeeeeaaaaaaah.
Ok, so, I mentioned in that post that there was a possibility I would take a lover. And I did! And he is great! Also, he reads here, so: hey, dude. THANKS. Because he is a stellar partner; really, I could not ask for better. Yet somehow, after having sex, I haven't magically gotten over all my issues like I supposed I might! The past didn't just fall away and everything was smooth sailing from getting laid on out! Surprise!
Seriously, I don't know what I was thinking. It worries me that I am the primary decision maker in my life, given that I am so clearly full of shit.
Sex is great; but holy shit, it's hard. I have weird anxiety and panic attacks if I think about having sex. I get upset contemplating the sex I will have, or the sex I did have. Usually at some point after I have sex, I have to take a couple deep breaths and calm myself down, because some weird fear will grip me in the belly and I have to ease myself out of its hold. I am more easily triggered of late, and reading about abuse or rape has been harder.
And, you know, this is ok. I am working through it, I keep breathing, and I talk myself through declenching after I have seized up with panic. I wasn't really prepared for how hard this would be; I went right back to sex after I was raped, after all. But of course then, I had already begun forgetting the incident, and the boy who had caused it; every memory I ever had of him or us together was already being erased from my brain. I put that night into a nice, neat box and shoved it into the back of my head, hoping it would remain there forever. Now that that box has been burst open, well, sex is a lot more difficult to negotiate.
So, you know, there have been panic attacks. There have been nightmares. There have been flashbacks. These will undoubtedly get better. And I may not feel this, but I know this, because if there is one thing people do, it is heal.
There are ways that I am mitigating all of this, though, and that's through exerting as much control over sex and the place it has in my life as I can. So, when I plan a night with my lover, it is far in advance. I pick the time. It's in my house, my space. I dictate the agenda. I keep it in this little cordoned off area in my life, and I can deal with that. It has boundaries and walls, and as long as sex feels contained, I can deal. It is safe in that little walled-off place in my life. And I didn't realize how necessary this was, this need for me to control sex in order to feel safe, until two things happened.
The first is, I got a text from my lover on a random day, sexual in nature, and I freaked. I was all WHAT I CANNOT DEAL WHAT IS THIS HOW COULD YOU DO THIS TO ME. And it was not even explicit, this text - it merely REMINDED me that we were going to have sex at some future date. But I couldn't handle it. I couldn't deal with a reminder that I have sex and I was going to get fucked, because it felt like sex was INVADING MY LIFE. Sex had showed up outside of its little walled off space and this felt like a betrayal, a surprise attack. Sex needs to behave; it needs to sit and STAY for me to continue having it right now. It must remain in it's little roped off corner for now and show me it will not hurt me before I let it out to play in another room. If sex is really good, I might give it reign of the whole house. Eventually. But right now: back behind the baby gate for sex.
The second thing that happened involved the opposite reaction. Someone with whom I have never had sex and have no future plans to have sex said something sexual to me. We were talking about politics, or some such, and then all of a sudden, he made a sexual comment. It wasn't rude, or obnoxious, or any of these things; it was a joke, and I recognized from an objective standpoint that were I not suffering from the rapebrain, I would have laughed and gone right along with it. It would have been fun and flirty. But the way this comment went down, the person might have said something in Pashtun. I responded, with, "Uhhhh, what?" Like, I couldn't get it. Because the person had brought up sex outside of the little area in which I have decided sex can play in my life, I couldn't understand what was being said to me. I couldn't switch gears. There is either sex, or not-sex in my life. There is no in between. These are not fluid categories right now.
The thing is, I can talk about sex. As an academic exercise. And also as an exercise on autopilot; I mean, jesus, I taught middle school for six years, I can talk about sex in any number of ways in my fucking sleep. But I don't understand it as applying to me in any real way in the rest of my life, nor can I handle any real encounters with sex outside of the controlled place I have allowed sex to inhabit.
It's weird, the way I am experiencing and managing sex, but I understand why this control is necessary right now. I understand why I am so protective of myself, and I think slowly, I will eventually be able to take down the walls, remove the gates, let sex start taking more forays out. Pretty soon, sex will be all over the house, and I will not be able to stop it from climbing the stairs or getting into all the closets, but that will be ok. And then maybe, when I don't feel the need to watch sex every minute to make sure it's not breaking something, maybe I can address the newest infant that's been banished to its playpen: INTIMACY.
But that's for another post.
Every tiny step is progress... and even when we step backwards, and even when we fall, and even when we feel that we have not made any progress at all - it is all part of the process of healing, of learning, of becoming.
ReplyDeleteThat's what I tell myself. Every day. It gets better, and it gets worse, but it never completely goes away, and I accept that I can't excise my experiences, or my circumstances, for they are what make me who I am... but I will continue to reach towards the goal of who I want to be, including these things and finding ways to what I want within them, around them, over them, under them, and surrounded by them.
And I think we're kind of privileged in a way Gayle... that you're sharing a journey that's so intimate and personal with the rest of us. Because it's courageous and inspiring. It gives us a little bit of added strength to fight our own battles, as we watch you fight yours. Perhaps even some more understanding. Of you, of ourselves, of the other people we interact with and sometimes never truly come to know.
I don't listen to country music all that much anymore, and I'm not sure you like country at all, but... I still like this song: "Life's a Dance" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3oOGHwEQT4 And it seems applicable here!
Also: I'm really grateful, for my lover, that guy... who doesn't cringe when I suddenly burst into tears. Who knows that I am damaged and that there are things he CANNOT do (we discover new ones, sometimes), but walks that necessary line and doesn't seem to mind. Little things I always thought were impossible have suddenly become possibilities, and experiences I never thought to have... I have had. Or will have. Or might have.
I'm glad you're sharing your journey with us, Gayle.
What I have to say to this post is: you are right, sex is stupidly hard D:
ReplyDeleteCongratulations on finding a lover that reads your blog and knows the score, though!
My poor patient partner is sometimes afraid to touch me, because of weird inconsistent reactions to sex. Sometimes it is scary but other times it is not? And sometimes it is fine for him to be on top of me and pinning me to the bed, better than fine even, but other times when I am tired, say, or overwhelmed by something else, that is too much and I freeze up in a panic and am shaking for an hour afterwards? We have had a lot of sad conversations about it.
My shrink recommended me a trauma workbook that has space for working out your reactions to things in slow motion, and I don't know if giving him it to read would be useful or just more confusing! God bless lovers who are interested and engaged, though.
Intimacy is a tough one. In a very real way, it's the thing that we humans crave the most. I think that we walkers of this earth want to shout the heavens and announce our presence, but in the quite cold parts of night what is essential is that other whispered voice from someone we trust letting us know that we are not alone.
ReplyDeleteThe difficulty, sadly, is that you can't just go on Craigslist and find someone to share intimacy with. *sigh * they _always_ think you're after sex. No matter how often you put "not a euphemism" in your headline. It requires an actual shared emotional connection between two people. This usually takes time and trust. Time is fungible. Trust is not.
At least, it's never worked well for me to treat it as such :)
Btw - Gayle... the number of times I've 'explained myself' to someone... and then later realized I had had NO CLUE what I was talking about?
ReplyDeleteInnumerable. I try to now say, "I think" and "maybe", though I forget sometimes, and I'm still wrong a LOT.
Hah, yes, I agree with Kara and try to use the same strategy. A similar thing is true of physical limitations sometimes—e.g. today I TOTALLY WAS UP FOR walking to get groceries instead of driving, and was all excited about this plan and announced that it was going to happen and that the stars were aligned and my what a marvellous day for a walk. But, uh, nope, I was full of shit. Fortunately there is a taxi stand right in front of the grocery store so I wasn't subject to the embarrassment of having to call for one and wait ten minutes for it to show up.
ReplyDeleteGayle, it is super smart of you to have figured out that sex is more okay if it is neatly sequestered. A+++ strategizing.