shame and the inescapable, paralyzing chase

Sometimes there is no reason for all that is wrong. Hope just stops and I anxiously await the thing that has been chasing me since I left Boulder, the bad thing that is bound to happen because a bad thing hasn’t happened in too long. When I feel it rounding the bend, I can’t read, eat, sleep, stay still or move my body. I am left in a constant state of occupation without being able to release anything at all - just waiting. 

The right song never plays, the world will never recover itself, there will be death and disease and I will not survive it. It’s as if I’m waiting to not survive. I hate it more than I could hate any bout of depression, any panic attack or any episodic breakdown because the paralysis eats me slower than all of it and presents itself as life. 

My skin is dry and I can’t stop itching it, but I can’t get myself to put on lotion. I’ll lay on my floor and hate myself for leaving dust bunnies under the dresser and they will grow there. They will loom and multiply and no matter how much I don’t look at them they’ll always be looking at me. And I’ll remember how clean my Mom is, how clean my sister is, and I’ll wonder what is so wrong with me that I can’t get my shit together and just do it. 

Then, I will do it. I will make the routine, I will drink too much caffeine so the anxiety puts me in overdrive and I can’t stand the claustrophobia anymore. I’ll call my family and show them my sparkling apartment, my dresser without dust bunnies, the dishes put away, my yarn in bags, and I will feel good for approximately five minutes. Because while I finally did the thing I know it will take the same to do it again. That it will chase me, like a bad thing, and I’ll wait for it miserably. 

I’ll work everyday from sunup to sundown. I will lay stuck in bed for weeks on end, but there will never be more than an hour that I’m not working. I will draw, write, knit, embroider, spin yarn, read a book, watch a movie with a hundred pencils laid out before me. I will make make make to make up for the basic tasks I can’t do, and I will still feel the bad thing coming. 

I will go see friends, talk on the phone, travel, spend time with my family and the people I love most in the world. Then, I will go home at night, close my eyes and the bad thing will chase me just the same. I will never outrun it. I will never medicate it away. I will never go anywhere it does not follow. 

I did not used to be this way.

This winter my parents took me and my sister on our annual trip. We have traveled together every year for Christmas since I was in fourth grade. When it started, it quickly became my favorite week of the whole year, and the time has become doubly precious to me since I left home. It is the only week my Dad ever takes off work, the only week we have nothing to do but talk to each other and read and joke and remember nice things. 

This year was the first time the four of us traveled alone for the holiday in four years. In between we’ve been lucky enough to have friends, boyfriends, or other families join us on the excursion, but this year was extra special because it was just like it used to be.

My twin sister and I had a lot of problems in college. Before that, we were inseparable and after a few major events, including my assault, a rift happened. Suddenly, we did not know each other and it broke my heart a hundred different ways. The person I had cared for most in the world did not care for me in the same way she used to, we did not get along, we had lost each other. 

After graduation, it took a year of us living apart for the first time and a summer being in the same city for us to become friends again. This trip was the first time we were sharing a room in four years, and more notably, sharing a bed. Before college, our twin beds had been so close to each other we could hold hands. We’d stay up into the early morning talking about anything and everything. After, we’d drive to school together in the same car, with the same coffee mug, and the same friends. We’d go to work at the same job, go dance at the same school, go drink at the same parties with sisterly arguments that are supposed to happen. 

Zoe and I both had bad enough things happen at Boulder for our lives to be shaken. We both changed, both suffered at the hands of boys who didn’t respect the ground you walked on, the air you breathed, or the body you inhabited. Whether it was through an act of assault or an evil and slow breakdown through words, it didn’t matter. The violence that was inflicted left us both at odds out of pure shock and it shot the closeness right out of us. 

The trip was the most fun I’ve had at any point since high school, and the space between us finally felt how it should. I had not felt familiarity that way in so long and I had forgotten it completely. It was a feeling I had been grasping for for years, the feeling of someone knowing you better than you know yourself, and I had not remembered it. Now I did, and while the joy of having it again made me soar, the void of those years collapsed in on me, too. 

Ever since I was assaulted, I have struggled intensely with intrusive thoughts. Not so much about the rape itself, but about death. My junior year of college, I started to see death everywhere. My head getting run over by a car on the road, my family dying in horrific accidents on their commute to work, Aiden clumsily falling to his death or being on the airplane that was surely going to go down. It wasn’t just the thoughts, too, it was the vision. The knowledge of the thing, the imagery. It felt prophetic. Even if I could shake the thoughts, I couldn’t shake the dread. And the dread chased me. 

This trip was the first time the thoughts came back as strongly as they had in college. My sister was leaving to ski and was departing from us a day early. In the days leading up to it I begged her to be careful. I begged her to not go too fast, not hit anyone, not do anything reckless. My sister nodded me off and said she would be fine and of course she would be careful. I hadn’t felt so happy in years, and as the happiness swelled, so was the looming of an equalizer. For everything given, another had to be taken away, and I convinced myself it would come in an accident.

When I couldn’t take worrying by myself anymore, I asked my Dad the day she was leaving, ‘do you ever think about dying or something really terrible happening?’ and when he said no, I couldn’t hold it together anymore. 

I started crying and my whole family asked me what was the matter. It was so irrational, I knew it was irrational, but I couldn't shake the intense fear. I was embarrassed by thinking that way, by being so out of control of myself, and I felt more than ever like I was exactly where I had started. 

Losing the closeness we had was like dying. Being a twin, having that ‘built in’ best friend, is something only another set could understand. To be with someone from a cellular level, to share everything so literally, to be able to read someone's mind that way and then suddenly not - ripped out my heart clean. And as I was remembering the old times of joy, I was also remembering the heartbreak, the crying, the inconsolable nights with Aiden and my parents. I couldn’t lose it again. 

To know what was lost, to know what could be because it once was, was unbearable. It lingered around corners, hid in bars and boyfriends and taxi cabs in the unmistakable shape of the Grim Reaper. When I finally broke down and my family understood what was happening, when Zoe understood what was happening, I felt ridiculous. 

Revealing the power of intrusive thoughts has always embarrassed me, which is stupid because I don’t seem to get embarrassed by anything else. In the moments I do, I feel infantile, silly, broken and unrelatable. The thoughts are so obviously connected to specific events, specific relationships, feelings. It feels stupid to even say them out loud, to look for consolation anywhere but in my own head. 

The ridiculousness and the embarrassment of saying the fear out loud was actually what made the whole thing better. As I am often told, more people feel this way than you think, they just don’t want to talk about it. And I guess my greatest gift in life has been the ability to talk about it even if I don’t want to, so here we are. 

Intrusive thoughts, the symptoms of PTSD in general and the permanence of it in my life, is the driving force behind my anger. I could never forgive someone who made me this way. The stupid, selfish, disgusting, weak, and repulsive men that ripped up my life, ripped up my sister's life, ripped up any woman, man, or child’s life should not be given anything. I truly believe that the damage they do whether it be through emotional abuse, physical abuse, or any combination between them is taking a life. Destroying it. Crushing it from its foundation and leaving behind messes. 

I get frustrated with myself when I’m not better: when I’m paralyzed, when my apartment turns into a tornado and my body disintegrates into a pile of dust under my dresser. I self deprecate and punish for things that have nothing to do with anything, but carry the reminder that I would be different had those boys been human. 

I do not believe in forgiving everyone. I think it’s virtuous, but sometimes impossible. Sometimes the only forgiveness that needs to happen is with ourselves, boys and men are forgiven far too often for their atrocities anyways. If that doesn’t change, nothing will. 

Killyourrapist.net is an attempt at not forgiving. It is a method of release for victims and survivors to tell those horrific people to go to Hell. Life is full of choices and there is no universe where I will be convinced it’s okay for abused to become abusers, for rapists to rape, for emotionally messed up boys to emotionally abuse someone because they think they’re too fucked up already to do any better than that. 

I am convinced that, women especially, have to be angrier. Have to channel the things they don’t talk about, the things they harbor and hide, and tell each other about them. I feel uneasy about revealing certain things about myself, but as this project has proven to me, sharing here is always met with ‘I feel that way, too’ and ‘I’ve never talked to anyone about this before, thank you’. 

I know there’s a lot of people here who use this website, who read these accounts and view the art and think - those are amazing, but my experience doesn’t count for XYZ reason, mine doesn’t fit the idea, I am not a good enough writer to articulate myself. 

All I can say is every time I hear someone else say they know what I’m talking about, or I read someone else’s story and say, I’ve never heard anyone else think that way - something in me settles, and the chasing bad thing that plagues me gets a little further away. I don’t think this is a space that relies on quality, but rather things that are true and often unheard.

It is almost impossible to escape ourselves, but it is possible to unite and redirect. It is possible to never forgive them and forgive ourselves, and when we do that there is no telling what will happen in return. 

If the world will burn in a hellfire set by the greed, money, and psyche of men, it should be done so in the face of shameless opposition. They want you to feel stupid, inferior, powerless. Their world and their power only functions if the powerless remain stagnant, and though we can’t all be saving the world and pioneering a new future, we can at least say fuck you to the men who pretend they can’t do any better, because they can. 

Free will and free speech are fabulous things, beautiful and ugly freedoms just the same. Use your voice and scream. They deserve it and so do you. Kill that mother fucker and do it how you want.