I am in a writing group/class that I am in love with. My writing teacher, and the women who were in my old group (it was all women), are at least 85% responsible for any writing in my first book that doesn’t stink. I switched groups when I got a full time job a year and a half ago, and the men and women in my current group are also fantastic – as writers and feedback-givers – hence the first sentence of this post.
There is a new person joining the group. He is not new to me, though. I was in a different writing group, with a different teacher, with him almost ten years ago. I was working back then on the same book I am working on now, about the blah blah with the psych hospital and the rape and whatever. I brought in the chapter about the rape to that class almost ten years ago, and this man plus another person in the group, a woman, both had bad reactions to it. Not like “triggering” or that type of thing, but like something about it or me or who knows, but something made them respond by saying “you brought it on yourself,” about the rape.
This did not go over well with the teacher. It did hurt my feelings and shock me at the time, but I also had this reaction of like looking at the situation almost from a distance – it made me feel embarrassed for them (everyone else in the class got mad at them, and the teacher yelled, and they were kicked out basically that weekend because of it). I knew that whatever made them feel that way and say it out loud, it was not because I did, in fact, bring it on myself, or even because they wanted to hurt me. I just thought, I don’t know, that they were whacko.
Still, naturally part of me felt like “Really, motherfucker? Really that’s what you say to someone as your feedback on their writing?” Never mind the whole this-must-be-a-sketch-from-a-cheesy-”How-not-to-treat-people-who-got-raped”-video-at-a-liberal-arts-college-orientation-for-freshman-because-I-know-these-two-fucks-didn’t-just-say-that-with-a-straight-face aspect.
But, it was almost ten years ago. And, I am not the same person I was back then. Thank you jesus, I am not the same person. He might not be either. I mean, surely he can’t be? Nobody doesn’t change at all over a decade, do they? Everything changes and no one can help but change along with it over that amount of time, for better or worse.
What I want is to be able to hold, I guess you could say, his heart and my own with equal consideration. Not – I want to take care of him at my own expense. What I want is to – well, first off what I want is to believe for his sake and mine that he was on drugs or something back then and doesn’t even remember saying it, let alone is he capable of saying anything similar in present times. Additionally, I want to not lash out at someone just because they fucked up. Even if it was yesterday, but especially when it was 25% of my life ago.
Simultaneously, this book is, if anything, more disruptive for me to write now than it was back then. If by some bad chance, he is still the type of person who would say something that crazy, I am imagining talking to my teacher about it and then her being like – whoa, I wish I had known from the start that this history was there. And I am imagining me feeling like, dang, I did the wrong thing. I am also imaginging telling her up front, and having her feel like she has to do something about it, and then if he’s not that person anymore, I will feel like, fuck, I did the wrong thing.
It’s safe to say that before, during, and after he said what he did in that old group we were in, I’ve had that feeling – I did the wrong thing - in connection with the rape as well, and maybe it is also so convoluted-feeling with him because of it.
To be clear – I am not of the belief that I did something wrong, it’s more this thing where I think my mind wants to believe that – or wanted to for a long time – rather than believe the person, who I knew and liked, would just flat-out of his own accord harm me. And not realize it, or not care, about what the harm actually was. Cuz let’s face it people – I am a person who has had lots of sex, and had had lots of it before that incident. The mechanics of it – fucking that you didn’t want to be having and said so and then got overridden by the person who rapes you – being fucked in that circumstance is really bad, it is a dark dark experience. But for me anyway, it was *that* he did it, not the physicality of what he did, that made me lose my mind temporarily afterwards.
Point being, that part felt like looking into a void, in the creepiest sense people ever use that phrase. Believing it could be anything other than what it was – including your own fault – is a comparitive relief.
Alas, that kind of relief is behind me.
I know all the theories and the reasons why other people need to think it was your fault, and I can’t say as I have the exact same amount of compassion for them around it as I have/had for myself. But, I don’t think it makes them evil people. I don’t think it made him an evil person. And, I don’t want to make him a potentially evil person in anyone else’s eyes, including my writing teacher’s. I know she feels protective of me around my experience in that group. I mean, she feels that way about everyone – that’s part of what makes her an awesome teacher, is her zero tolerance for people spilling over onto each other.
Oy I’m sleepy now. I know it’s off topic, but is it bad blog form to say that I think BFP’s comments two threads down from this post should be up for a blogging award? Sick while she wrote them, too. Jesus.
