Around finals week, a month off from school sounds amazing; the higher education gods have finally taken pity on your mortal soul and decided to release it, if only for a while. But after Christmas and after (an admittedly non-celebrational) new year's, there isn't much to do or accomplish. I try to read but I get upset; my book choices are not light as I'm in the middle of A Brief History of Misogyny: The World's Oldest Prejudice by Jack Holland. He is thorough and the history he recounts is equal parts infuriating and saddening. Usually, the sadness overwhelms the anger, as Jack obviously agrees with me and being aggressive toward an unyielding, unchangeable past is nonsensical. I lament the lives of women (from now and yesterday) while having little actual means to aid them.
My house, in its moderately secluded state, leads me to believe that I could scream as loud as I can, and no one would hear me. (That's not an invitation to murder me; please do not--I repeat do not--murder me.) But my disconnect is not inspiring. I started writing another blogpost, which sits as a draft because I now hate its lack of inspiration or thesis. I could scream without being heard and if I did scream, know that I would be yelling "Can you hear me?" and "Please help! I'm useless and don't know what to do!" (Both pathetic and desperate--getting that phrase tattooed on me--but both very real.)
It is in this time frame, when my family is not here, when I have nowhere to go or be, when I have no friends to see, that I feel hollow. During the semester, I place my entire being into the clubs, activities, and classes I partake in, but after the semester ends, I have no project or book or email or idea to let devour me and, as a result, the self I would apply seems to disappear.
Woo! Look there I go!
While it is excellent to feel so wholeheartedly consumed that I my entire self is occupied, the abrupt end of this privilege is a system shock. So here I am, my brain slowly turning to mush as I continually ask myself to engage intellectually without the pressure of a deadline.
***
Am I loud and clear, or am I breaking up?
Am I still your charm, or am I just bad luck?
Are we getting closer, or are we just getting more lost?
***
What you write when you don't know what to write: shit.
I picked up my sister and drove her to GMVS. As I was walking her to a seat in the gym so she could see Les Mis, I was hugged, squeezed tightly and told, "Welcome home!" Naturally, I was offended beyond belief. It's natural to call where you live home and, in high school, I usually misspoke, saying I was going home when I really meant I would be returning to GMVS. Such a slip of the tongue would never occur now, nor would I really call Saint Mike's my home--simply my place of residence. I don't know if my home is in Vermont (where I get my mail). It certainly isn't my childhood home, which has been demolished and created in a new vision. My room--aka the storage room--does not house me or who I am. I feel small pieces of myself everywhere. We must ask ourselves how far we extend, what items, places, moments, clothes, and memorabilia are us; does their existence signify you or just you in that place? Arguably, none, some, and all are signifiers. I am signified... by what exactly, I don't know I am a sign with unfathomable signifiers; I do not know me, so how can you?
Almost a year ago, in February of 2014, I created a new blog, this blog, allowing me to start fresh. A lot happens in a year, and it's combined arbitrariness and social acceptance lends the year to new starts; constantstateofwonder.blogspot.com becomes blank, shaking free its old, embarrassing posts from the me of last year. My writing changes, if it does not improve, and I'm glad I thought to do a yearly cleanse; Junior year Sammi can dwell in the depths of Internet hell while the me with yet no perspective of her own embarrassment can write freely and without anxiety that a reader (or, more likely I) will be tempted to read and learn about me from before. Because me from before does not encapsulate me; she remains formative in development, but not central in current personhood. Slightly Insane Musings of An Idiosyncratic Nerd Girl (my original blog), need not be taken into account when trying to understand me as I am now. Believe me, I'll tell you what I'm about without you needing to root around in my old shitty writing. You can learn more from my current shitty writing. My signifiers cannot be traced to a place or a time, but what else would you expect in the age of the image? I look at pictures of myself sometimes and wonder who I'm seeing. What was I thinking and who was I being? Who is this girl? She is me and she cannot signify herself in a photo; I look for some explanation of who I am in photos of me, but, despite my attempts to declare my personhood to others through countenance and dress, I remain elusive, even to me. But despite my slippery definitions, I feel attached to And That's When I Said...
It may be because years seem much faster; having finished high school, four years in one place (college) feels much shorter; the year, though I've always recognized its arbitrariness, loses its power. But beyond that, And That's When I Said... still feels powerful. It implies seriality--beginning with And, ending with ellipses--and voice with the word Said itself, as well with the temporal words That's and When; the words are spoken in response, and what follows is simultaneously a punchline, sarcastic comment, scathing remark, and outraged explosion; what follows is a post which has attempted to create a signified for myself, the most accurate one possible. Here, I am here; this is me; this is me right now, right this second; you cannot know me more than I know myself; I've granted you all I can collect from within myself, gathered and shaped it to show you this instantaneous, fleeting glimpse of me. And that's why And That's When I Said... feels right. Because it is temporal; because I am transient, at least the me of now. Tomorrow, I will be someone almost exactly the same as I am today; you won't even notice... and then you will. But I will still be saying; I will still be responding in a myriad of (mostly likely embarrassing) ways. And That's When I Said... I will use my voice and what I say will be signifier of myself.
***
"People who have been raped or sexually assaulted" takes up a lot of space, and it should, but when we're attempting to refer to this group, we search for a word that fits the needs of the group and quickly conveys their status. "Victim," it is argued, gives no agency to the person who has been sexually assaulted or raped ("Victims are passive. If it was really that bad, why didn't they do something to stop it? Why did they let it happen?"), which is why some prefer the term "survivor." The person who has been sexually assaulted or raped endures, survives, and recreates their life despite the harm done to them; they do this of their own volition; they are a powerful agent, a force with control and capability. "Victim," it is argued, removes the power and agency of the person who's been sexually assaulted or raped. They are, according to the synonyms of victim, a casualty, a fatality. Personally, I disagree with both words. Victim undercuts the value and depth of a person who has been sexually assaulted or raped, but survivor, for the reasons it is claimed to be valuable, can be harmful.
Survivor declares either a certain amount of luck or power. Concerning luck, they were lucky to make it out alive and unlucky to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Luck and sexual assault/rape are two unrelated instances we need to not intersect. For luck to meet sexual assault/rape takes the blame from the assaulter/rapist; bad luck is blamed rather than the perpetrator. Luck also declares that it could've been worse; instead of just being raped (a horrid act and experience), you could've been raped and just realized you ate the last chocolate! You're a survivor, kiddo! We simply cannot associate sexual assault/rape with bad luck, let alone good luck. Concerning power, if this person who has been sexually assaulted/raped is declared a person of agency, their agency may be turned against them: "If their so capable and in control, why didn't they stop their attacker" or "Why weren't they prepared?" or "So... they wanted it to happen?" While people who have been sexually assaulted/raped should not be reduced to powerless, passive victims, granting them too much agency leaves them open to backlash in the ways I've discussed and, I'm sure, in a myriad of other ways I haven't thought of or am not aware of.
I've never been sexually assaulted or raped, so the decision does not belong to me, but both proposed words seem, in varying ways, fraught. I don't know if a word exists in the middle ground that simultaneously places blame on the perpetrator and empowers the person who has been sexually assaulted/raped after the fact. Each word signifies a different meaning and grants skeptics different avenues of critique. The transition from victim to survivor to thriver is also proposed, but this transition is not a single working word applicable to all and usable in conversation, discussion, court, and political discourse. I offer little solution to this issue other than the words "endurer" and "perseverer," the definitions of which are, according to Merriam Webster, one who endures and one who perseveres, respectively. A horrible act has been done/is happening, but the endurer endures, the perseverer persists. These words are certainly not panaceas, nor are they easy to say, but they seem to better fit the (perceived) requirements, definitions, and needs of those who have been sexually assaulted/raped.
***
I see my particles arranged in this way: Crystalline and fractured As I stare into the void I watch the other particles float
Whenever I read, I don’t pay attention to the writer’s architecture. To Kill a Mockingbird, for instance, takes place at my great aunt’s house.
Every Sunday, we brought doughnuts. Her fridge always held a liter of Moxie, and I guzzled its bittersweet for hours; sugar high and free, nothing could stop me.
I haven’t entered the house in a decade, I think, and I can’t remember if, three feet from the end of the kitchen table, an opening leads to a sitting room. I imagine Atticus, Aunt Alexandra, and Scout entering and exiting this room through a door-shaped hole in the wall and I wonder if my own aunt ever did the same. I believe I remember the doorway, but I do not remember beyond it.
I was a seventh grader when my great aunt died in a fire. My mother, always one to supply unneeded information in relation to my age, hinted that the fire had been started by my great aunt. I sat and wondered if the combination of her brother’s death and the dearth of doughnuts to pair with Moxie urged her to light Atticus’s house on fire. Did matches find their way into Auntie Mary’s hands because we chose other things over Moxie and doughnuts and her?
***
The mural springs out from the corner, where the two walls meet. White and gray, the pseudo-people depicted, are cartoonish and beautiful. Their depictions, flat and simple, their actions, daring and three-dimensional.
One jumps, his hands shaped like pointed mittens and attached to the ends of thin arms that reach high over his head. His head hold horns like a crown. In my mind, I make his white tutu and ballet shoes pink as he leaps, knees leading the way for pointed toes and a wide smile.
Beneath him, a man, traditionally dressed, stretches his arms. His face reveals a negative emotion, somewhere between upset and worried.
I peer through the darkness and wonder if the man’s arms reach to stop the ballet dancer from falling, or from leaping.
***
Focusing on the waves of reflected light jumping from the disco ball and landing lightly on the wall gives me a headache.
It’s easier to focus instead on swell of the crowd—how it moves. Intricately swaying and knottily shuffling, the crowd says, “I am here.”
If this were literature, the women putting her palm over the top of her drink might have received a phone call from her mother, reminding her to be careful.
Literature gives way to life and the woman doesn’t want her drunk— drink—to spill.
Even this focus, this interpretation of the crowd’s darkened, defining undulation, is too much.
The music, at once pulsing and static, lifts my fingers up, weightless, and away from my body, like the first person to pair I love you with I’ll leave you.
***
This I wrote last year for my freshmen seminar, but I'd like to commend my 4-year-old self for attempting to describe the cycle of abuse.
I sit on the bottom of the wooden staircase of my house. I pick at the Velcro on my light-up Power Ranger Sneakers and cry uncontrollably because of some insignificant injustice. Little kids’ tears are always messy and this was no exception; my nose makes disgusting noises as I suck back in the flowing boogers. My mother kneels in front of me.
“What’s wrong?” she asks. “Why are you crying, Sammi-wham?”
Tripping over words and trying to explain emotions my vocabulary was too limited to convey, I say, “It’s just that Daddy. He is so mean. He’s so mean and I’m going to run away.”
“What do you mean he’s mean? We have this house, you have your clothes, your own room, and all of these things that you wouldn’t have without Dad. Dad loves you and me very much.”
“I know. I mean, I just… Sometimes he’s really, really nice. But it’s because he wants me to stay.”
“Wait, I thought he was mean?” At this point, my mother is laughing at me, which only makes me more insistent.
“No. He’s mean and he’s nice and he’s mean so he can torture me and he’s nice because he wants me to stay—”
“So he’s nice and mean?” My four-year-old fists ball and I cry harder; I know I'm being made fun of.
“Mom, listen. He’s nice because he wants me to stay so that he can torture me more and then he’s mean so that I hate him, but then he’s nice again so I won’t run away.”
My mother laughs a little more before the front door slammed. The subject of our conversation walks through the door and my disproportionate, four-year-old legs carry me quickly to my room. I slam the door and continue a paused conversation with my stuffed animals.
I could be, should be, watching T.V. right now. I don't really know why or what I'm writing. All the writable things have to be censored; they must be written, but they cannot be read.
***
The letter I wrote to myself during the spring of my senior year is sitting in the top drawer of my desk, surrounded by miscellany. I want to tell myself, to assure myself, that quote everything will be okay unquote. But really I will live with the guilt of existing for my entire existence. This summer, I crashed and totaled my car. With the insurance money, I bought the same make, model, and year vehicle, the effect of which has only granted me grief whenever I drive. Existing is like buying the same car every time you crash it and feeling the same debilitating waves of shame and humiliation whenever you find yourself with your foot on the clutch and your hand on the key.
***
I read, analyze, memorize, and regurgitate. Not necessarily in that order and not necessarily completing the same amount of each task. We're reading Feed by M.T. Anderson in my media class and my copy from high school contains all the annotations I wrote two years ago. Senior year me and the me of the present have similar ideas. Senior year me used to cry in the shower though, and that was kind of lame, so I'm glad that's done. She also had a lot more things to say, but I'm not glad that's done. I'm surrounded by like-minded people with no one to rail against. I used to write upwards of three posts a month. Now, if I'm committed, I write one a month. The world and everything I see is just nice. It's just pretty. It's just okay. There is no high; there is no low, only silence.
Shhh. There is nothing to hear.
***
I tried to write a poem, but it was shitty, so it's gone now.
***
Everything's already been written, so what's the point of writing? Everything's been said, so why speak? People have already lived and died, so why do we keep existing? There's nothing left undone. We are the things we do and somehow, I'm always nothing.
***
Yesterday, I left my water bottle in a store in Burlington, which was stupid. But a friend retrieved it for me today. Then on the bus, I lost my water bottle again. My life is most likely a string of mistakes. I can recall a me with a more solidified identity. A me who was certain: yes, please, that's exactly what I want and here's why. But mistake after mistake and a shift in reality has created a me who could not tell you who she is. At 17, I was a writer and a student and a ski racer and a softball player and the best friend I could be. Now, a multitude of mistakes later, I am no longer an athlete, which was one of the only things that wasn't a mistake. Decisions have never been easy for me, and now it seems I've made too many to make myself a person again. Each error grows larger in my mind, taking over my consciousness.
Question: which one of my mistakes will make me I hate myself forever?
Answer: all of them.
Question: Who am I? Where am I? What am I doing? Where am I going? Why aren't I going anywhere?
Answer:
***
REDO REDO REDO
UNDO UNDO UNDO
DELETE ME
***
I'm so tired and I don't care about the rest of my life.
In the middle of speaking. Wait. Speaking. The decision to speak. Why? Why did I make that decision? Wait. In the middle of speaking. The idea becomes a thing. An out of context quote. No. Wait. The idea. The thing. Say it. Say the fucking thing. Did I say it? Fuck. No. Fuck. She gives me a quick, confused look. She says yeah. Why don't I just fucking listen?
***
I'd like to say something about racism.
It's real.
Thank you for your time.
***
This Is Just To Say
I have died.
Please grieve silently.
***
This is the difference. The difference is this. We are different. This is we and we are different.
In the out-of-context context of existence, you and I and me and you and all of us, are different.
And, I would like to tell you, in the clearest way possible, that I don't fucking like it.
***
At the risk of sounding extremely ableist, I'd like to recognize the sincere struggle of very sad deaf people. I need noise. In silence. I crumble. Which is why my music is currently trying to permanently destroy my ear drums. But I'd like to issue an apology to both sad, deaf people and the me in an alternate universe who cannot hear. I'm listening twice as loud for you.
***
Your out of context existence means nothing. As well, I'd like to point out that while your in context existence means more, it still means nothing. Meaning. Tell me about meaning. So infinite. Too infinite. Lacking. Impertinent. Meaning doesn't matter. What does it do? How much work? It doesn't work without meaning. Work is tied in meaning and I am without meaning so I do nothing.
***
Jean-Louise Finch. (Who we all know as Scout.) Wears overalls and nothing else. Spoiler Alert. In Go Set a Watchmen, Jean-Louise Finch does not wear overalls. She wears dresses. Her rebellion is in her lack of makeup or some other pseudo-progressive bullshit.
I was at Nate's house the summer before my senior year of high school. Some uncle who perpetuated sexism with benevolent misogyny had the mother fucking audacity to tell me "I would learn to" like dresses, makeup, and all the other bullshit that comes with being a lady. (What's even better is that he said, "She'll learn" to Nate and not to me.) The effect, I would say, is opposite. All this bullshit about it being adorable for young girls to be tomboys but not for young ladies and women to show their masculinity is exactly that: bullshit.
Jean-Louise, who left behind the chance to be my absolute idol, to wear dresses grew up before second-wave feminism. I would respect her choices if they seemed like choices. But they don't. It seems like someone learned Jean-Louise real good.
I will tear down society and build it again. Based on one fucking principle: listen. Listen because Scout's voice was clearer and stronger than Jean-Louise's. Because I've always hated Aunt Alexandra the way I've hated the subtle cultural messages that I was wrong. Internalized misogyny and strict ideas of what a woman needs to be perpetuated by societal norms is gonna fucking stop.
In Athens, baby girls were referred to as "deformed boys" and when a mother gave birth to a baby girl, it was common to discard the child in the garbage. "Best case scenario," the child was taken out of the garbage raised to become a prostitute. If not, the children screamed and cried until they died in a dumpster. This happened so often that Athenians were unperturbed by the cries. No one listened and we need to start.
The first thing that happened is I got invited to a party. (Just to repeat with the correct emphasis: I got invited to a party.) Now, granted, it was a party for work. And if they hadn't invited me, it would've been cruel. Either way, I got invited. After this invitation, I had two more days of work, and then, on a fateful Tuesday night, I attended a party with all my "coworkers." (That's such a grown up word, but I don't have an alternative.) The party, like, happened, or did whatever it is parties do. And then I went to bed. On a couch. In a sleeping bag. (I learned a valuable lesson about the difference between an invitation to a party and the party itself. I like invitations; I do not like parties.) Anyway, I woke up on Wednesday morning, picked up my bag from the Rosens, and made my way to New York. I had worked, played softball, and completed the homework for a class I no longer wanted to take for too long and when I finally got on the road, on the ferry, off the ferry, and on my way to Haylee's, I thought I was going to cry. (?). Like, I was happy and I was going to cry.
The only thing I could think was, "I'm on vacation. I'm on vacation? I'm on vacation!" and I cried. My best friend lives three hours from me, and I was getting closer every second. I was going to lie next to the pool, in the sun, and have no responsibility to yell at children. That's what I did. And it was awesome. I drove, my privilege hitting me like a ton of bricks every mile marker. Then I got lost and had to call Haylee, who met me at the end of her road. I pulled over after I turned onto her sidestreet, and, after some vehicular finagling, so did she. We both got out, hugged, broke apart, hugged again, broke apart, screamed, hugged one more time, and then got back into our cars.
After two days spent poolside and shopping, we made our way to Canada for a music festival. (The thought of which still seems ridiculous in hindsight.) Anyway, Haylee and I lost our hearing during the twenty one pilots concert, jumped and danced for Weezer, and (I) screamed for Father John Misty. I spent much of our time dragging my directionally challenged friend from one place to the next, pointing us toward photo booths and kiosks. (Haylee seemed only able to locate a fruitless claw machine.) Either way, we ate poutine and ordered in on Sunday night. We went to another, different party, rode in a taxi, and walked around Montreal like it was our job.
Honored, I felt, to spend this long, long weekend with Haylee, to see such amazing artists, to pay way too much for food, and to be here, to be present.
***
Haylee and I were navigating the subway system, an apparatus I'd never encountered, in order to move from our hotel to the music festival and back. On Friday night, we were walking along a long hallway, which led to the exit and, five blocks later, our hotel. At the end of the hall two men were situated, one sitting, the other standing. The standing one moved between the legs of the sitting one in order to make sexual gestures. Haylee and I, if we hadn't already, visibly stiffened. Haylee, who lacks a sense of direction, and I, panicked and still unsure in a city almost 4000 times the size of Burlington, did not know what to do, where to go, when two french-speaking men were walking toward us with was obviously an agenda. Incidentally, we took a wrong turn and ended up explaining to a woman who only spoke French, that we needed her to just walk with us for a certain amount of distance we could not describe. She finally understood, at least to some extent, and Haylee and I walked the five blocks back to our hotel looking over our shoulders.
In other news, a black twelve-year old girl's jaw was fractured by a white police officer and GOP candidate Ben Carson believes we need to move beyond race.
In other news, queer history is constantly erased and the other day my father told me that "all the queers like Freddie Mercury went around giving themselves AIDS."
In other news, our elected officials, and the society they represent, are so against pre-marital sex that the idea of closing many people's only access to (sexual) healthcare is a more logical option allowing abortions.
In other news, 48.4% of girls in Yemen will be married before age 18. (Source)
In other news, I get really upset sometimes because I convince myself that my rhetoric isn't good enough to make a difference and even if it does, my voice isn't loud enough to have a widespread effect. No one's listening and even if they were it wouldn't matter.
***
My parents were arguing, about what who knows, who remembers. But it was not a small fight. My sister wasn't older than three, which would've made me about eight. I'm not sure if you, reader, know many eight-year-olds, but their decision making skills are not particularly honed. My sister's decision, on the other hand, was much easier. She was a baby, clinging tightly to the back of my legs until my mother moved to the door, said she was leaving, swore she wouldn't come back. (She didn't pack anything; she never does). But to the door she went. They were both screaming, deafeningly so. My sister was crying. I stood stock still. (Screaming adults are like that myth about t-rexes: if you don't move, they can't see you. You no longer exist. They no longer exist. Reality becomes quiet and empty.) My mother did move, scooped up my loudly crying sister and walked to the door. Everyone shouted their sarcastic, biting good-byes, and I followed my mother to the final door.
At my house, the porch door closes at the edge of a large drop off. I spent afternoons jumping from the ground onto the edge, and seeing how long I could balance on the small piece of metal extending from the house. Every time I stepped up it, I leaned forward a bit and brought my knee close to my chest. Now I stood, toes hanging over the edge of the same metal strip, unsure what to do or where to go. My mother was walking toward her car; my sister was, thumb in her mouth, sitting, bouncing with each step, on my mother's hip. My mom turned back when she didn't her the crunch of my sneakers on the stones behind her. Her face and voice incredulous, "Are you coming?"
My mouth opened, but nothing came out. I looked down at my sneakers. It was just one big step. I could lean forward, put my foot out and break into a small jog, just like I did every time I found myself at this precipice. The edge seemed too big, the drop too far, and the height too great, yet the metal piece, I knew was not my home. I didn't know what to do. Nowhere seemed to be where I should go. My mom took my answer hastily. "Fine," she shouted. "Stay with him." And so I did. Until my mom and sister came back.
I had watched them reverse out of the driveway. I had stood and watched the trees across the street until my feet and legs ached. Eventually, I had returned to my room to do whatever it is eight-year-olds do when their mothers and fathers divide them up like property.
I think about this moment a lot. The moment on the precipice. The time I didn't move. Plenty of fights occurred later. In these I made different decisions, following my mother easily out the door and into her car. (We went to my grandma's.) But this one sticks out to me. My mother's tone. My indecision. The way that not choosing a side made it seem like I had chosen a side.
Now I think of my present self in the same situation. One parent screaming on the left and the other on the right. I think of my sister, clinging to the back of my legs. I see myself, car keys in hand, putting my own car in reverse and driving to get ice cream with my sister. I see us driving to my grandmother's for the night. The three of us sleeping in her king bed together. Getting up early and deciding against cereal, because what is it with old people and almond milk? I don't know where we would go or what we would do from there, but I refuse to stand on a precipice any more. My decision is no longer either/or. My decision isn't mom or dad, it's me. I choose me.
