The consent conversation

When I was a student in prep school I was was a train wreck. Predictive text wants me to say that I was a train station, so yeah, maybe I was a train station with a bunch of wrecks in progress and more inevitable wrecks to come. I was too ignorant, too angry and in too much pain to let anyone help me. I had no coping skills. I had no confidantes. I had so much untreated trauma roiling inside my heart and brain that most people just wrote me off as a lost cause. The walls I erected around myself were impenetrable. I downed my sorrows in booze and sex most of the time, but on occasion I'd channel all that emotion into a school project or assignment. Then I would be unable to discuss my work or receive feedback without either getting defensive or shutting down. 

My female English instructors found me particularly frustrating. I had a goldmine of unresolved women's rights issues to pull from, but I couldn't stand in my own truth. I couldn't see myself as a person who deserved a voice. I didn't understand that, from a feminist perspective, I was the embodiment of what was wrong with society. I was a scared and helpless little girl in a woman's body, easily accessible and disposable. I didn't realize that I was a victim, STILL a victim. I was victimized at a very young age, and I was unable to mentally mature past that age. I was stuck. I believed everything that happened to me was either due to my poor judgement or because I wasn't good enough. Now that I am a mature woman, aware of my rights, honest with myself and receptive to love, I see it. I see why I made them so angry when I shrugged off their questions and refused to tap further into my feelings. It took forty years, but dammit I get it now.

I don't know what to do next. There's a lot of crying. Yeah, more crying. Great. It feels like somebody I love died.

There's a firestorm of sexual assault scandals brewing around my old school. They're gonna get crucified. And you know what? Fuck 'em. We all have to deal with the ugly consequences of questionable decisions we make. The school decided to protect students who victimized classmates. Now it can find out the cost of that decision. One of the minority faculty members is being unfairly ostracized for his involvement in one of the scandals because he was unable to provide effective counseling in a situation where the offense was in the process of being swept under the rug by the institution's leadership. Yes, that is the school's response to the scandal - fire the guy who was just trying to help the kids.

In this world a girl has to stand up for herself because the adults around her are too chicken shit to protect her. If that girl is like me, she'd rather just disappear. When you start fighting, you never stop until you're dead. I don't wanna spend the rest of my life fighting. Ugh. Maybe I'm deluding myself by thinking that I have a choice. Maybe that's what all this 

mother-loving crying is about.