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  1. Years after my sexual …

Years after my sexual …

Years after my sexual assaults—some at the hand of the very bad man—I still struggle with shame, guilt, fear, anger, embarrassment, mistrust, helplessness, hopelessness, worthlessness, numbness, loneliness, depression, anxiety, PTSD, and suicidal ideation. For me, grief has become praxis and learning that healing isn’t linear, that even if I think I’ve dealt with/accepted/move passed an overwhelming emotion or experience, I may, once again, be at the mercy of its reemergence. And even if I continue therapy and antidepressants for the rest of my life, I’ll never know what life is like minus trauma. But I do know I can soften its effects.

I’d like to think the persistent confusion and devastation over Claire’s death comes solely from a place of selfless empathy, but I’m aware enough and honest enough to know that that isn’t the case. Of course Claire’s death is devastating in and of itself, but it’s also a foretoken of the sexual assault survivor curse: suicidality—for the percentage of survivors who experience suicidal ideation—haunts you like the cursed videotape in the movie The Ring. If you know the movie, you know that once you’ve seen the video, you’re doomed. There is no escaping death. (I’d almost feel guilty using a movie to compare Claire’s death to suicidality, but she loved horror films, and I know she’d approve of this reference.)

Existence is perpetually in doubt.

’ve been following the poet Chen Chen on Twitter for a few years now, and he recently tweeted a Mary Oliver poem and his thoughts about the poem that perfectly elucidates the struggle I’ve experienced trying to negotiate my will to live with my will to end things. Something I’m working toward is realizing this isn’t a separate self—it’s all me.

@chenchenwrites We shake with joy, we shake with grief. What a time they have, these two housed as they are in the same body. –Mary Oliver, “We Shake with Joy”

@chenchenwrites thinking about how this very short poem is composed of all single syllable words, until the end, with the word “body”—

how this two syllable word is the (trembling) container for both joy and grief

My body both trembles with joy and grief. My will to live and my will to die are nurturing forces inside me that stem from the same root. I have an intimate relationship with both of these selves—how could I not? I live so I can macerate in love, to waste away life rapt in humiliating devotion. To become softened by love is also to become hardened by it. In order to let love fray the edges of your heart, you also have to become hardened to its disappointments. Without expectation, you cannot love, and you cannot love without expectation. To expect is to wait and to anticipate, and the very act of waiting and anticipating is yielding your heart to someone else. Its beauty is as unparalleled as its ability to devastate.

My life feels like a waiting game. A game where I’m trying to outwit and outpace the trauma that has been slowly trying to pull me under. A game to see whether or not an old trauma could do me in, or if a new trauma will deal the final blow. I’ve often found my autonomy and agency subjugated to both external and internal forces that are beyond my control, and death is one of them. And I often wonder if Claire felt the same way.

I wonder if and hope I’ll get to a place where I’m no longer waiting. But I do know, in learning to love myself and continuing to open my heart to others, I am wishing for a future. And that is good enough for now.

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