Once Upon A Time

Once upon a time, I was an athlete. Swimming was my sport, and I was pretty decent. I made the state competitions in fall of 1992 as part of a 4×50 freestyle relay team. At 16-years-old, swimming at the UA’s Hillenbrand Aquatic Center was a dream come true! I really didn’t know how I got there. I dismissed the daily hours of training that enabled my body to perform. But, I was used to dismissing myself. It goes with the territory when body shame and self-worth issues are implanted at an early age (starting at six or seven-years-old) from physical and emotional abuse.

I look at this young woman (she was me!), and my heart aches. When this photo was taken, I remember saying to my teammates through a forced smile, “don’t look at my fat.” I was obsessed with being fat. In this picture, I was a size 8-10-12 (depending on the clothing), and that was “too big.” I weighed 145 pounds, and that was “too heavy.” I remember being told that I was “big-boned.” I also remember being told that African-Americans couldn’t be competitive swimmers because their “bones were too heavy,” which made no fucking sense to me. Now I realize that narrative was due to a racialized society that kept people of color from sports that were deemed only appropriate for “white” people – members of society that had access to swimming pools.

I didn’t understand why the swim team was fully white. I didn’t understand why my physical attributes seemed to be more important than what I had to say and share and write. I struggled with my body and my face belying my intelligent brain. “Don’t worry your pretty little head about that.” “You can get by on your looks.” “College is for obtaining your Mrs.”

A couple years later, I was raped by a trusted boyfriend – with whom I’d never had sex – on my best friend’s couch. I had fallen asleep, in a full-length flannel, unsexy nightgown, with a blanket over me. I woke up to no blanket, no underwear, nightgown pushed up and I being penetrated, again and again, over and over. Nausea rising, I struggled to keep it down. Why make a bigger mess of this situation, I reasoned. So, I turned my head and closed my eyes and moved my mind somewhere else. I swallowed a deep breath, and went underwater. This lovely mechanism of dissociation kept me from puking.

Dissociation can be a saving grace during traumatic situations. I had experienced it several times before. Like when my father’s second wife sat on me and punched me in my face repeatedly; I was seven. To this day, I can’t even recall the memory of being in my body when it happened. I was across the room witnessing the abuse.

The term dissociation still carries a misogynistic bent. Look it up on Dictionary.com and read:

4. Psychiatry The splitting off of a group of mental processes from the main body of consciousness, as in amnesia or certain forms of hysteria.

Read: hysteria. Dictionary.com defines it as 1. An uncontrollable outburst of emotion or fear, often characterized by irrationality, laughter, weeping, etc. 2. Psychoanalysis A psychoneurotic disorder characterized by violent emotional outbreaks, disturbances of sensory and motor functions, and various abnormal effects due to autosuggestion.

I’ll highlight two loaded words (because, I could go into so many more, but for brevity), hysteria is “Due to autosuggestion.” Dictionary.com defines autosuggestion as: 1. Suggestion arising from oneself, as the repetition of verbal messages as a means of changing behavior.

This is a definition that clearly places onus on the individual and gives no credence to the abusive actions perpetuated on the individual that likely caused the hysteria and thereby the autosuggestions. Autosuggestions as a word and its defined meaning really pisses me off because our human minds and experiences do not exist in vacuums. We are affected by our upbringings and surroundings and by love and hate and nurturing and abuse. I will venture, viscerally, that autosuggestions are a result of these experiences.

And, let’s review the etymology of hysteria. According to etymonline.com:

Hysteria (n.)  Nervous disease, 1801, coined in medical Latin as an abstract noun from Greek hystera “womb,” from PIE *udtero-, variant of *udero- “abdomen, womb, stomach” (see uterus). Originally defined as a neurotic condition peculiar to women and thought to be caused by a dysfunction of the uterus. With abstract noun ending -ia. General sense of “unhealthy emotion or excitement.”

When Freud was delving into the histories of women via talk therapy, and the pervasive sexual abuse that was reported to him, his reports were shunned and he distanced himself from them. The 19^th Century/Victorian era sexual issues are way beyond this post, but the heart of it is the fact that Freud did learn through his research that women were regularly sexually abused. Disgustingly, he then perpetuated the culture of cover up and the excusing of male abuses. As this Wikipedia article states, “Any attempt on the part of the child or her family to expose the violator exposes her own alleged innate sexual motives and shamed her more than the offender; concealment is her only recourse.”

I didn’t report my rape. How could I? This “boyfriend” and I worked at the same restaurant together. His sister was my good friend. Who would believe me? No one, that’s who. Afterwards, a rumor circulated through the restaurant that went like this – “Ladies, don’t let your brothers get near Jamie! She’ll ‘corrupt’ him!” It was said with gleeful disdain, and was super humiliating.

The woman who reported her rape by the Stanford swimmer, and went through the demeaning process of trial by jury to have the California jury convict Brock-what’s-his-nuts (er, Brock Allen Turner) on three felony accounts to get a six month sentence, is a fucking hero. Her statement to him blew my fucking mind. And reduced me to tears; sobbing breathless tears. I too know what it feels like to want to shed one’s body like a jacket.

And, her courage gave me hope. Perhaps it is just a vestige of hope for shifting the dominate paradigm, but hope nonetheless.

Bless you, sweet darling dear. And thank you for reminding us to be, and for being, a lighthouse that shines for the lost boats. Thank you for giving me courage to share my story.

I hope we all can find the love, support and voice to confront and batter down the rampant misogynistic, societal oppression that beleaguers victims of sexual abuse locally, nationally and globally.