[This is a post from the sexual assault series.]
[Also, I’m sort of just spinning my wheels in this run of posts, if you want the gist of what I’m saying, maybe skip to the overview one.]
I have another post coming up getting more into the idea that you would think I’d never done anything before him! (We’ll get into it.) But today, the big giant blinding-light example is flying.
I. Fly. All. The. Time.
Think of how much I flew back and forth when I was kinda moving-ish from LA to NY. (All the time!)
And of course in my life before that, I’d flown kind of a ton. (Even my first job in TV was to go around the country and help at different auditions for two seasons!)
And yet, when I fly now – which is a thing I love… I loooove to fly, and I love airports, but now – I feel this weird anxiety, as though I’m gonna be with him again.
And I don’t want to make it sound like the flight I took with him was all bad. I’ve referred to it before as probably the best most hopeful time I had with him after being assaulted. He was all over me, being quite sexual, seeming super duper into me. And that one specific part felt like, “okay, everything is maybe back to normal, or at least getting there. I’ll be back in that spot on his bed, and in the (currently scary) shower before you know it, and that will help, ’cause I’ll have new memories there. Things will go back to the status quo. It’s all gonna be fine. So fine.”
But aside from hope, there were all the other things – really annoying, semi-upsetting things. Most of them were very small, but when you’re already drowning, and you reach up and your hands feel air (instead of water), if somebody covers your fingers with a cup of water – that’s a small amount of water in general, but it’s taking away the only air/hope you could feel….
And it’s hard to explain because it kind of sounds silly when I try to explain it, because it’s like “well, what’s the problem if someone helped you with your bag?”
And the best answer I can give – that I hope makes sense – is that I don’t mind when any of my friends (or people I’ve been “involved” with on any level) help me with a bag, or do something normal and kind and polite. We’re just being humans. It’s all good.
But basically every interaction I’ve ever had with sexual assault guy (including this one and how he went about it) led me to believe that, for instance, he didn’t go find a place for my duffel bag in an overhead compartment (kinda far back on the plane, because the ones above us were full) because he had the aisle seat, so he just happened to be closer… He did it because he’s the “man,” and that’s what “men” do. They take care of the bags.
He would want to carry my bags, but it would be preposterous to him when I offered to help him.
He was allowed to stand on the train, but I got yelled at for “being too stubborn” to sit – like I need to be a proper girl, relaxing, being “taken care of” – as though in the eyes of strangers, he also had to be showing he is a “good man, taking care of the woman he’s with.”
It doesn’t matter what the woman he’s with wants. The appearance of how we look to strangers is what matters. It’s not if he’s being a good man, it’s if he’s appearing as one.
I just constantly – not just on the plane, but everywhere – felt like he was “in charge.” Even as we were in the train station (after the plane), and he pressed the buttons for me on the machine to buy my tickets to Penn Station, I had to calm myself.
“Okay, Aurora. It’s possible he’s doing this not because he thinks he’s superior and always has to ‘take care’ of you, but because he’s very familiar with this airport, so he’s probably faster at this specific thing… Also, you are very sleepy. And that makes people operate not at full capacity… So maybe this isn’t an ‘in charge’ thing. Maybe he’s trying to be kind to the groggy girl by doing the thing he can do on autopilot.”
But I don’t think that is why he took over my machine, pushing me aside to do it himself. It was all, always, an “in charge thing.”
And this is where we’ll pick up tomorrow (because, I’m sorry, I just have too much to say on this to fit into one post – eep!).
[This is a post from the sexual assault series.]