paradoxically, a victim cycling mess

I don’t know how co­her­ent this is go­ing to be, but I wan­na share my thinks.

Junot Días pub­lished an es­say re­cent­ly com­ing out as a sex­u­al as­sault sur­vivor. He ex­plained how his in­abil­i­ty to process and cope with his trau­ma re­sult­ed in ter­ri­ble be­hav­ior in re­la­tion­ships, large­ly con­stant cheating. 

There’s now a grow­ing group of women that don’t ap­pre­ci­ate how Días’ tox­i­c­i­ty is be­ing giv­en free pass be­cause it’s root­ed in trau­ma. To para­phrase some­thing I saw go­ing around, women’s pain is ac­cept­able when it con­tributes to a man’s growth. 

They want to know, why aren’t we ask­ing these women how they’re doing?

I’ve been a Junot Días’ girl­friend, more than once. I have been in­ti­mate with in­cred­i­bly bro­ken hu­mans, peo­ple who need se­ri­ous ther­a­py and in­stead turn to tox­ic mas­culin­i­ty to get them through their in­tense trau­mas. These peo­ple have been hot—cold, these peo­ple have cheat­ed on me, these peo­ple have sex­u­al­ly as­sault­ed me.

My pain was not ac­cept­able to fos­ter their growth. In fact, I don’t know that they’ve grown at all. 

But, my pain was ac­cept­able to fos­ter MY growth. Be­cause there is a trau­ma, a dam­age, a need for self-re­pair that is also present when you make your­self vul­ner­a­ble to a Junot Días. It is a step above Días: Know­ing you’re fucked up, know­ing your life is im­pact­ed by the shit you’ve been through, but be­ing de­fined by it and need­ing more of it around you.

Please don’t mis­in­ter­pret my point. I’m not say­ing that vic­tims are equal­ly cul­pa­ble to the dam­ages done to them by perpetrators. 

I’m say­ing that vic­tim is a flat char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of a per­son, a two-di­men­sion­al idea that takes away from peo­ple that they are stu­dents of life. Every bro­ken per­son that did some fucked up shit to me, was some­one I should not have trust­ed with my men­tal, emo­tion­al, or phys­i­cal safe­ty or well be­ing in the first place. 

It doesn’t make me at fault. It means I was un­aware of my­self. And maybe para­dox­i­cal­ly, I need­ed to be en­dan­gered in or­der to know what the dan­ger looked like. Then ac­cept­ing that I couldn’t keep sub­ject­ing my­self to dan­ger, chang­ing my stan­dards, giv­ing my­self what I sought from oth­ers, evolved me into the kind of per­son that has a life now filled with amaz­ing, wor­thy people.

If these peo­ple wrote es­says about what their trau­ma made them into, if I was re­duced to a sen­tence about a group of wreckage. 

Per­son­al­ly? I would not be up­set about be­ing small. These peo­ple had beau­ti­ful sides to them­selves, they too were not 2D ideas of vic­tims or mon­sters. They de­serve the abil­i­ty to move on, just like I do. I would be elat­ed at the ma­tu­ri­ty it re­quires to put your demons into words, to hold your­self accountable. 

I would be elat­ed for the fu­ture lovers who don’t have to hurt, who don’t have those lessons to learn anymore.

That’s all I have right now.
 
 

—mel­ony ppenosyne

Flom­mist Mel­ony Ppenosyne is a writer and weird artist type. In the last year alone, she’s trav­eled to Vir­ginia as a com­pet­ing poet, co-writ­ten a play on men­tal ill­ness that is present­ly be­ing pro­duced, and craft­ed a pub­lished es­say check­ing the priv­i­lege and scope of art gal­leries. Copy­right © 2018 Mel­ony Ppenosyne. Pic­tured: For­tu­na­to De­pero, Il ci­clista at­tra­ver­sa la cit­tà (cropped and repho­tographed), 1945, from.

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