about that time i was raped at camp

Dylan Farrow is brave. Talking out about what happened to her at the hands of a man whose work has put an untouchable mantle on his shoulders is getting her a lot of flack and the response from his camp has done everything they can to diminish her, question her motives, trivialize her experience. Thank goodness there are lot of people speaking up to say that they stand by her, thank her for coming forward after having a life of otherwise autonomy and peace away from media attention. This perverse sort of dominance happens in ways all over the violence- and salaciousness spectrums. Some of us are routinely molested, sometimes with great violence, sometimes with the subtle violence of an abuse of dominance. Sometimes it happens only once, with physical force and threats or manipulating our anxiety and fear in the moment. Sometimes it happens when we are children. Sometimes it doesn't happen until we are older teens or grown women. When and how it happens, the  statistics are staggering that it will be perpetrated by someone we know.

Every so often, there is a flurry of support for one or many women speaking up about what has happened to them. Molestation, rape, sexual assault. Every flurry shines a light on the broken bits of our society that need to be repaired because we still treat sexually-based crimes against others as taboo. A taboo that offers a stage for rape and child molestation jokes in conversation or performance. A taboo that makes us comfortable to let the perpetrator off the hook if the victim is coming forth with anything less than the cast of CSI coming up with particulates and cleaned-up security tapes as damning evidence.

A lot of strong women I respect have been opening up about their pasts, many simply mentioning the offense against them as a show of solidarity. I know I don't have viral levels of readership, but I take my personal experience seriously in this blog, so I am going to share what happened to me.

I was working at a summer camp in Oregon as a counselor for the oldest age group of campers. We had a good team that year, including a kind of nerdy guy who was generally agreed to be one of the nicest guys on staff. We were friends, not super close but definitely friendly. We had some shared common interests that led to a few conversations at break time, but to me he was just a part of my unit. He had an off-and-on girlfriend at camp who I barely knew, and I didn't keep track of their relationship status. It was a big staff that year, and though we all worked well in our teams, we gravitated to our usual groups  of friends for time off and weekends. One evening, this guy and I were sitting in the unit house after campers' lights out. We were just chatting, keeping an eye out for stray campers headed to the bath house while counselors got an hour or so to wind down without kids before staff curfew. At some point of our conversation, he leaned in and kissed me. I wasn't particularly attracted to him, but I didn't react angrily. I just asked what that was all about and he told me he thought we had chemistry. No one had ever told me it's good decorum to ask a person before you kiss them the first time, so I figured he was finding signals that I wasn't sending. I told him I didn't want that, that I was pretty sure he had a girlfriend. He replied they had broken up, but we could just go back to talking. He was super nice and was a D&D kind of nerd, so I figured everything would be cool. When our replacements came to let us enjoy the last hour before curfew, our legs were asleep from sitting on the porch. Everyone we would usually go hang out with were showering or playing Snood on the break room computers, so he asked if I wanted to take a walk to the nearby overnight site. It wasn't uncommon for people to take short walks into familiar places in the woods at night, so I said okay. He grabbed a flashlight out of his truck and off we went. When we got to the overnight site, I started heading to the picnic table in the star-viewing break in the trees, but he stopped me and led me to a cluster of trees that blocked out the sky. He told me to get undressed. He was twice my size, had the only flashlight, and knew the trail back to main camp a lot better than I. I didn't know what to do. I thought for a second that I would run in the direction we came from but as I was calculating the likelihood of getting lost on the way back, he grabbed my arm hard and directed me again to undress. I was scared, confused, had never been told to stand up for myself, for my body. Everything I learned about getting along and avoiding drama and not being so bossy kicked into overdrive and I just did what I told. He made me lay down on the ground and got on top of me. He started to unwrap a condom and when I told him I didn't want to have sex with him, he leaned a thick forearm across my shoulders and told me if I didn't want it, I wouldn't have walked out into the woods with him. This is what we were going to do. He put his full weight on my chest, making it impossible for me to take a deep breath or move my arms or torso. I stared up at the black boughs of the trees overhead, fir needles poking me in the neck and a rock digging into the small of my back. I tried to catch a glimpse of the sky between branches as he huffed and sweated himself to completion. He stood up, grabbed his flashlight, and started to walk away. He turned back and told me to get dressed and wait a few minutes before following the path he was on to the hill that was a daily part of my route between upper and lower camps. He said he would just keep this between us. I got dressed, picked duff out of my hair, and watched the glow of his flashlight fade to black before setting off back to my cabin.

By lunch the next day, I had heard the rumor that this guy had cheated on his girlfriend with me, and that I was a huge slut for sleeping with a guy in a relationship. All I could say was that we hadn't had sex, it was just a walk in the woods to stretch our legs. I knew no one would believe me. I was artsy and serious, not bubbly and athletic like the girls spreading the gossip. There was already a strong slut-shaming culture at this camp at the end of the 1990's, something I didn't want to constantly fight. I gave in and I didn't talk to anyone about it for years. For a long time I blamed myself for being so naive, for being known to have had plenty of sex with the boy I dated throughout most of high school. I blamed myself for being stupid and not fighting back more or screaming or running away. It wasn't really rape because I didn't argue back when he said my not wanting it was a lie and didn't matter.

I held that night inside me like a concentrated ball of bile for a few years before I realized it was getting in my way. I didn't feel like I could trust anyone in my life, couldn't trust my own judgement. I took trivial gossip deeply personally, felt helpless to do anything about false chit-chat, and felt irreversibly betrayed when rumors going around about me that were false and petty were not stopped and shut down by people who heard them and knew the truth. I let a lot of friendships fall apart and held a lot of people at arm's length to avoid needing to trust someone with my secrets. Eventually, I did some counseling and opened myself up to real, intimate friendships and that night stopped ruling my emotional life Now it feels like an awful chapter of a book, instead of something I relive in stereo sound and full color over and over with no warning.

When I see the reactions to Dylan Farrow and others who come forward and name their abuse and abuser, and those reactions include people who blow off the accusations or rate them against a public persona or a body of work, it makes the bile rise in my throat. I have avoided talking even semi-publicly about what happened to me when I was 18 for a long time. It even took me all this time since Farrow's story broke to go from "I need to write this" to "I am writing this."Our culture could do a better job of supporting survivors and removing the shame  and incredulity directed at them when they share their experience. The statistics tell us that there are a lot more women and men who have been sexually assaulted than we can imagine just by looking around, but every story that is shared by a survivor helps to strengthen us all against rape culture. The more real people tell their stories, the less acceptable it is to hear rape jokes from friends, child abuse jokes in stand-up sets by comedians like Aziz Ansari, reasons someone had it coming when they were assaulted. I don't have a whole lot of readers, but for those that do peek in on my blog now and then, I hope that knowing my story, the story of someone you know pretty well by now, will be a drop in your bucket. The more drops, the easier it will be for others to tell their stories instead of hiding them in a place that feeds sadness and shame.

I love you guys. Thanks for reading.

oh, me.

Oh, me. Where are you taking me? A chair or a bed propped up with pillows with a humming lap warmer we use to tinker and paint, building modest homes for virtual souls from the ground up. Little scaffolds, bits of colored scrim, windows that open to precisely set pictures. In stages. Let's build stages for others to play on, some who will drift by, some who will come home. Oh, let's leave what we've built for others and paint on elsewhere. Let's take our contraptions of plastic and celluloid and enshrine everything holy. Take me over the deep ocean to a small land so I can capture the light off flowers, off the surf, off faces so beautiful simply from smiling in the sun. But islands are small and I can hear the music of the sea calling as it ebbs and crashes into a walkway made to translate the ocean for people, so we can hear her song in its open, sonorous voice. Let's scoop up our two ears and pad through the sand in search of monoliths to climb. Let's embrace craggy rock faces with our whole bodies in different shapes until we see the desert stretched around behind us and feel the rocks so warm. Let's march back to the woods with scratched elbows and burnt knees and eyes of sunlight and drop it all into the dear river so the bundle of parts can float along beside outcroppings and trees and let the roll of the river shuffle all the parts back together so they can be home. Oh, me. We do miss adventure.

surfing birthday

I'm going to Hawai'i! I will be attending Camp Koru in May for surf & paddle board camp with other cancer survivors. Camp takes place over my 31st birthday. What an excellent birthday present!

Ed understands my excitement

Today is day 192

My memory is still damaged from the BMT. It doesn't help that I spent two years on a variety of strong medication to keep my chronic pain under control. I can't remember a lot of details from things I have read or seen in the last few years, and sometimes things I do remember get a little scrambled when I try to recall them. Trying to have pop culture conversations can be a little embarrassing, though I get the benefit of re-experiencing a story with a fresh mind if I want to come back to something I know I enjoyed but remember foggily.

I am trying to learn javascript, and it is making me crazy. I refreshed my HTML and CSS knowledge without much effort, but learning a new language is harder than I expected. I've been splitting my learning between Code Academy (which has a handy experiential tutorial, but is sometimes buggy) and w3schools.com (which is information-rich, sometimes to a fault for a beginner), so I have everything I need to know at my fingertips. Still, I have a lot of moments of staring dumbly at my screen while I try to remember something I learned five minutes ago. This is tough. I am used to learning everything quickly, processing new information easily, rarely slowing down. What gives me hope, though, is that my brain seems to function a little better every day.

Exercise seems to help. The more I can get moving, the sharper I feel. I guess that should be obvious, what with improved circulation and all the science behind exercise and improved mood and mental faculties, but I tell you I am living it. Usually, I do 30 minutes of recumbent bike and 15-20 minutes of strength-building like resistance bands. I just got into this "30 Day Shred" video series put out by Jillian Michaels, which is maybe a little more intensity than I need but it burns soooo good. I made it all the way through for the first time last night and today I am still feeling a little wimpy. I was nervous to walk down the stairs this morning! I'm not an idiot, though, so today I am taking it easy, doing a little flow yoga, and enjoying my day. I also took a break from javascript and am having a little "weekend" kind of day. I have to remind myself that if something is wearing me out or making me feel nuts, I need to take a break and shift gears so I don't burn myself out.

go, lil' immune system!

I had a gyn/onc check-up yesterday and the doc said shit looks awesome down there. My immune system is kicking the HPV's ass. That's right, the devil virus is getting beaten down and I am DESTROYING IT WITH MY OWN CELLS. Fuck to the yes.

short-span time capsule of good feeling

I came across a small, floral gift bag the other day when I was organizing the poor job I did of unpacking days 0-94 post-transplant. All the items gathered up from the hospital and a fair amount of the books and art supplies I took to the apartment had been sitting in little piles under the window, including this little bag stuffed with cards and letters. I was having a tough day, feeling isolated and stagnant and more than a little uneasy about what 2014 will look like. The bag tipped over as I picked up an armful of sketch books and out tumbled all the cards and letters I had received when I was feeling the worst. I remember the arrival of each and every one, but my brain function was temporarily handicapped following the massive dose of chemo pre-transplant and as went to put them back I realized I couldn't recall the contents of most of the correspondence. I sat down and read every one.

I usually don't call people by their names here but only lend an initial in hopes I can preserve the privacy of my friends and family. These cards and letters revived my sodden heart this week, cheering me up all over again and rekindling the strength they lent me in the hospital and after. They appeared at my feet when I needed them the most and I think the authors ought to get some first-name credit. I am away from the bag of letters tonight and threw a handful in my suitcase to take with me to Black Butte, so consider this representative of more love than my heart can hold. Quinn started the idea in my head for acknowledging some folks who have sent concrete reminders that I belong to a bigger community than what I can reach with one arm the night she sent a text just to tell me she is grateful that I am here. It made me grateful to be here, too. It made me grateful to have so many connections to some quality humans I have the honor to call my friends.

The young daughters of a coworker of my now-ex sent me drawings portraying me as a healthy human, sometimes laying in the grass to stargaze, sometimes with a mermaid. Josh pinned to my cork board  photos he had taken of sunset at Mt. Tabor. Annie's many cards told her side of our pen-palling, including her travels and her new beau. Abby sent humorous cards and games along with her survivor-mentor brilliance and sister/auntie love. Dawn had lovely words of encouragement, written in stanzas only a writer of her caliber and spirit can concoct. Kris bolstered my strength all the way from Hawai'i and reminded me that I go through this on my own but not by- or for  myself. Hauss' existential pondering and personal updates brought my hometown to my hospital bed, where I could put myself back across the living room/service counter/giant bowl of vegan something from him while we unravelled the universe and complained about non-communicative bosses. Kenji's flawless handwriting considered the implications of deep love and what is done to keep it at arm's length lest we lose our priorities in the process of answering love (familial, romantic), and managed to expand a roomful of philosophy from a zipped-down few paragraphs. Ethan told a beautiful love story about a Southern boy and a Texan girl, intertwined with quarter-life contemplation and whether a roommate who lived near the Fleshlight factory was a wise choice. Sean offered to send mackerel to the seafood capitol of the PNW, got himself into peril in Finland and demanded I get off my lazy ass and fly to Helsinki to use my Russian mob connections to get him out of there and back to US soil.

These letters have lifted my spirits and reminded me of what an incredible web of people exist just beyond my immediate family. What you have done by writing me letters and sending me postcards has made me feel connected to each of your distinct and treasured personalities. The people I call my friends are cast widely around North America and points further out, and every single one tells a story that is purely their own. Most of the people who wrote to me because I asked for letters didn't bombard me with platitudes (my most loathed conversation block), but told me stories of their lives, shared their perspectives about young adulthood in the 2010's, built narratives I could get lost in, told me specific things they believed in about me and my fight, and knew I would get their humor and play along even  if only in my head while a tube hanging out of my chest pumped fluids and a dilaudid drip. It's true, by the way: I made the choice to kill those pimps and I never shy away from dealing with my own decisions.

If someone you care about at all ends up with a cancer diagnosis or some other condition where they are going to be feeling terrible for a long time, one of the best things you can do is send a letter or card. Put as much of yourself as you can into what you write, even if it rambles or you are afraid you are sharing too much. If what you have to offer is your heart or the present point on your journey, or your killer wit, put it on paper with the maximum amount of you possible. Form doesn't matter, nor do formalities. Skip the "get well soon" and replace it with a story. Junk "I'm sorry you aren't feeling well" and offer, "this is what I see in you that makes you special/important/dear to me. Thank you for that." If you are funny, be funny. If you are a romantic, run with it. If you are ever the philosopher, don't shy away just because it might be too heady. My bag of letters is like a paper version of a weekend spent with some of my favorite people, just as they are. My letters ground me in a place in my soul where I remember that my community is on fire with brilliant minds and hearts too outstanding to not adore. Having them at my fingertips is a brand-new sail after trudging through this bit of recovery has tattered all the others. I love you guys; it's time to start writing you back.

finger cancer and ocean camp

I should change the name of this blog to "Actual Cancer" because even though MDS is almost cancer, I have had actual cancer in my vulva and now in two of my fingers. That's right, I have finger cancer. I might also have toe cancer. Unreal. It's related to my aggressive case of HPV, and has destroyed the nail bed on one of my fingers and is threatening to do so to another. A biopsy a few weeks ago turned up cancer cells and not the benign wart tissue we were hoping for. I had X-rays taken on Friday to see if the cancer cells have spread to my bones, and I will have to have surgery on at least the really bad finger. The outcome of this surgery in its best-case scenario is "we will try to save as much of the tip of your finger as we can." This makes me feel sick to my stomach. I also have new areas of concern in the bikini zone, so I have to admit to a little bit of freaking out. I'm scared of cancer cells spreading to my bones and my lymphatic system. I desperately want to get this cancer crap behind me. Maybe finger cancer sounds like no big deal or the punchline to some joke, but after everything I have already battled a little bit of finger cancer is cause for alarm.

Since Seattle, I have had two colds and a sinus infection. As a result, I am more out-of-shape than when I left. I feel pudgy and gross. I bought myself Zumba 2 for the Wii and a stability ball, and there is a recumbent stationary bike I can use if I can drag it out of the room with the cat box, so now that my airways are clearing I should have no excuse not to exercise. Except I am so tired. So very tired all the time. Granted, regular exercise should help with fatigue, but holy crap it is hard to start my body moving. It's like my limbs are full of wet sand.

There are a few things I would like to do next summer, including Camp Koru's surf & stand-up paddle board program in Hawai'i. I have applied and need to have my doctor fax my medical release, but the hard part (if I get a spot at one of the camps) will be raising the funds for my airfare, but it looks like there is the possibility of securing a scholarship. Cross your fingers.