malakijr is Back
I wrote this to my friend
quirkytizzy today after I got home and found my old journal back. It's honestly how I feel. MAybe you guys could help me decide whether to go back to my old journal or use this one and keep the old one simply as an archive...? I'm not sure. Either way, changes are in order.
Hello there. My old journal is back...but I'm not that person anymore. I don't know where to go, whether to use this new one or that old one, but I think I'll probably stick with the new one (as of right now that's my plan...maybe I'll just change the look of the malakijr one).
The thing that got to me the most was the insinuation that everyone who's survived rape reacts in the same way, like it's my duty to be offended by something and if I don't, I'm not supporting rape survivors. The Warmongers for Ignorance remove any context and any chance for reasonable dialogue and screaming in anger and sarcasm and shock value and cruel joking...things that were the catalyst for my healing. Until I stepped outside my bubble, I didn't watch the kinds of movies and shows that showed me that what happened to me was abuse and it was wrong. Until I watched movies like Hostel I didn't know how to react to what had happened to me or how to handle having a panic attack while I do something routine like watch a movie, until I watched Fight Club I didn't know I was slowly pretending to be someone I wasn't to the point where if I didn't integrate myself and admit who I really was I might be so torn that eventually I'd split myself in two, until I watched Judging Amy I didn't realize that masturbating is something abuse survivors do and it's not something I do because I'm a sinful evil person (not to mention the fact that I started it so young doesn't mean I'm evil, it's a normal way people cope with abuse).
I shit you not, I was so sheltered all my life I never knew most of these things. I had this horrific child and teenhood, and then I crawled into a fundamentalist bubble with well defined boundaries that clearly painted everything I did and loved as sinful, and I liked it that way because that's how I wanted to see myself. Honest and frank discussions, learning not to cringe or freak out at tasteless rape jokes, learning to start separating hugging and other forms of touching from sex...these kinds of things don't happen in a protected bubble. They happen when pop culture collides with real life, when angry violent music echoes loud enough to quiet the voices in my head, when violent movies spill enough blood to make me question my own desire for bloodshed and revenge, when books don't sugarcoat and step around subjects but when they use real language so I can gague how real people would speak and think on the subject...these things may not help everyone, but they were the only way I could begin to sort through the broken pieces of my past and glue them together into a suitable foundation for the future. And what WoF wants to do is remove any kind of offensive wording and any kind of image or idea that might be dangerous or wrong, which in turn removes any chance for me to vent the dangerous and wrong parts of my soul. So much of my healing has come through unconventional means, and to suddenly be labelled as wrong like I had so often in my life, to suddenly find myself inadequate...it shook me. I'm not just being melodramatic, it seriously pissed me off and hurt me very much. I expect people from the fundamentalist bubble not to "get it" when they see the real me. I expected better from Livejournal. Now that the "idiots have gotten away from the big red delete button" as one person put it and the smoke has cleared, I don't want to leave Livejournal. I never did. I just wanted my community back, because as broken as it is sometimes, it's real. And that's what makes it beautiful.
quirkytizzy today after I got home and found my old journal back. It's honestly how I feel. MAybe you guys could help me decide whether to go back to my old journal or use this one and keep the old one simply as an archive...? I'm not sure. Either way, changes are in order.
Hello there. My old journal is back...but I'm not that person anymore. I don't know where to go, whether to use this new one or that old one, but I think I'll probably stick with the new one (as of right now that's my plan...maybe I'll just change the look of the malakijr one).
The thing that got to me the most was the insinuation that everyone who's survived rape reacts in the same way, like it's my duty to be offended by something and if I don't, I'm not supporting rape survivors. The Warmongers for Ignorance remove any context and any chance for reasonable dialogue and screaming in anger and sarcasm and shock value and cruel joking...things that were the catalyst for my healing. Until I stepped outside my bubble, I didn't watch the kinds of movies and shows that showed me that what happened to me was abuse and it was wrong. Until I watched movies like Hostel I didn't know how to react to what had happened to me or how to handle having a panic attack while I do something routine like watch a movie, until I watched Fight Club I didn't know I was slowly pretending to be someone I wasn't to the point where if I didn't integrate myself and admit who I really was I might be so torn that eventually I'd split myself in two, until I watched Judging Amy I didn't realize that masturbating is something abuse survivors do and it's not something I do because I'm a sinful evil person (not to mention the fact that I started it so young doesn't mean I'm evil, it's a normal way people cope with abuse).
I shit you not, I was so sheltered all my life I never knew most of these things. I had this horrific child and teenhood, and then I crawled into a fundamentalist bubble with well defined boundaries that clearly painted everything I did and loved as sinful, and I liked it that way because that's how I wanted to see myself. Honest and frank discussions, learning not to cringe or freak out at tasteless rape jokes, learning to start separating hugging and other forms of touching from sex...these kinds of things don't happen in a protected bubble. They happen when pop culture collides with real life, when angry violent music echoes loud enough to quiet the voices in my head, when violent movies spill enough blood to make me question my own desire for bloodshed and revenge, when books don't sugarcoat and step around subjects but when they use real language so I can gague how real people would speak and think on the subject...these things may not help everyone, but they were the only way I could begin to sort through the broken pieces of my past and glue them together into a suitable foundation for the future. And what WoF wants to do is remove any kind of offensive wording and any kind of image or idea that might be dangerous or wrong, which in turn removes any chance for me to vent the dangerous and wrong parts of my soul. So much of my healing has come through unconventional means, and to suddenly be labelled as wrong like I had so often in my life, to suddenly find myself inadequate...it shook me. I'm not just being melodramatic, it seriously pissed me off and hurt me very much. I expect people from the fundamentalist bubble not to "get it" when they see the real me. I expected better from Livejournal. Now that the "idiots have gotten away from the big red delete button" as one person put it and the smoke has cleared, I don't want to leave Livejournal. I never did. I just wanted my community back, because as broken as it is sometimes, it's real. And that's what makes it beautiful.