Hostage
I know the look on her face.
I saw the movie ROOM today. I would like to write about it as a movie because I think it is exceptionally well done. But before I can do that, I have to process how the movie affected me on a personal level. Watching this young woman who lost years of her life as she was held hostage and ritually raped and seeing her try to raise her son to be happy and healthy struck such a painfully deep chord in me.
It wasn't when she was held hostage that I cried. During those scenes, I watched with numb detachment. Just like I watched my own body with numb detachment as I spent my entire teen years as an anonymous no one being brutalized by men multiple times each day. I was bought and sold, dehumanized and demeaned and endured the most egregious violations against my body. For years. The only way to survive it was to kick my survival instincts into full gear, and to leave my body behind. I was a spectator in my own life.
I am only now starting to understand the immensity of the damage caused to me. It is so painful. In the movie when the mom is still being held hostage, she has days that her son refers to as "away days" -- days in which she spends the entire day in a ball under the covers. I get those. I would like everyday to be an "away day" on some level. But I keep going.
What really broke me in the movie was when the mother and son are finally free and watching how she has to deal with living in the world after years of being wiped off the planet in an extremely traumatic and sexually violent environment. The scene that did me in is one where she is looking at an old photo of her and her friends "before" she left the world for a nightmare life. She asks her son, "Do you know what happened to them?" He says, "No." She replies with rage and horror: "NOTHING! NOTHING HAPPENED TO THEM!" I understand those feelings. Just writing them here made me break inside.
The silent tears rolled in that moment in the movie, and then I gulped them down. I told myself, "It's only a fucking movie."
Living with the aftermath of extreme sexually violent trauma that lasted for YEARS is beyond difficult. I don't even understand all the ways in which my wiring and biology have been fucked over by it. I'm trying, and I'm trying to "fix" it or at least cope better.
I hadn't formulated my experiences prior to tonight as living as a hostage, but I was a hostage. So many men took advantage of me, bought and sold me. Used me as merchandise. Used me. It was so debasing, so full of shame and guilt and horror. I survived it, but as I grow older, the cost of my survival becomes more dire. I no longer have the resources I had when I was younger.
I realized that I need to stop inviting problems into my life. I need to close the door on negativity. I need to not judge myself so harshly, and I need to not allow others to judge me so harshly. I also need to not always expect the worst. I need to not always apologize for myself. For example, I don't need to apologize for writing this.
The mere fact that I survived and made it to age 53 to write this is nothing short of miraculous. But I am tired. And it is time to slow down. I will be slowing down. To what degree, I'll see. I don't need to fully determine that now.
If all I do is write shit like this, so be it. But I doubt that will be the case.
Now that I got that off my chest, I'll go to bed. I have to drive to LA tomorrow.
What will I do when and if I land on my feet again? Not sure. And I don't need to decide right now. I just wanted to get this off my chest. Peace.