Oh man. So, a conversation about Henry Rollins led me to dig up this goofy-ass video on YouTube. This goofy-ass video saved me. No lie
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Amanda Palmer's Oasis. (Trigger warning: rape, also for the rest of this comment).
I'm not a fan of Amanda Palmer as a person, but her music usually works for me and is nice to listen to in the background. This is not a background song. This is, as I describe it, "the happiest song about rape and abortion you'll ever hear".
I was lucky that my sexual abuse never got so far as to needing an abortion (sitting on the side of the tub with the plastic stick was scary enough), and unlucky that it wasn't a stranger who I could forget about and detangle from. But regardless of the dissimilarities between our stories, for the last nine years, when Amanda sings "and it isn't my fault that the barbarian raped me" I have _howled_ along.
It's the song that's picked me up and said "yep, this sucks donkies but omygod, did you see the photo I got from my favourite band? TOTALLY AWESOME RITE!" You have no idea1 how scary it is to consider that I don't get to be a person anymore, that I'll forever be defined by my trauma.
My biggest fear in coming out was not that I wouldn't be believed. It was that I would stop being Kat and start being Kat-who-was-raped, and this song was here to tell me that it didn't matter, that I could still go to concerts and hang with my friends and have better days.
I'm not a fan of Amanda Palmer as a person, but I owe her a huge debt for how much she has helped me find my stability and regain my self. Two minutes of music has absolutely changed my life.
~Sor
1: Or maybe you do, at which point you have my sympathies.
((PostScript: Sorry that the comment's so depressing, but then, it's hard to be saved from something happy))
I'm not a fan of Amanda Palmer as a person, but her music usually works for me and is nice to listen to in the background. This is not a background song. This is, as I describe it, "the happiest song about rape and abortion you'll ever hear".
I was lucky that my sexual abuse never got so far as to needing an abortion (sitting on the side of the tub with the plastic stick was scary enough), and unlucky that it wasn't a stranger who I could forget about and detangle from. But regardless of the dissimilarities between our stories, for the last nine years, when Amanda sings "and it isn't my fault that the barbarian raped me" I have _howled_ along.
It's the song that's picked me up and said "yep, this sucks donkies but omygod, did you see the photo I got from my favourite band? TOTALLY AWESOME RITE!" You have no idea1 how scary it is to consider that I don't get to be a person anymore, that I'll forever be defined by my trauma.
My biggest fear in coming out was not that I wouldn't be believed. It was that I would stop being Kat and start being Kat-who-was-raped, and this song was here to tell me that it didn't matter, that I could still go to concerts and hang with my friends and have better days.
I'm not a fan of Amanda Palmer as a person, but I owe her a huge debt for how much she has helped me find my stability and regain my self. Two minutes of music has absolutely changed my life.
~Sor
1: Or maybe you do, at which point you have my sympathies.
((PostScript: Sorry that the comment's so depressing, but then, it's hard to be saved from something happy))
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