What am I holding?

Cosby, Kavanaugh, all of this talk of sexual deviance and how men and women abuse each other brings up all the old pains for me- all the hidden ways we abuse each other. I begin to think of all of the equally horrible ways we abuse one another in the open and I wonder which is worse.

I’ve always been a non-blamer. I don’t make a big fuss about what someone has done to me. I too, have been the victim of sexual assault. There were two times in my life when I was sexually assaulted in a way that was cut and dry solid rape. Multiple instances of, what do they call that? Where you don’t get to claim control of your body because it’s someone you’re dating?

But those aren’t the things that immediately come to mind for me.

What comes to mind is the way a man disrupted my life by falsely claiming that I sexually harassed him. The way I had no chance to defend myself against those claims because they were “protecting the victim” by not even telling me who was claiming what. The vague questions they asked. The way my responses didn’t  matter. The combined group of men, who spent every weekend out golfing or playing ball together, who backed up the liar so they could protect their buddy. The way the system will ALWAYS force the disadvantaged person to do twice as much work to prove themselves. The frantic way I called every lawyer, every social help network, everyone I could think of, to try and get help and there was none.

I have the day off and the tv on to keep me company because I struggle through life now. Still, 6 years later, and I haven’t regained the capacity to trust something as simple as my physical body. Still unconsciously afraid that everything will be ripped out from under me. And the tv is stuck on a channel but the remote is across the room. I’m not lazy but I’m scared to get up. It’s a news documentary about the Cosby investigation.

These ladies sued someone years later. So then I’m searching for how I can sue this guy who left me virtually incapacitated for years. I look up his profile, because when you’re being followed by a demon you can’t help but look to see where they are. Then I look to see where the other players in that scenario are. Doing good. They’re doing good.

They’re all Christ and charity on the surface. It makes me sick. How can people who look so good on the outside be so gross on the inside? Maybe they’re not that bad? Maybe they just didn’t understand that the lies they told would so thoroughly prevent me from being whole?

While I’m looking I know that it doesn’t matter. I’ll never get the chance to “set it right”. I’ll never hear them apologize. I’ll never even hear them admit the truth.

So when my stomach is tense and my skin is cold and I can’t let go of the fear, anger, and injustice, what am I holding?

What am I holding onto?

The chance that, one day, 3 people who told an “insignificant” lie would be stricken with guilt by their Christian conscience and come begging for my forgiveness? That they sit in church and shame would weigh as heavy on their hearts as the anxiety and victim shame weighs on mine? That they would one day be served a cold soup of karma that renders them somehow as crippled as I have become? Would any of those things make me feel better?

I don’t know.

Can we just say, Don’t rape anyone and don’t make false accusations? Ugh.

We can, we do. But it doesn’t help.

We will always be creatures of dark and light. The light will always increase the shadow. The shadow will occasionally snuff out the light.

Thank God it’s not up to us to set things right because we can’t always tell.