Involuntary actions – Epilogue

Tags

ashamed, bad relationship choices, belly dancing, crescendo of disaster, epilogue, indelibly ragged scars, Meditation, naivety, rock bottom, six sheets to the wind, snaggle-toothed, Wake up, Yoga

[Read part 1, part 2, part 3 & part 4 first]

There is and never was anything I could do about it – then or now. I could never really remember enough to feel traumatised, just vaguely disturbed. Also… I tell myself there’s a possibility that I enjoyed and participated in whatever happened, six sheets to the wind and complete memory failure notwithstanding.

Sure I was vulnerable and stupidly so, given I’d allowed myself to be isolated like that. But they’d paid for a service and perhaps as far as they were concerned, they simply got their money’s worth?

I can only acknowledge those things – that they happened. That I was once a very scared and sad young girl who grew up in a family that did their best given their own long-standing wounds. And that I was woefully under-prepared and paid a very steep price for my wilfulness.

But I think I did my best too, despite my naivety. Fiercely independent and yet operating without a sense of self-worth or the necessary cynicism required to protect myself from the world I insisted on participating in.

If I’d written about this even just a couple of years ago, I don’t think I could’ve looked at what happened in the way I do now.

And though I don’t believe that something positive always has to come out of every negative experience (why should it?), I can see that hitting absolute rock bottom, completely losing all sense of who I thought I was and what I thought life was meant to be about… well, that pried open a lot of doors that’d previously been dead-bolted shut.

I can’t honestly draw a straight line from my early experiences as a mixed up kid, through to being assaulted and terrorised and sinking deeply into a very painful time emotionally and mentally. But perhaps there’s a dotted line or two there with a few bends and swirls? And I can look at the crescendo of disaster I was faced with and think… well, perhaps this WAS the biggest flag that could be waved in my face asking me to STOP.

Just stop doing and thinking in the ways I had been. Stop treating myself with so little love and respect. And, if I wasn’t going to make those changes for myself, if I couldn’t see how to make that happen or even see the need… why then I was gonna get some help, like it or not. Unfortunately, the sort of help I needed was to tear everything down, take it all a part and re-build.

For so many years I was desperately ashamed of myself. Of what’d happened to me. Of the choices I’d made. And although the outcomes of my wildness were relatively minor they still marked me with indelibly ragged scars. I could see them even if no one else could and they are still there today, even if they mean different things now… (I’m sorry to report, there’s another as yet untold story here which occurred a couple of years after this one. More to tell some time I guess! Later, but not now…)

For most of my life, I felt compelled to come clean with those closest to me – friends and lovers. But it was always storytelling with a tightly regulated filter. For my lovers I’d play up the sexy angle, making it sound fun and flirty (the reality was never anything like that!) and mostly they didn’t try to learn more than what was offered. For friends, I skimmed over certain facts and framed it as being very much in the past. But it wasn’t you know – guilt and shame persistently claimed space in my lungs and refused to let me breathe clean, untainted air.

Inhale regret and confusion… exhale humiliation and low self-worth…

While I only told partial tales, I’d delude myself into believing I’d been brutally honest and that people accepted me as I was, warts and all. I think I came close to telling the full story only once. It was probably the “lite” version though, with the less savoury parts tagging along silently.

So believe it or not – this is actually the very first time I’ve ever delivered the no-holds-barred-objectionably-ugly-I’m-soooo-not-the-hero story, as closely as I can recall. And, the only reason I feel I can do that is my somewhat snaggle-toothed veil of anonymity.

What’s brilliantly clear to me now is that I allowed my messed up teenage years to set the stage for most of the rest of my life. I felt worthless, stupid (for putting myself in so much danger), unlovable (who’d want to love someone like me?) and confused (no idea what to do with myself). I knew I was intelligent but I didn’t feel smart enough to figure out how to turn my life around.

Instead, I ran. Ran away from home, away from my brother and family, ran interstate, away from mistakes that made me feel like a fool and most of all I ran from myself.

Luckily I ran in the right direction though and enough blessings came into my life so that despite everything, I’ve been fortunate. Like discovering belly dancing and knowing immediately it was something I’d be good at (and I was)! It gifted me with a sexual confidence that didn’t make me feel like a whore. And I met my guru – one of the single most significant events in my life, which gave me a renewed spiritual confidence that who I am is no different to the very forces that create this universe.

These events (and others) changed the course of my life and gave me some authority, independence and confidence in myself once again and/or for the very first time.

However, it seems I’ve almost consistently made bad choices about men and relationships. Perhaps it’s because I believed I didn’t deserve any better? For example, I was just twenty-four and in London with my soon-to-be fiancé. I was desperately in love but so very afraid that he’d leave me once he figured out I wasn’t good enough for him. [*present-Self rolls eyes*]

And that’s the same reason I accepted other relationships that were never right for me in the first place – because it was someone paying attention to me, telling me I was special and worthwhile, showing interest in me when I simply didn’t feel like anyone could or would.

Fortunately I’m beyond thinking such horrible things about myself these days (well, mostly). And in no small part that’s due to the process of healing I’ve been going through in the last few years… this whole thing has certainly made me WAKE UP!

Not straight away. Not easily. Not without much misery and pain, almost more than I could bare.

But I was lucky. All along I had yoga, meditation, an amazing teacher and gorgeous teachings that showed me there was a bigger picture where the crappy things I believed about myself and the world weren’t true. Even if I couldn’t relate any of those things to myself yet, I knew there was more to reality than my present experience. And that helps.

I can’t ever say that I’m proud of some of the things I did. But I’ve come to a place where I don’t judge myself or others in my life with such a harsh finality any more. I did what I did and I was fortunate to get out of it all so lightly. Yet there’s no point dragging around a palette of toxic greys and blacks, tainting my life with ugliness from so many years ago.

My heart is now open to both myself and other people! I’m not saying I’m perfect or enlightened or that I’ve learned everything I’ll ever need to know. I expect and hope I never stop learning, in fact. And who knows how things might look if I ever end up in a relationship again! Good grief!

But I guess I am saying… this is where I’m at. This is where I’ve found myself (in more ways than one). I embrace that younger version of myself. I accept that she did the best she could. And I know that for better or worse, her story is also mine. It might’ve taken a while to see relatively clearly, but here I am.

~Svasti

Involuntary actions – part 4

Tags

bachelor party, cash for flesh, defiled, Denial, drinking games, Embarrassment, Fear, foreboding sense of doom, French knickers, humiliation, naivety, Night of Monumental Bad Choices, pregnant, regret, Sadness, Shame

This post may be too much information for some. If you don’t wanna know, maybe skip this one?

[Read part 1, part 2 & part 3 first]

I didn’t like to think about it, not even in my most private moments. Except that I did. Couldn’t help it really.

Such a fuzzy combination of nothingness blended with images, loud thoughts and soft, a strange procession of ideas and most pressingly, regret. It didn’t come straight away but with more time to reflect it was glaringly obvious that I’d made a foolish, foolish mistake.

I can tell you what I think, what I remember, what I suspect, but I can’t tell you what really happened. I’ll never understand everything, clouded as it was in alcohol and crowded out by my ridiculous adversity to taking care of myself.

Belief was my downfall. Always a belief in the best of people until proven otherwise.

But people not doing their best is not always evil, is it? It’s not always bad or wrong. Or maybe that just depends entirely on your point of view. In any case, I can’t tell you what happened, if I had sex with anyone that night and if I did, how many.

I suspect I did though. Like, really suspect. I’m almost sure that I did but there’s no way for me to prove it. Not then, and certainly not in retrospect.

And there’s no doubt that I was entirely at fault for being there in the first place.

It was a Night of Monumental Bad Choices. Not my last or first. But certainly a rather memorable one.

I got the call. Others had already turned the job down because of the distance. But the money was tempting, even though I didn’t have a car and it was a really, really long way to go. A bunch of guys for a bachelor party wanting a semi-naked lingerie-clad female to entertain them for the night.

M wasn’t sure about the gig and wanted me to use her driver – have him come and pick me up late in the evening.

We organised to meet at the Portsea Pub because the beach house they were staying at wasn’t easy to get to. They’d drive me there and M’s driver would pick me up later. That’d been the plan anyway.

They were a nice looking bunch of guys – preppy-ish but down to earth and clearly money wasn’t an issue. Conveniently since we were at a pub, they asked what I’d be drinking that night. It was beer for them and Baileys for me.

Off the beaten track and surrounded by trees. It was a pretty weatherboard split level house. Already there were many cars in the drive. I was shown into a room to change and came out in French knickers, suspenders and heels.

The boys decided we’d play drinking games and here’s where I forgot (rather crucially) that I wasn’t among friends, but employers of my flesh. I drank with bravado and really didn’t think it through. Sure I can keep up with the boys no problems! [Are you shaking your head yet?] By the time M’s driver called I was pleasantly wasted and easily persuaded to stay the night, with the offer of a lift home the next day.

What did we do in those hours? I can’t say. There were flirtations and craziness. Games, silliness. The groom fell drunkenly on a glass table, swiftly dispatched to hospital for stitching. Then he was back and still partying of course. It was his party, after all! I ended up in the back of a station wagon with one I thought was cute… but I think it didn’t go anywhere in the end. I think…

There’s hours I don’t recall. Then, the unpleasantly creepy surprise of waking up in the groom’s bedroom with him standing over me, somewhere deep into the middle of the night. He must’ve carried me there and I wondered how he’d done it given the stitches he’d just earned. And I remember leaving the room and finding a bunk to pass out in.

It all seemed harmless enough until I ended up pregnant and unsure of the father. Because I could no longer avoid those burning but muted and pressing questions.

That I didn’t know caused me shame. Embarrassment. Sadness. Fear.

What happened that night? How many? How often? Sure they were nice guys (sorta) but did they intend to get me drunk? (I suspect now that was definitely the case).

They drove me home the next day as promised. It was almost as if the lingerie-clad me and the fully clothed me were separate people – one was a service provided by the other. I even gave them my phone number when asked.

Because I occupied a hollow little world of denial. A vacuum where self-esteem had no foothold, and even knowing that I’d probably done things I wish I hadn’t… I still didn’t tell them “no thanks”.

But somewhere in there, what I did remember was roasting on a slow burn. Eventually, combined with the abortion, that night must’ve formed part of the foreboding sense of doom I felt. The one that caused me to retire from the world of cash for flesh. It seemed that out of nowhere, I felt panicked by the idea of doing any more gigs and I quit.

Later, I was living back at my parents’ place. I’d moved on from stripping to working as an actor in children’s theatre. Highly ironic, I know. The phone rang one day and it was one of them, the bachelor party boys. M must’ve given them my new number. No, I’m sorry. I’m not in that line of work any more… Another cringe of fear, because now I WAS feeling defiled. Just what did they think my services entailed exactly??!

Ah… so interesting how the subconscious harbours those things the conscious mind wishes to ignore. That’s why denial never really works and why we can terrorise ourselves and become our own worst enemy: in the end we can’t escape our own truths, no matter what.

And so it was that the writing of this series helped me to see. Oh! FUCK! Those terrorising dreams where I thought I’d been molested? Well yeah, maybe that did happen but in a different setting… [heart thudding].

Once thunk, that thought rang long and loud in the hall of truth and I have to admit that’s quite possibly how things played out.

There were at least four of them… and I swear that’s all I really know.

[Epilogue]

~Svasti