CW: Rape
I know it’s been way too long folks, and I’m working to come back to this blog because I really enjoyed doing it. Things have been absolutely bonkers wild, of course a lot of that is shared experience. If you’ll let me though, I want to take a slight turn today and talk about something that happened, but I promise it relates to spirituality. So my dad talks a lot about “life scripts”, made really simple: this is an idea that individual spirits will write out a complete script of a life they want to experience in the physical plane. They will collaborate will the other spirits who represent everyone they will ever encounter in their physical lives. For him I think this is a very comforting notion, that his higher self has planned everything and that everything is going the way it is for a reason: to learn and grow. This is not dissimilar from the ways I’ve heard a lot of Christians talk about their understanding of God. “God has a plan” is vernacular that’s very familiar to anyone who’s ever heard a Christian speak, especially about tragedy. The idea that everything bad is happening for a reason, usually to encourage growth, can be very comforting to people. Now, the theology of Avery is pretty weird and pulls from a lot of different directions to create itself. I don’t believe anyone is wrong about what they believe in. People that worship the Christian God and Jesus, people that worship Allah, people that worship whole pantheons, follow the teachings of Buddha, practice Wicca and follow the old gods, etc. What I believe is that everything, every person, animal, plant, river, breeze, EVERYTHING everything, all contains spirit. Collectively, this great spirit has the power to shape reality in the physical plane. I don’t know very much about the spiritual plane, but I don’t think it’s something far away or some other space like “Heaven.” People experience and relate to this great collective spirit in many different ways and have varying understandings of what it is and how it affects them. For me, I find myself very connected to the spirits in trees and rivers, lakes, oceans, spirits in rocks and crystals, and of course the spirit in myself. I’ll use tools like tarot and the divining pendulum to seek clarity from the collective spirit about my life. I differ greatly from my dad and a lot of Christians because I don’t believe in a “life script” or “great plan.” I do think I’m here in the physical world to experience new things and grow and learn, and a lot of the things I’m to experience freaking suck, but I’m doing nothing if not learning a lot. Now I had a damn buckwild night last night (Saturday). Sometime around midnight, I for real got a message on Grindr of all places that read something innocuous like “Hey, how’s it going?” No name listed or username or anything, but I see a tiny thumbnail of a photo so I’m “ahh, maybe this is a real person” and click to see the profile before I decide whether or not to respond, pretty usual for me. 29 years old, white, only two pictures, nothing written in the bio, bearded, looks stupid familiar. I get a sinking feeling in my heart because I know it’s E---- A-----, my rapist. The thing that really convinces me it’s him is his stupid little paunchy beer belly. But I have to know for sure, because I do this kind of thing ALL THE TIME. Classic Avery has PTSD kind of content, I take little bits of information like that about whoever it is and convince myself it’s E----. It’s never actually him though you guys, always just some other rapist-looking white dude. So I say, “What’s your name? I think we’ve met before.” I added the second part because “What’s your name?” might come off as too aggressive and I HAVE TO KNOW. New message rolls in, “E----? Haha” and then another, “I don’t remember meeting you.” So now my breath is caught at the edge of my lips because this is literally the exact thing I used to lie awake being afraid of. I feel like I’m about to blow chunks. I don’t say “Oh really, you don’t remember me? That’s crazy, because actually you raped me nearly four years ago. Yeah, oh and everyone knows about it because I wrote and performed a memoir play about it. I used your mugshot for the poster image after you got arrested for raping some other poor soul. So you know, everyone who has seen that image knows who you are and what you did.” I did not say that. But I thought about it A LOT. I didn’t say anything. I immediately rang Jessa even though she had been sleeping, I was not at home, and told her what happened. She reminded me that I don’t have my name or any personal information on Grindr, and that it would be impossible to find anything about me from my profile there. She tells me to go ahead and delete the app from my phone, and I bloke E---- first for good measure. “I don’t remember meeting you” he says. Which means he’s literally just on Grindr looking for tranny ass, because he isn’t queer, and thought I was hot and messaged me. He doesn’t know who I am. It’s possible he just doesn’t recognize me, it has been four years, and I do look different. Of course too, Grindr doesn’t have my name on it, just my username, and I even have a different name now. I was not Avery when E----- raped me. It seems more likely to me though that what happened between us, him raping me, is so mundane and boring in the world of him, that he has forgotten me. I know that two years ago he was arrested for sexual misconduct after he assaulted someone else. I also know that two or three years before I had the misfortune to meet him, he was convicted of rape and became a registered sex offender in the state of Oregon. The woman in question filed a restraining order against him as well. Course he neglected to mention that little bit of trivia to me at the time. All this to say, raping people is just par for the course with him. So there’s nothing memorable about what happened to me in his mind. I kind of knew this even before he tried to hit on me after straight up forgetting who I was, that he never thought about me or felt bad. For a long time I was very angry about that. I was angry that he was free to continue living a life, even with arrests and yadda yadda, while I was stuck with PTSD and years of therapy. I’m not really angry about that anymore though. He’s just entitled. He’s an entitled child who doesn’t think of other human beings as people. He feels that he’s entitled to the bodies of others, especially women and AFAB nonbinary folks. When he doesn’t get what he wants, he reacts like a child, violently and without care. If my spirit was writing out a life script to come down and live, it would be some seriously masochistic stuff to write that this happens. The day after he raped me, I was still processing what had happened and didn’t have the words to know what to call it. What I did know is that he had been touching me that morning before he left in ways I didn’t like. As if he owned me and could touch me however and wherever he felt. This was the only piece of the puzzle I understood at that time, and I used it in my response to him. I contacted him to end things between us, because you guys we had been kinda dating for a couple months before this, but over distance because he lived in Eugene. I told him that he was touching me inappropriately and advised that he work to learn how to be a decent human being and respect people’s boundaries. He said he would do better next time. I said there wasn’t going to be a next time and that if he ever contacted me again I would start building up a case to file for a restraining order. He was angry, childish, because I “wasn’t giving him a chance.” I told him I didn’t owe him anything and promptly blocked his number. To my knowledge he has not attempted to reach out to me since then, until last night of course. I don’t think anyone wrote a script or a play-by-play of last night. I am looking to see what I can learn from it, and using it as an opportunity to reflect on the progress I’ve made especially over the last two years in my therapy and trauma treatment. I do not feel afraid. I do not worry that he still holds power over me. I do not feel responsible for the way he is, and for not filing a police report. I feel surprised, maybe a little emotionally drained, but overall fine. Last night my rapist got in contact with me, and I’m actually doing pretty okay. Mabon is coming up, the thanksgiving celebration for the second harvest, the autumnal equinox. I have never been able to properly celebrate the equinox before but this year my family and I are making plans too. I have a desire to move away from “Thanksgiving” since it’s history is phony, imperialist, and racist. However, I want to be able to celebrate the harvest and cook the foods that my mother and her mother and her mother always cooked for me. I think Mabon is the perfect opportunity for this, to celebrate the things that I’ve reaped this year. Yes, it’s been easily the most disaster filled year of my life so far, but I’ve also grown a tremendous amount. It’s time to celebrate in the bountiful harvest of my emotional and spiritual wellbeing. Next time I want to dive into creating my own magick and spells. Thanks for letting me go off about this today.
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AuthorAvery Kester, enby Playwright, Artist, and Student. Archives
September 2020
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