I've got the power! (Dun, dun dun, dun)

Reaching a long term goal is strangely both anticlimactic and terrifying. It's as if you reached the top of the staircase to nowhere, stepped off and realized oh fuck, there's nothing but air.

But you don't fall, you just aimlessly float. 

I got a job. A real effing job. I'm ecstatic. I'm mostly relieved. And I'm scared. What is my next goal? I guess it's to not suck. What if I suck and all this reaching was for naught?

I've been thinking about how much power I give people. How often I show my cards without them showing me theirs. Even in my current awesome relationship, I often feel I've given too much of myself and that the power is uneven. I'm a naturally passive and submissive person, so I don't mind, but sometimes I wish I had kept a little but more of myself. Love isn't about giving all of yourself, but just the best parts of yourself. And I've gone and given the most fucked up and nettled pieces of me to someone who may use it to fuel doubts. Doubts about us, about me. Whether I'm a person worthy of having a long term relationship with. 

Obviously, my boyfriend does think that I am or else I wouldn't still be mentioning him. However, I would like to have some of my power back. I'd like to have the ability to say something mean when I'm angry just because I feel it's merited. I would like to say "I want _____" and nt feel bad about it. 

I want my power back from all the words. Fuck the words, I won't let them hurt me as dearly as they have done before. I won't let someone try to belittle me by speaking my fears and insecurities. Like, so what? The bad things will always be there but they will always be surrounded by good things. Two truths. 

I've been trying to erase trauma and fear instead of coming to terms with it and surrounding it with feelings of comfort and assurance. My whole life I've been told to suppress my feelings until now they spill over like a boiling pot, when really I should just have felt them and let them pass until I could feel good things. 

I have a lot of catching up to do. 

So if I look for compliments or assurance, let me. Don't judge me for it. I'm just immortalizing you into a good thing. 

-grace #adulting

Dirty Laundry

I've been criticized for a lot of things: My messy room, my terrible life skills, having to google what cleaning products can't be mixed so I don't die...

And for airing my "dirty laundry".

AKA, my rapes.

Does people knowing about these things through my abrasive jokes and pithy commentary make them think less of me? Maybe.  Does it turn me off from me? Probably, and I have evidence of such.

But, does it make me a bad person?

Today, a man I had briefly dated and had former consensual (and terrible) sex with but then later took advantage-wait no, no euphemisms- raped me while I was black out drunk, texted me after I told him I never wanted to speak to him again.  So while I tried to to ignore him, I wanted to say SOMETHING, not necessarily outwardly caustic, but sarcastic and funny to myself. Because I deserved to get some of that out, and I deserved to hear him accept he did something wrong.

Yes. Yes, still. He then said he had apologized, and that he was apologizing again. He also said it was a funny response. Which, made me feel really good. Because I got to be snarky, without being cruel. Because even though he raped me, I don't think he's a terrible person all around.  I just think he needs to rethink what constitutes as an appropriate time to be intimate with someone when you are sober and they are not. Which is 99 times out of 100, not the right thing to do.

Apologies help out the person who did the wrong feel better, more so than the person they wronged.  An apology doesn't erase an action, or words said. It's not a free pass. All it does is make you seem like less of a douchebag and make YOU, the WRONGDOER feel better. I admit this as a wrongdoer myself.  These things we do that hurt others are like shrapnel; a little piece always lingers in our systems. Whereas some of us are better at handling it, like Ironman, some of us get a little more cut up on the inside.

Sometimes we have a piece of clothing that hasn't seen any sunlight in ages. It's smelly, and worn and faded. No matter how many times you wash it, bleach it, or douse it in softener, the stink is so imbedded in the fibers the only way it will leave is if you hang it out to dry.  It needs air, and sunshine, regardless of how ashamed you are that someone will see this filthy laundry you have. Sometimes, it's the only way we can truly move on.

So here I am, airing out my dirty laundry. I've been raped twice, one a pretty grey situation that I rarely speak of because I always have to justify it. The other, date rape.  I have a pretty volatile state of being and I am addressing and working through it.  

I feel a lot less dirty now.

-Grace #Adulting