Ghost
“Here it comes, a clean slate, picture perfect, no mistakes
How am I to keep from blemishing this masterpiece?
How am I to know?
How am I to know?”
Sixteen years ago, the stars aligned and I got to see Coheed & Cambria play live at the House of Blues in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.
It was fucking incredible.
There was magic in every word, every chord, and every beat. The energy was perfection, and every single human being in that building was feeling their feels and singing at the top of their lungs. I don’t know what Coheed puts in their songs (if Taylor Swift puts narcotics in hers, then my money is on DMT), but there is no doubt in my mind that we would have followed Claudio right into the Atlantic Ocean that night if he had so much as nodded his head in that direction. I’ll never forget that show. It was utter bliss, a sensory coup, and even now I can’t help myself – “BYEEEE BYEEE BEAUTIFUL, DON’T BOOOTHER TO WRIIIITE”.
You’re welcome.
Ah, the best show I’ve ever “seen”. You see, I’m not a very tall person. And it was a VERY crowded show. They’re kind of a big deal to us grand millennials, and we all showed up and showed out and, well, it was tough taters for me because I missed out on a front row spot. I was about five bodies deep up on the balcony. Every now and then a couple of bent elbows would align and through a tiny triangular hole I would catch a glimpse of The Hair™ living its very best life, but my view was mostly black t-shirts, jeans, and a handful of arms attached to hands gripping beer.
Fucking incredible, it bears repeating. I wasn’t on DMT but I swear I could see every moment of the music with my soul.
There is a point to this…and it’s a point I have to drive home often for myself, because we truly are our own worst critic, aren’t we? Well, aside from our abusers, but let’s be honest – the harm they inflict is a crucifixion dressed in critique’s clothing. If we manage to survive, escape, and count ourselves among the lucky living (*we interrupt this sentence to bring you this message: this is a pre-recorded blog and Aveon Air cannot guarantee that the heart credited with pouring out this message is still beating*), the Femme Fortuna’s who win the daily grand prize of 24 beautiful no-contact hours; sometimes…sometimes we start searching for the fault, the reason, the guilt. We are looking, and we stop seeing.
When we look back for the why, we fail to see these truths:
1. We did not cause, deserve, or perpetuate their violence
2. We could not fix, change, or stop their violence or insatiable need to control everything
3. We gain nothing from hindsight if we are peering back into the past through the lens of rumination
We should all over ourselves. Should have done this. Should not have done that. Should have known. Should not have trusted. Should have run. Should have told.
You’ll should yourself into an early grave. The grand prize will tarnish and you’ll piss away those 24 beautiful hours, anguished over everything you missed as you look and look and look.
Sister, rumination will rob you blind. You are here now. You are alive. You did not cause, deserve, or perpetuate their violence. You could not fix, change, or stop their violence. You gain nothing from torturing yourself for having been tortured.
I too have fallen into that trap. I have should on myself a few times, even today, but for the most part I focus on reality. I came so close to death when my abuser strangled me that I literally shit on myself. He intended to murder me, but I survived that shit, and I cherish my survival. And with each passing day I shift a little more from “survive” to “thrive”. I won today’s grand prize, and it has been beautiful. I spent all of it seeing and not looking.
When I do drift to the land of should, or when I am dragged there by the seemingly endless parade of blamers, shamers, enablers, and destabilers (it rhymes; we are adding this word to the dictionary), I redirect my thoughts and focus on two powerful concepts I have explored post-attack; concepts that reinforce the aforementioned truths and allow me to move toward a more complete embrace of self and away from the search for “why”.
The traits that made me a target of their violence were and are the traits of a decent, loyal, valuable person. I can learn from this experience without renouncing the best parts of me. These traits do not make me weak; I was chosen because they are strong. Empathy, generosity, integrity, honesty, compassion, and optimism.
Coercive control is sinister, deeply harmful, and quite difficult to detect in real-time, and many studies have been conducted to measure if it is possible to differentiate between genuine humanity and a forgery of humanity. Many more have sought to evaluate how credible the forgeries appear to be.
There is no why. No justification. No answer. Not inside of you, anyway. And in my case, I don’t want to know what exists in the land of why. I suspect that it holds little more than a grubby mutation where a conscience should be; vacant but for a scrap of rubbish, a callous shrug, and a lazy grunt of “why not?” And the why is none of my business. I am grateful for the inability to comprehend it, and try to show myself grace when I slip into a routine of mental gymnastics. The lingering need to know why shows us who we are, the acceptance that there is no credible why shows us how far we’ve come. If an abuser can be rehabilitated, wonderful. It is my fervent wish that anyone who can be saved has the opportunity to be saved. They can sort that out with the department of corrections and their higher power, in THAT order. I am done looking back.
I’m looking forward, and here’s what I see: I didn’t lose myself. I intentionally put more and more of myself into escrow. His ego was so fragile that I recognized early on that peace required me to become more and more diluted if I chose to stay.
Should I have done this? Don’t should on me. I have should on myself plenty, thank you.
Obviously, NO. No one should ever dilute, diminish, or disappear themselves for a partner. Love wouldn’t ask for that, and a good partner wouldn’t even imply it. And although my intentions may have come from a good place, I have to examine why the fuck I did this. And I have, and am, and will continue to do so.
The merciful, self-aware act of becoming the skeleton in my own closet? It didn’t make him any less fragile. It empowered the darkest, weakest parts of him. And that may be all he is – and perhaps if I had remained at full strength, he would have moved on. Not worth it. Too much work. Because it was never about who I was. It was about his ability to use me.
A weak man cannot be made stronger by a weakened woman, and this man’s perception of his own masculinity is rooted in the ability to dominate and control women. There is NOTHING good that grows from those poisonous roots. He is a parasite. An invasive species. He must be UPROOTED, and never allowed to drain another host. To enact lasting change, we must always address the parasite – we must not blame, or punish, and alter the host. Botanists know this. Geologists know this. Zoologists know this.
Humanity MUST grasp this. We must grasp this.
Next, a quick word on whether one CAN perceive the rot, the deceit, the parasite:
There may have been absolutely no way to detect the danger you were flirting with until it was too late to safely see yourself out. It was a very short window for me. Looking back, I knew in my gut that there was no easy exit within a few weeks, maybe a month or two. Not only did my abuser love-bomb me, take me on a “grand tour” to meet a bunch of friends and family, and press hard to meet my children very early on, we also worked together and shared a supervisor. I was in balls deep before I could read the temperature gauge. I have been shivering ever since.
What does this have to do with Coheed?
Because, at that show, there was no doubt in my mind that I was experiencing Coheed live, and it was real, and it was amazing.
And in my abusive host/parasite relationship, I became less and less visible, but I was no less there. In the aftermath I am no less me. I am still here now. And when I wonder if I will find myself in another situation like this, I remember what I can control, and what I cannot. “How am I to keep from blemishing this masterpiece?” I am to not worry about that – I am to show up to my own life, with joy, AND BOUNDARIES, and embrace every blemish as warmly as I embrace the whole. And while it would be lovely if women were protected from their abusers as fiercely as botanists protect trees from parasites, the world isn’t there yet. We don’t have a Magic School Bus episode. And if we don that lens of rumination as we peer into the future, we do ourselves a disservice. Shed that dead weight. Stop worrying about what you will get wrong, because that implies you got it wrong last time.
IT WAS NOT YOUR FAULT.
You did NOT cause, deserve, or perpetuate their violence. You could NOT fix, change, or stop their violence. You gain NOTHING from torturing yourself for having been tortured.
You were chosen because you were strong. You are STILL strong.
And if you are reading this, go look in the mirror. Do you see what I see? I see a badass, fully alive Femme Fortuna who won yet another grand prize of 24 beautiful no-contact hours.
She’s fucking incredible. And so are you.
…The "now" is ours but the "then" we can’t get back…