When "Home" Was Hell: Love After Slavery

By now you know that Sublime Mercies isn't "just" a style blog. I write about all kinds of things, from fashion history to... very heavy and horrible things, like the fact that I was a victim of sex trafficking as a child, and the fact that the sexual abuse was so severe, it damaged my back and I am now disabled.

If you've been reading my blog, I'm sure you've wondered how I manage to have an adult romantic relationship. It's a natural question to ask, and I often ask it myself.

The simple answer is: It's not easy. I am riddled with childhood fears and distrust that no amount of intellectual understanding can erase. Of course those old emotions hinder my ability to freely and comfortably feel and express the love Beau and I share.

Now that we've moved in together, all those old fears are even stronger. 

I didn't want to write this post. I wanted to just write a love story, a story about a blissful honeymoon ...

 ... a lovely story about a seamless melding of homes and libraries...

... about two cats slowly and cautiously getting to know each other and becoming friends ...

... about order slowly emerging from chaos ...

... about trying to find nice outfits in all those boxes ...

Shirt and jeans: Reitman's; Boots: Ecco; Cape, earrings, bracelets, and brooch: vintage; Diamond ring: Birks

... and doing a pretty good job of it, if I do say so myself.

That's the story I wish I could write, and, in fact, it would be a true story.

But it's only half true because it's only half of the story.

With an abuse history as brutal as mine, there is always a shadow side to every story. There is always pain -- both physical and emotional.

No matter how loving and playful my relationship with Beau is, no matter how supportive and gentle he is, and no matter what a wonderful, tender lover he is (and he is all of these things and more) ...

... I'm no super hero. People tell me I'm brave and strong and maybe that's true but I am scarred by my past, or, if you prefer a gentler term, I am deeply affected by my past.

There are still times when I feel like all I'm good for is the sexual slavery I experienced in my home as a child, so there are times when parts of me think that's all that Beau wants from me. It has nothing to do with Beau. It has everything to do with how badly I was used and abused in my home.

Home.

For me, home was hell. To me, words like "home," "marriage," and "family" hold absolutely no positive meaning. Instead they conjure up in me feelings of terror, entrapment, sexual obligation, and degradation.

Yet, I needed shelter, and food, and clothing, and all the things a child cannot provide for herself. These things did not come free for me, as they should for a child. I had to pay for my life with my body. If I showed revulsion or rebellion against all the rapes I endured, the beatings, the drugs, the daily incest ... if I tried to resist, I could be left without the basics of life. I could be left without a home, without food, without clothes -- without life itself.

Yes, I'm an adult now. Yes, I can explain to myself that I'm safe now, that "home" need not be hell anymore, that Beau and I can define "home," "marriage," and "family" in any way we want to. Beau can explain it all to me too, and he does, often, telling me that I am free now, and can always say no. The adult part of me understands that -- sort-of -- but there are parts of me still stuck in the emotional trauma of my childhood. Those parts can't understand.

The child parts of me believe that moving in with Beau is the ultimate form of prostitution. They think that I will have two options: have sex I don't want or like; or be homeless and destitute.


Homeless, destitute, and crippled, crippled by the very abuse that makes me feel this way in the first place.

I've always felt shut out of normal life, shut out of the things that others take for granted: happy childhoods, parental support, family, this thing called home.

Even in circles that purport to care for the downtrodden, I feel erased, invisible. Even in those circles, I don't feel like their imaginations are expansive enough to include downtrodden folks like me. Such horrors do not exist for them. Sometimes, even when I tell people what happened to me, they forget and claim I never told them. Some of them have even told me, right to my face, "Those things don't happen." Something in them would rather erase me than admit such atrocities into their world views.

In some ways, it's precisely because of this that I've never wanted to be "normal." I'd rather be an outsider than be the type who is willfully blind to the realities of life. I'd rather be a bohemian weirdo any day, touting my horn about various social causes, than a box store shopping, insular, acquisitive type.

This was brought home to me when Beau and I went all the way out to the suburbs to buy a shelving unit at Ikea. Yikes! Yuck! No matter what my upbringing had been, the box store shopping, suburban, mainstream life would not be for me.

But other differences were brought home to me to out there too. Box stores are HUGE, and they involve a LOT of walking, so much walking that I was in an agony of physical pain before we were finished. Normal people don't have to suffer like that. Neither would I, were it not for the selfish perversions of a bunch of heartless pedophiles.

I don't like being reminded of that fact. Would you like it?

The struggle for me is in finding a way to let all the horrors I have known co-exist with the joys of life. The struggle is not to let the bad erase the good. The struggle is not to let the wonder of moving in with Beau be outweighed by the terrors of home and family.

Do you remember the September 11th attacks on the twin towers in New York? The next day was a beautiful, sunny day here, and people sat at the sidewalk cafes chatting and even smiling, as if life was normal and okay when, clearly, it was not. How could the sun possibly shine on such a day? How could people possibly laugh when things were so bad for so many others? Did you feel that way on September 12th?

That's what it's like for me sometimes.

Sometimes, I can not reconcile the good with the bad. I remember being nineteen, in emotional agony and confusion, walking beneath my city's famous, early cherry blossoms. I could not understand how flowers could bloom in the same world where children are regularly raped, misused, and discarded.

It seemed like a contradiction in the very fabric of the universe.

Eventually I learned to call it a paradox and get on with my life.

But when my doctors made the connection between my disability and the child abuse, when I realized that my chronic pain was directly caused by the sexual abuse, it all started to feel like a contradiction all over again. Only, this time, the contradiction was in my very body. I felt and sometimes feel like my abusers still live in my body, beating me from within. How, then, can I make love with that same body? How can I love it all? It doesn't make any sense.

The beauty of the mountains, the west coast mountains anyway, could co-exist with all that is horrible in the world. For me, the wildness of their beauty, the dangerousness of their precipices and wildernesses, had room for pain as well as joy. They were huge enough, and scary enough to encapsulate both.

I remember being about fourteen, staring up at this very mountain as I took the bus home from school, and imagining myself at its freezing top, screaming out my pain into the violent wind. There was no-one to tell, no-one to help or comfort me in any way. Just the wild ancient mountains. They were my friends.

I was so very very alone.

I'm not alone anymore.

Now I'm loved. Now I have someone to comfort me. Now I can express my pain.

And sometimes it seeps out in the wrong ways. Long silent voices in me confuse the past with the present. They feel and even say things that are not appropriate for the free and adult life I now have.

I was pouring out my worries to Beau, telling him I'm concerned about money, telling him that I'd had cheap rent in my old place. "You have cheap rent in our new place too," he reminded me.

"Only because I'm sleeping with you," I replied, not even getting how inappropriate that was, how untrue it was. I am not Beau's kept woman. I am not his slave. I am his partner.

It comes as a revelation to me that some people feel an increased sense of security when they live with a partner. I still can't really understand that on anything but the most cerebral of levels. For me, the only security is in utter, fierce independence. Parts of me still think that marriage is prostitution. No, worse: it's slavery.

As I watch our two homes slowly meld into one, even as I am filled with happiness and awe at this love I've found, I am also filled with an almost blind terror.

I feel stuck in my child self, thinking that any kindness Beau shows me is a trick, just like it was with all my abusers. Soon enough, I'll be abused again. I must remain wary, alert. I must not be duped by false kindness ever again.

So instead of resting in the large comfort of his love and our home together, I find myself grasping at the small comforts as I always have: a cat's company ...

I'm really very excited about this Marcel Boucher brooch. More on that in another post.

... the sparkle of a vintage brooch ...

... the bright contrast of colours in our new kitchen ... 

I highly recommend several of the books you can see here, especially The French Lieutenant's Woman, The Hours, and Monkey Beach. I most decidedly do not recommend The Well of Loneliness.

... all my lovely beautiful books.

It's like that Simon and Garfunkel song, I Am a Rock: I have always had my books to protect me.

But when Simon and Garfunkel sang, "If I'd never loved, I never would have cried... safe within my room, I touch no-one and no-one touches me," I don't think they meant what those words mean to me. When most people speak of being afraid of being hurt in love, they're thinking of a lover who dumped them. Me, I'm talking about a very close relative who sold me, and others who said they loved me as part of their ploy to enslave me.

The pain I fear is quite a bit more concrete and quite a bit more terrifying.

Most of the time, I put on a brave face but it's not easy. There are times when my face hurts, not just from smiling, but from not crying.

For crying out loud, I was literally crippled by what happened to me.

The next time we went to a box store, Home Depot this time, I used their courtesy scooter. It was the first time I'd used one. I don't even drive a car so there was quite the learning curve.

I laughed at the time.

I hammed it up. Beau had to remind me to look at where I was going, not at the camera. We both laughed a lot.

But it's not actually funny. Not at all.

Sometimes I want to retreat back to my solitude because it's the only way I know how to feel safe. My bruised and battered body, and my bruised and battered soul would feel some relief in that.

But I'm not just what happened to me. I have free will. I have my intellect. I have my rather snobbish sense of humour.

Like, really, take a look at this sign on the scooter. What on earth does it mean to get "ON" or "OFF" a cart and lean "ON" or "OVER" the side of said cart? Apparently, the friendly folks at Home Depot don't know that quotation marks are not meant "FOR EMPHASIS." That's what italics are for, sillies!

I'm still me. I would have been a snob about grammar no matter what my childhood. I'm still me. 

I also still have a knack for metaphors.

Here are Beau's fat orange cat and my geriatric black one getting along famously after knowing each other for only two weeks. They are lying on and amongst the accoutrements of my disability: a special knee pillow, heating pads, the day bed itself, railings to help me maneuver myself, and a knob so I can massage my own back. My need for that bed enrages me; but the cats' love of the bed truly does delight me. The bad does not erase the good. Nor does the good erase the bad. They co-exist.

Let's call it a paradox rather than a contradiction. Let's try anyway.

Cherry blossoms bloom even as children are being raped. It's always been that way and it always will be that way.

I can see some humour and have some fun even in the lasting results of my abusers' cruelty. What else can I do? Give up? I don't know how.

And here we all are: Beau, me, orange cat, black cat, all entwined and cozy together on the bed I need because I'm crippled because I was abused. It's all true at once.

Maybe I'll learn to feel safe in this love thing after all. In fact, I am learning it, whether all of me knows it or not. 

(I'm linking this up to Visible Mondays on Not Dead Yet.)

Spring, for Real! New Beginnings with Beau.

It was the first day of spring.

And, unlike in other parts of North America, it really and truly is spring here.

Flowers are busting out all over, much to everyone's delight.

Every year, if I look closely enough, I can see the flowers' shoots coming up out of the ground in late December. I just love Canada's south-west coast! You couldn't pay me to live anywhere else.

Jeans, shirt, belt, and cami: Reitmans; Shoes: Ecco; Bangles, brooch, earrings, and locket: vintage; Jacket: thrift

Yes, it does rain a lot here, but the sun does come out sometimes and, on the first day of spring, it came out in bright, squint-my-eyes force...

... lighting up all those lovely flowers.

It was so warm, I even wore my mary-jane shoes without socks and discarded my little jacket by noon.

This seemed in keeping with my entire outfit, with its flower theme...

... to go with the flowers in my new neighbourhood.

The sun complimented real flowers and my flower brooch alike.

Yes, my brooch fetish continues. I got this one especially because I knew my grandmother would have loved it. There were very few good adults in my childhood so I really like to honour my grandmother in little ways. It was her brooch collection that was the start of my own, much larger collection. 

And yes, you did hear right if you were reading carefully: I'm now in a new neighbourhood. After two years together, Beau (and his two children) and I have taken the plunge and moved in together.

We are exhausted!!!

We've been so busy, neither of us has had a haircut in months so, lately, whenever I go out, I pull my hair back. Believe me, it's the best choice. I thought these barrettes worked though, and were in keeping with the general floral theme of the day.

The whole outfit was totally cobbled together with whatever I was able to find in boxes and piles around the new place. It's going to feel great when everything is finally set up and in its place.

But I did my best on this, the first day of spring, to look at least a little presentable, as we drove across town to get the right poles and attachments to set up my bird feeders at our new place.

It's a well-known fact that I love me my birds at least as much as I love me my brooches.

It's a bit of a lie to say I've moved to a new neighbourhood. I'm actually only a few streets away from where I lived before. I can certainly still go to all my favourite cafes and shops and see all the neighbourhood regulars.

I can even still see the crows flying home each night above my head. Look closely at the above photo. See them? That's the well-known and huge flock that flies west each morning and east each night, predictable, loud, and reassuring in their regularity. 

So the neighbourhood is the same but my new area of it is actually nicer than where I was before. When I was able-bodied, I often used to walk and jog over here, so I could enjoy the beautiful gardens and houses. 

Now that I live here, I can walk in this neighbourhood again, after all these years.

I always particularly remembered this garden in which the owner created little magical paths and archways for his grandchildren to enjoy. Way back when I was able-bodied, he told me to feel free to explore them myself. Maybe now I can!

It's such a beautiful area, where people take full advantage of our extended growing season, and then gloat a little to their friends back east.

Our own new yard is busting out with flowers too, though we don't even know what some of them are. Do you know what these are? I don't.

 

Our yard is pretty wild and overgrown. This is the top of what can only be called a rose tree. It's grown right up the side of the house and over the second floor balcony. I'll be getting my good friend and landscaper to come and give us advice. 

We're going to prune off all the dead bits on this tree so it has the energy to really focus on growing flowers again.

If this all reminds you a little bit of The Secret Garden, it does for me too. I love that!

I'm enjoying the little unexpected beauties as each emerges. I'm told these are crab apple blossoms. 

And there is more beauty to come, budding and ready to emerge day by day. 

What's next? Who knows?

And if that isn't a metaphor for my new life with Beau, I don't know what is.

To be continued...

(I'm linking this up with Visible Mondays on Not Dead Yet and Tres Chic Style Bits on Searching the Inner Me.)