A Quickie for Today

I’m gonna be doing a quickie post for today. I feel like I need to. I’m feeling pretty mentally bogged down after work yesterday. I’m still feeling particularly triggered.

So, my 2-day a week job is hard on me. My boss is fairly controlling. He wants things done a specific way but never tells you what that means to him. This happens all the time. So, instead of being specific before I start something he’ll then tack on other things and be angry about how it’s not good enough… even though he never stated what he wanted done.

So, he reminds me so much of the guy who rapes me. He needs to desperately keep control of the situation that it becomes a power play and he won’t listen to me, even though he hired me to take care of certain things and this happens to be my realm of ability. Now, this could be because he is on the Tea end of the political spectrum. That means because I’m a girl, I couldn’t possibly know more than he does. But either way, just being around him triggers me.

Then there’s the hours of Fox “News” I have to listen to. This is why I’m feeling particularly unhinged today.

Fox “News” was reporting on the rape that happened at an Indiana university. Now, if it was called an alleged rape, I would have been annoyed, but it would have been accurate.

Of course Fox “News” couldn’t use the term “alleged”. Instead they said “so-called rape”. This is during their news reporting… not during one of their many opinion pieces they run all day long. I was about to break something, anything… possibly throw a $3000 computer across the room.

Calling it a so-called rape is so incredibly dismissive. It’s like a huge middle finger to a rape survivor. Let me scratch that, it *is* a huge middle finger to a rape survivor. There’s a reason consent is being redefined. It’s not OK for someone to beat the shit out of anyone. It’s not OK to rape someone. It’s especially not OK to do both. If someone says no when you start hitting them, you stop all play.

So, here we go. Rape is a serious issue. It’s emotionally damaging to the victim. But calling something a “so-called rape” is unconscionable.

And it’s the reason I’m upset… and understandably so.

So, I’m feeling… a lot of things. A lot of them are rage and hurt. It puts me back to how I felt when I was 13. It gave me a panic attack… well, several of them. So, I’m having a hard time keeping my head on straight.

I am grateful for my dog. He does a good job of taking care of me. He’s been by my side since I came home last night. He’s not normally a snuggler, but last night he went for the full snuggle. He’s been so close to me. He wants me to pet him and make sure that I know that he’s there for me. As we speak, he’s lying on top of my feet.

I’m still vacillating between being weepy and trying to maintain. it’s hard to deal with… but I’ll get through it. I’ve had to do this before. It might require me sharing some more. It’s not fun and it could be triggering for someone else, and for that I apologize. The treatment for PTSD is to talk about it. Talk it out. Talk about what you’re feeling. I’ve been through a lot of therapy for this and my abuse.

I’ll get past this. I just need to take the time to do so. I need to remember, more than anything, I need to be gentle to myself. I need to give myself time.  I need to remind myself that I’m not the same person and I’m not in the same place I was when I was 13.

More importantly, I need to just breathe.