It used to be that I would dream of him, carving his “s” shaped terror into me with a dirty knife. His sweat falling onto my face like rain from an angry cloud, even on that cold December day. I would awaken cold and clammy and heaving with the fresh recollection of the death of my spirit.

As years passed, so did the focus of this dream. From crisp bruises and blood, to the aftermath.

I kneel, my green dress folded carefully over the door of a bathroom stall. Shivering, with caked blood under my fingernails. My hair is piled into a tormented bun at the back of my head. My own blood is adhered to the floor is a streaky mess as I scrub it with paper towels and soap from the hand dispenser above a row of sinks.

The smell, even in this dream gags me. The mix of his semen and my blood and the sickly, chalky smell of pink industrial hand soap. I slosh and pull and push giant wads of paper towels. Watching them grow more ever full of me. The aftermath. Literally and figuratively cleaning up the mess he made.

I am still cleaning it.

Sometimes, he breaks his hold on my helpless dreamworld and skips forward into my waking hours. I used the restroom at work and washed my hands. The soap came out a soft, foamy pink and the smell hit me like a fist. I can’t even piss without him shaking his fist at me from my memory. But, I swallow down tears and emerge smiling.

But sleep? In sleep I have no defense. In sleep I cannot use the strength of my words, the simple, inarguable force of my will. The warrior that I am cannot fight him. Even in his absence, as I scrape up enough blood from that floor that I should have died, he is with me. Even when I lose the subtle shapes that made up his face, a leaf will fall that is the same color of his eyes and he is with me. Even when I have not given him a thought, the smell of blood, or bathroom soap, or his sickening-spicy cologne on a stranger passing by- places my small hand in his big one and he drags me back.

Back to tired. Back to small. Back to cold. Back to him.

Hot water isn’t difficult to come by here. It springs from our pipes without the slightest provocation and scalds in seconds. But it is there and handy and clean. I could drink it, if I needed to. I bathe in it daily and let it scrape the sweat and the salt and the grime of my work from my body. My body, with the rounded curves of my luxury.

I pour a powdered soap into my washing machine, turning on this scalding water to froth up cleansing bubbles as I shove sheets into the mouth. One set after another as I do, 5 days every week. Wash and dry, fold and pack, unpack and use, repack and wash. It is a pain in the ass and cycles me into a never ending flow of soap and softener and the heat of the dryer in the heat of this summer.

Then, I see her:

Witnessing a revolution in a country I will never see. Making her wishes known, in a voice of which she would shortly be robbed. Sniped by a militia, tasked with silencing an unarmed student. A student making the  sham of the Ayatollah run elections known. Unarmed. Shot dead in the street.

I complain about how much laundry I have to do. Her face has stayed with me for three days as I fold these mundane fibers in my air conditioned home. To transfer to my air conditioned car, to my air conditioned office. I need not worry about being shot for my opinion. I need not worry about my voice not being heard. I will not die in the street, like Neda did. I can no longer think the same of my life. I am in no dire need.

I eat, I sleep, I work, I love. I do all of this in the luxury of safety. Never has the point been so heartbreakingly made.

Strength to you, people of Iran.

No matter what the temperature in this baked land, the whirring of a fan can be heard. If you are near me, the light licks of mechanical breeze will fan across your face. With it, carried a scent. Maybe of figs or citrus, maybe of my body heating up the subtle perfume I wear from time to time. But these fans, while making me feel less claustrophobic, serve a greater, less obvious purpose.

Noise.

I am an addict of noise, in its most egregious and subtle forms. I do not enjoy all of it, but I cushion myself in the staticky cocoon of the vibrations against my eardrums. At night, the silent skies are split apart by the rumbling bellies of passing planes and I crane to hear them more fully. Cars speeding against the blackness pull me out of my thoughts and into the room.

Sometimes the noise, the pressure of it in my head, so riddled with headaches makes tears settle into the corners of my eyes. These headaches which I sometimes feel are blessings. Maybe they are sent to split my head open and let the ideas tumble forth, little bits of brain and ache. When they are too thick to allow me to sleep, I watch him sleeping next to me. Soft snoring, another layer of noise, spilling from the lips I get to kiss. I trace the line of his neck into his shoulder and wonder how sound looks as it rolls down that slope.

I am never in silence, for fear of the internal noise that is sure to surface. To spin up from me like a storm and drown out the progress. I suppose it is time to let the rain clouds do what they will. They are not for me to control.

Day one, the great whey experiment.

Whey protein with soymilk in my passenger side seat? 1. flutter? 0.

*sigh*

Although, if I am telling the truth, this particular brand of whey tastes like shit. Scratch that, it tastes like the shit that shit eats to taste more like shit. In other words, it’s yucky. So, the fact that it flipped out of my hand and into the passenger seat when some douchebagalamadingdong cut me off on the freeway? Not such a huge loss.

Except.

There is always an exception.

It now smells as though hell has belched in my car. This stuff, which tasted like shit? Now smells like shit. Actually, this shit smells like the shit that the shit shat after eating the shit which makes it taste more like shit. Shit.

It is a crusty, hard, whey-stain.

Whey stain sounds pervy.

Oh and also? My tongue is now swollen, as well as the inside of my cheeks. So this shit tasting, shit smelling shit? I think I may be allergic to this shit. I wonder if my ass will break out if I sit on the passenger side.

We have a socially acceptable bias against fat people. People with weight problems are made fun of, reviled, rejected and thought less of across the board.
In movies, on television, in our media we are bombarded with the stereotype that women with weight problems curl up and eat french fries and ice cream from a bucket and men with weight problems are the funny guys who play side kick to their more attractive friends.

The assumption is that weight carries with it, pound for pound an inverse relationship to worth. The more you weigh, the less you are worth, as a person. The larger you get, the less you are seen. The bigger your pant size, the less likely to be loved.This is not to say that society is to blame for the weight problems of people, but it certainly helps perpetuate the last great wall of prejudice as I see it.

For me, as I am ever flexing and extending an undulating and fluid mass of numbers on a scale, I see the difference in how the world responds. When I am thinner I get appreciative stares, people pay attention when I speak and ask intelligent questions. Doors are held open for me. I am permitted to linger in nice clothing stores without being derisively stared at by the shop girls. I am congratulated for slimming down and working hard.

As if, when I am heavy, I am lazy and slovenly.It seems absurd to pack on weight in order to hide.  It is like balancing an elephant on a teacup. You would think that someone would notice that, but people walk past with not so much as a glance. Where as, the thinner me is rarely left without a word, or a proposition.I realize that this is why, when I start to approach a more socially acceptable weight, a switch flips in my brain. The big, red switch with the word “DANGER!” on it.Danger, I might be expected to be as intelligent as I am. Danger, people may expect more from me. Danger, I may have to ward off advances. Danger, I may no longer have a built in excuse to fail.

That’s it for me, really. I see how people bypass me at this weight and I can point my chubby finger and say, “see? they won’t LET me succeed.” When the truth is, it is fear of fully exposing myself that keeps me in my fat suit.This is a disorder. This is not a normal way of thinking. To obsess over food. To indulge then deny. To fluctuate tens of pounds. To control my body in such a way that is not healthy for it.

It destroys me to feel this way, to feel less than. To know exactly what I am doing in a very logical sense and to do it anyway. I am better than this and it is not good enough.

It just isn’t.

Thank you, Tracey for your wonderful words

I trip along the interwebs and am often totally stunned by the brilliance of people. Also by the stupidity of people, but that is NOT THE POINT. I wanted a way to let these people know that I think they are fabulous. So, I bring to you:

 Every Sunday, I will round up the best of the web. If you have a person who has wowed you over the week, email me at fluttercrafts at gmail dot com , and I will feature the top 5, plus my picks. This week, they are all my choices

(oh, and that button? made for me by the AMAZING Dawn over at Kaiser Alex)

Now, onto the fabulous:Mike, over at Cry It Out with A Very Public Experiment: Part 3

Mike is consistently and unmistakably one of the most talented writers on the web. Period.

 Christina, over at Down and Out Chic with Stop Hating 

Christina is one of my favorite style and design authors, but this post was so pithy. So true and so necessary that it stopped me in my tracks.

Four four with Fake as my fake boobs

I do believe his name is Richard, but I would hate to say that and make an ass out of myself (how rare). Instead I will say that his blog is genius. His America’s Next Top Model reviews and his ability to make the most hilarious gif make me bust my uterus.

Hilly, over at Snackie’s World with You Want “Real”? Let’s Disco, Bitches

Hilly is just generally bad ass. That is all.

Thank you, all of you for being brave, being real and being the best.

Me answering the phone: Hello?

Dude on the other end: Albert, I need you to…

Me: Wait.

DOTOE: Huh?

Me: Do I SOUND like an Albert?

DOTOE: Uh, no.

Me: Ok, so then why would you say “Albert” then just keep talking to me, when I am clearly not an Albert?

DOTOE: Um.

Me:?

DOTOE: When you see Albert can you let him know…

Me: There is no Albert here.

DOTOE: So, you won’t take a message?

I’m not asking for a sisterhood of broken souls. A brotherhood of protectors.

I am not asking for permission to fly, permission to grieve, permission to be.I am not asking for someone to tell me how to heal. I am not asking for someone to kick me out of the shadows and into the sun. I can do all of these things on my own. I am doing all of these things on my own.

I use this space as a place to breathe. These words, these things, this jumbled mess of letters tangle themselves around my pen in a way they can never fall off my tongue.I can imagine how it looks, to come here and hear me talk about something that happened 17 years ago. I look through my archives, little blood-red butterflies dancing down the sides of pages where I bleed. And I think. I think I must come across as some sad, wallowing thing. But, here is the truth.

I am getting it done.

I have danced, less than gracefully, granted. I have danced through 9 years of a relationship with a man I love. I use my words. I get myself up and I give a million pieces of myself to help people recover from injury, to manage chronic pain, to make their lives a little better every day. I work until the tips of my fingers are numb. I plod through the tattered old house of my mind, rearranging throw pillows, scrubbing floors. I make decent, the dust of this structure, because it has good bones.

Yes, there are days where I get overwhelmed. Yes, I have nightmares, yes I wear a fat suit. Yes, sometimes my heart is dark. But, I am getting it done.

So there are those that want to tell me that it’s been a long time and that I can’t afford to look back. There are those who want to tell me that I have only had this one thing happen in my life and I am lucky. Just get over it already. While I have found and given support in this space, I won’t be told how to heal. I won’t be given a timeline based on a judgment purely on the words I put here. I have given a very slanted window into my life, I realize. With that comes a certain expectation of familiarity, but I promise this:

I am not here for anyone but me.

This page, with my little butterflies and my black background, which I have been told sucks…and I don’t give a shit, really because I like it, is mine.

This struggle, whether it takes me 17 years or 75 years to process and to get over, is mine.

Every time I talk about it, it’s not to throw another black raincloud into the atmosphere. It is to gain another piece of myself. Not for the world. Not for the blog stats. Not for the comments. For me.

The one person who would be qualified to give me a timeline, the one person who knows every small, large and gargantuan tragedy that has fractured me has given me no timeline to get over it. This is not my only pain and there is no competition for who carries the biggest wounds. I am not here to pick at anyone’s scabs and I am sure as hell not inviting anyone to pick at mine.

I don’t need to be challenged in this process. I fight demons that I don’t wish on anyone. I fight myself. I have enough challenges without fighting off more swords aimed in my direction. So, on posts where I am talking about this recovery process, if you find yourself with itchy comment finger and you’re getting ready to tell me (albeit in a backhanded, “kind” way) that I haven’t suffered like you have, or it’s one thing that happened a long time ago, or that my pain is minimal in comparison to yours, or your aunt sally’s or that at least I have food and shelter, just don’t.

Because I expect support here. I expect it just as readily as I give it. I expect that we all act like adults here. I don’t want a pissing contest over whose pain is bigger, who’s dealt with more bullshit. I am asking this because I have the right to expect this from people who purport to care for me. I have the right to ask for this, because I give these things without being asked. I also have the right because while I am here for me, there are others who may trip by.

There may be a young girl who was just like me, barely keeping her pieces together. She may wake up after her last colorful nightmare and try to find some place where someone has been through, what she’s been through. What I want her to find is the strength not just from me, but the strength of the words of a community of people.

A community of people who have given me strength. Because while I am here for me, there is no reason why we can’t be here for her.

She has the right to her pain. She has the right to her healing. So do you. So do I. I have this place as my lighthouse and it will always guide me to shore and to remind me, I have the right to exist.

I go over to Where’s My Damn Answer and I talk about tits.You should go there, you really should.

I have spent a lot of time deciding the type of person I would become. What type of person would emerge from the depths of rape. What I could have been, versus the war I was pitted to fight. Seventeen years later, I finally feel as though I am returning from a foreign deployment. Coming home from a place where your worth is decided on the point of a knife.

I have spent as many years escaping the strangle hold of a stranger’s attack, as I had years free from it.

This is a sobering thing.

It is not as flip as it may seem, to just let these things go. To forget unfocused eyes, looking at your innocence with derision and mental illness and violence. To forget how your own blood looks as it begins to thicken on tile, as it begins to settle into grout, as it leaves you. To forget leaving behind a child from a scene so horrific, that you had no choice. To forget feeling so guilty for punishing an unborn for the crimes of its father. Trying to make sense of these truths, trying to make them fit into a world where I can feel safe to proceed into the life I have been blessed with; is nearly impossible to reconcile.

I finally understand, I have finally internalized. It was not my fault. But this makes the recovery process all the more frustrating and nonsensical. How do I understand a world where something like this happens to a  seventeen year old girl? How do I let it all go, when I still don’t know why it happened?

How do I make impersonal, something so intensely personal?

I am beginning to miss the girl I was, the one with the quick smile, the quick wit, the absolutely free spirit. I miss myself as I was. Unashamed of my talent, with a strong belief in myself. In my course. The girl who believed that sun-in would turn blonde, her dark brown hair.

The one who smiled, this big even with braces. Subsequent pictures after my rape find me sullen. A closed-lipped smile and a defensive posture. I am still in hiding.

I want my voice to shimmer across the silence, cracking it open and changing it, forever. I want my faith back. I want to believe in God and divinity and in the humanity of people. I want to celebrate my failed attempt at suicide and to step out with confidence, with strength, with humor. With grace.

I want this girl back. Her beautiful, uneven smile. I want her unabashed spirit. I want her sparkle.

But I’ll let her keep her orange hair.