Still
When
people come to me I want them to feel like they are standing at the edge of a
lake. I want to be reflective like that, cool like that, calm like that. When
they touch me I want them to feel infinite and not because of me but because of
them. I want you to love yourself, why don’t you love yourself, who’s been
stopping you all these years?
I study neuroscience and know we are infinite. There are a trillion neural pathways in each of our brains, it’s no wonder we feel lost, it’s no wonder we always find ourselves anyway, blinking up at the light like the children we fear we still are.
We still are.
I want to love myself but first I have to find her/ what was ever found that wasn’t fueld by love? Curisoity/ the desire to know/ to know/ to undo the fear that keeps us from ourselves/ each other.
I got so close to you, it was like living inside you, all those chains rattling against your insides. I picked so many of your locks/ you let me touch everything except for you.
I gave you everything, including me, like a mother I loved you unconditionally/ is there any other way to love/ if there is I don’t want to know it/ I need to know it.
I cannot let you rape me I cannot let you rape me I cannot let you rape me/ you raped me/ I won’t unsay it because you can’t undo it.
But still. This bundle of axons I’m always toeing along, this imaginary tie to you/ madness/ how are these feelings any less real than when I said I loved you/ how are you actually any further away? So much of what we built was invisible/ so much of what you destroyed was invisible/ still, all of this matters.
I am tired of not being known/ touched/ able to exist in all my human parts. I keep telling people I am mangled from the inside out but I never actually show them/ myself/ hold myself.
I’ve clung to my truths as a way to avoid other truths. This poem was once as true as this poem and I am both of them and neither and more all at once. “I contain multitudes” lol but really it’s true. There is no room for nuance and there is room/ I have to make room/ secretly/ I am it.
Everything I do is in service to someone else, an addiction to being needed/ useful. I try to break this cycle and all my illusions break away/ I am left with myself/ nothing.
I slip into this pain and think of you curled up like an infant on the floor in your apartment because the cap to your water bottle didn’t click three times/ or maybe it did/ how can you know/ I don’t know/ the water/ the water/ the germs. They really are everywhere. I used to suspect you were magic for being able to sense them/ this magic thinking of mine/ this is how I built you/ loved you.
Don’t mistake these words as me saying yes. I refuse to be ping-ponged from one side of the dichotomy to the other/ I am not an object, after all/ I object/ I am infinite.
I am a person. The danger is that I project my inner self onto others/ when I humanize myself I cannot help but humanize you/ love you/ myself. I need all of these things to be okay/ I need to have my needs met/ I need to learn how to say no as a way of saying yes/ to myself/ you/ the part I never reached.
I write as if you are inextricable from me/ maybe this is a truth/ a lie to distract me from other truths.
I don’t actually know.
I sit down against the wall and hug my knees to my chest like the child I feel that I am. This is what she needed/ needs/ this is where she is. Go there, I say to myself, and I realize I say it only to myself.
For most of my life I didn’t know how to say no to anyone because I imagined everyone as the babies they once were/ everyone as innocent/ everyone as hurting. This is selfish pacifist thinking/ this was me projecting/ this was a cry for help coming up from the depths of me/ every person became a mirror for the unloved self in me/ I just never learned how to recognize her.
Still sometimes I don’t recognize her/ she is not always a her/ but she is something/ she is holding me now. I hug myself and become her/ she becomes my guide. I close my eyes and show her my thoughts, how often I think about leaving, those thoughts like fiberglass, they insulate me.
She looks at me and says No. She doesn’t even beg, her voice still like the lake I want to be/ she knows I want to be/ she knows I will listen. She just has to say it/ I just have to listen. I will listen.
I am listening, still. Stay.
“My first question is ‘Who don’t redacted allegations work for?’ Because obviously they work for the person(s) who chose to use them, which would be the person(s) most harmed by the accused, and if we’re not centering the needs of those who have suffered the most harm then what are we even doing publicly talking about sexual assault?”
Dave Higgins with a review of my chapbook, JULIET (II)
“We name names anonymously and vaguely with supposed “guerrilla” tactics and without the law’s official permission because, despite being boot-stomped from all angles, we feel a desperate need to save others from anonymous rapists.
We use “guerrilla” tactics because we have righteous anger and despair, and if we do not express it or process it somehow, we risk mental, emotional, and spiritual toxicity and death through substance abuse, eating disorders, panic disorders and PTSD, self-harm, general deterioration of quality of life, and/or suicide. We have decided, against all evidence, that it matters if we live.”
“Every time I speak up about misogyny in the lit world, I am met with resistance, as if it’s merely a matter of personal opinion that violence against women is a global epidemic, as if it’s merely a matter of personal opinion that one in four women will experience sexual violence in her lifetime, that one in five women will experience rape, that I can’t think of a single non-male person in my life who hasn’t been subjected to male violence in one way or another.”
The idea of “grey area rape” is bullshit. Rape is rape. But what they don’t tell you is that unraveling that experience is complicated because it cannot be homogenized.
Due process doesn’t really exist. According to RAINN, only 2 out of every 100 rapists spend a single day in prison. This is because those laws the victims and their advocates are supposed to follow so thoroughly make it impossible to prove what happened to them.
[…]
In the aftermath, you lose your best friends, who don’t know if you can talk about normal things, who need you to need them so badly you have to run. Sex is over for many victims, so is trust. The ‘fame’ these bros think we’re aiming for is pages and pages of internet comments so lethal you forget living outside of a cloud of suicide contemplation. That is what due process is.
“But was the Alt Lit community’s response to vocal non-men fundamentally different than Gamergate’s? I put the question to Sarah Certa, Jos Charles, Kat Dixon, D. Dragonetti, Kia Groom, and Alexandra Naughton, a group of editors and writers who are neck-deep (or deeper) in the war against the patriarchy. I put my question to the group: how do these two battles against the patriarchy compare? In our conversation, we explore the explicit violence of Gamergate and the implicit violence lurking behind the treatment of rape victims and perpetrators in the Alt Lit community, discuss rape culture’s silencing of victims, and bemoan the codependent relationship between capitalism and the patriarchy. And what we find is that the cost of pushing these issues into the spotlight is the emotional—and physical—safety of those who speak out.”
“Gregory Sherl has apparently chosen a railroad lawyer to speak for him these days, and she has released the usual statement that allegations against him are ”vicious and untrue“ and that Sherl is a victim of cyber bullying. In response, Sarah Certa and I have been tweeting things that are both vicious and true. Here is a sampling.”
Trauma: Like this the truth trickles down to you. Slowly you peel back one layer at a time. You built walls in defense but now you live inside a house inside a house inside a house. You live underground. It is safer to be dead but you realize you’re not ready for that. Slowly you unearth your grave.
Please stop supporting Gregory Sherl. Please take a stand for the women who have suffered deep irrepreable damage because of this man’s actions. Please take a stand for all women everywhere, for all victims of abuse, for all future victims – we don’t doubt that Sherl and men like him will continue harming others – it’s just a matter of how many and who condones the behavior. As of now you are condoning it. You are complicit in his actions. Please Stop.
Vote NO to Violence Against Women & Tell Oprah Magazine & Algonquin Books to Stop Supporting Serial Abuser Gregory Sherl
This is the email I sent to Oprah Magazine’s last week, both the web editor and the book reviewer. I gave them the benefit of the doubt, assuming they didn’t know they were promoting the book of an abuser, since Algonquin Books has refused to publicly cut ties with him. I was respectful. I was patient. I have waited nine days and have not heard back. Kat has not heard back, since she and I also both sent messages via the website itself. The people who left comments on the website, respectfully urging editors to research Gregory Sherl & reconsider promoting his book, have also been silenced, their comments since deleted. Others’ comments continue to be denied approval.
And this is why we end up having to call individuals & organizations out via public platforms – because private correspondence results in nothing. And silence is part of how abusers like Sherl & Ghomeshi are able to do what they do so easily and for so long. Silence is what helps perpetuate the cycle. Nobody puts the pressure on. Nobody wants to confront. Nobody wants to “get involved.” I call that complacency & enabling & it’s disgusting. It doesn’t matter what you “want.” The women who are abused & assaulted don’t WANT that either. But it happens. It happened. It’s fucking happening. Now wake the fuck up & do something about it. How many women will it take? You waiting for more bruises? You waiting for someone to die? ENOUGH.
Your Silence Makes You Complicit: Algonquin Books & Their Continued Support of Serial Rapist & Abuser Gregory Sherl
Algonquin Books refuses to make a public statement regarding their complicity in Gregory Sherl’s abuse of women, even though I’ve made clear that he especially preys on women who admire his work. At first I was patient because Gregory is incredibly charming and he no doubt manipulated those he was in business with but at this point I have entirely dismissed Algonquin Books as a respectable press. What else is there to say? What is there to discuss? I went as far as showing you the bed where he raped me, the bed I have to sleep in every night. And I am not a stranger to them – they know who I am and have easy access to all my contact information since I was their beloved author’s fiancee & personal caretaker for a very long winter. At the time of our relationship they acknowledged my existence because the fact that he was engaged to a “grounded” person helped his story/helped their story/helped them go ahead w/ their book & not have to address the issue. They didn’t even consider that HE MIGHT ALSO BE ABUSING ME. They completely dismissed Kat Dixon’s allegations because it was the convenient thing to do. Now I am free and have spoken the truth, reiterated the other victims’ truths, and nothing. As if they cannot be bothered. As if there is still something to consider. How many women does it take for one story to be heard?
Anyway I am continuing to speak to them publicly on Twitter because private conversations with them result in nothing. They say “we acknowledge there has been suffering.” Yeah. So fuckin’ what? Your private “acknowledgement” is just another way to sweep us back under the rug. You won’t even cancel his reading on behalf of a victim who works at the bookstore where he read. She asked privately. No one helped her.
I feel like this all sounds too crazy to sound true but it is all true. This is the shit that goes down “in private.”
Fuck the whole lot of them. Women’s lives are more important than these fucked up “business” practices. <<<<—-why should I have to say that? why isn’t this the way things are?
Notes On Gregory Sherl: The world makes me want to hide in my bed/ but I was raped in my bed/ & this is how you end up on fire/ this is how you end up dead
It’s been over eight months since allegations of abuse against poet & novelist Gregory Sherl first came to light. You can read many of these words here, some words by Kia Groom here, more words from Kat Dixon here & here, and words from myself here, here, & here. I’ve written poems about this here & here. A domestic violence relief fundraiser was started here.
But it’s increasingly clear that our words don’t always mean a whole lot, and this is true not just for us but for victims everywhere. We are questioned, silenced, minimized, ignored. And anyone who engages in this silencing is an accomplice to the crimes themselves, upholding the systems that normalize and thus perpetuate such violence. We speak about this publicly not only because Gregory Sherl is a published author who tends to prey on women who admire his work but also because violence against women is a human right’s issue. We speak about this publicly because these are public issues. And we speak about our rape and abuse not because we think we are special for having endured it but because we know we are not.
Nearly 7.8 million women have been raped by an intimate partner at some point in their lives.
One in every four women will experience domestic abuse in her lifetime.
It’d be nice if it went away. It’d be nice if our words were enough. But we don’t live in a nice world. We live in this world.
And I live here, in this apartment. This is my home. This is what it looks like.
This is where he stood when he shouted at me for wearing a T-shirt to bed. I wasn’t supposed to wear a T-shirt to bed. I was supposed to be naked. This is where he stood and this is where he raged. This is where he stood the first time I heard how big his voice could get.
his voice that you haven’t figured out how to describe but every time you think about it you see him with his black hair screaming across the sky of your brain, you see him with his black hair, you see him and you wonder why the sky doesn’t have more holes in it, how that blue stays so blue
This is where he screamed I NEVER WANT TO FUCKING SEE YOU AGAIN.
This is the collection of books from which he took one and threw it across the room. I wasn’t supposed to have slept with a poet before him and I especially was not supposed to own any books from this poet. I would show you the book but I had to throw it away. I didn’t want to throw it away. I knew I didn’t do anything wrong by owning this book. It was still in a box. I’d just moved in. But it was my fault, it was my fault, I was very very bad for having this book.
This is the dashboard of my car where he slammed his fist after I said I didn’t want to pull over and put my mouth on his cock. It was 2 AM, some highway in Missouri or maybe we were already in Iowa. I’d driven the 14 hours to his apartment in Mississippi because he couldn’t pack his suitcase and I really thought he might die if I didn’t come to him. He was always almost dying. I had his local police department in my phone, in case of an ambulance, in case of emergency (I was the emergency, I needed the ambulance). And when I said I couldn’t make the drive he tried to break up with me. But then he didn’t, he didn’t mean it, he said he said he said, he said he just loved me so much. He needed me. The night I arrived was the first night he raped me but I’ll tell that story another time. I drove most of the way back to Minnesota and when I said I didn’t want to pull over and put my mouth on his cock this is where he slammed his fist and said Jesus you’re so fucking cruel. I cried and he ignored me for hours until suddenly he didn’t. Suddenly it was as if it never happened.
This is my shower and this is where he screamed Are you going to fix this?! This is all your fault. Now take a shower with me. Have sex with me and fix this.
This is the chair he kicked over on Mother’s Day. This is where he told me I was such a cold person. I wasn’t feeling well. At the time I was really struggling with my anorexia and the thought of a Mother’s Day brunch was too overwhelming. I said I’d rather stay in and make pancakes, less calories. I started making the pancakes and joked, Hey, how come I’m making the pancakes? It was not a good idea to make a joke. This is the chair he kicked after he knocked everything that was on the table off of it. This is the chair he kicked after yelling at me for making him feel guilty for not making pancakes. YOU’RE SUCH A COLD PERSON, YOU KNOW THAT RIGHT?
This is my sofa. This is where he spent the day ignoring me because I got up and left the house without having sex with him and didn’t want to have sex with him immediately upon my return.
The black bag is his, collecting dust in my bathroom. I don’t yet know how to touch it.
These are his coffee mugs. I don’t know how to touch them yet either. Just the other week I got rid of his soap. It is a slow process, this gathering up pieces of myself, all this scrubbing and cleaning.
Now you press the word rape flat against your tongue and feel your chest shatter into fragments, so many pieces of bone you will spend the rest of the night sweeping up with your hands, the rest of your life weeping, for the rest of your life you will always have been raped.
This is my bed. This is my home. This is where he raped me. This is where I go when I want to feel safe but some nights I remember too much. The sheets have been washed but I know his dead skin cells are in my mattress because that’s what dead skin cells do, sink down and burrow like the mini corpses that they are. I don’t always think of it this way but today I do because today I am tired of pretending. Or maybe I am just no longer able to. Today my chest split open like a tree struck by lightning and I know it’s because every night I sleep on top of so much of his death. Our death. My death. At least it is death, at least it is death, at least he is not here to wake me in the middle of the night with his cock, trying to enter me from behind and then yelling at me for not being wet enough in my sleep.
Maybe some people look the other way because they don’t want to get involved.
That choice is a privilege victims of rape and abuse do not have.
Throwback Thursday to the Domestic Violence Relief Fund made in honor of victims of Gregory Sherl
hey writing community how about we #tbt to that time Kat Dixon made a domestic violence relief fundraiser and then we all forgot about it ‘cause idk why.
I was forced to forget about it by the man himself but idk why everyone else forgot.
also to everyone who donated to the initial fundraiser I made for him – I am so very sorry and wish I could give it all back. I am in the process of writing about all the things. you all deserve to know.
https://www.crowdrise.com/victimsofgregorysherl/
“In January 2014, three women came forward to reveal their experiences of abuse at the hands of poet Gregory Sherl. At that time, Sherl was the subject of a fundraiser seeking $10,000 from the public so that he might “reclaim his life” from OCD. While there is no doubt that Sherl is in need of professional psychological help for many ailments related and unrelated to his OCD, to present himself as a victim without recognition of his history of abusing women is an injustice to the women he has victimized.
It is our sincerest hope to begin to right the wrongs of the domestic violence committed by Sherl by spreading awareness of the prevalence of violence against women in the U.S. and by honoring his victims by seeing the success of this fundraiser. Sherl was able to collect more than $4,000 in charitable funds by exploiting his own standing in the literary community and the good hearts of so many people who were unaware of his history of abuse. Now that the truth has come to light, we hope to raise at least $5,000 to send the message that mental illness of any kind is never an excuse for abusive behavior.
All funds received will be donated to HOPE HOUSE (http://hope4dv.org/#/welcome), an organization that aids women and children in rebuilding their lives after escaping situations of domestic violence. It is a solemn note to remember that the abuse committed by Sherl is in no way an isolated incident. Every year, more than 5 million women are victimized by their partners, and 1 in 4 women will experience domestic violence in her lifetime. Many do not survive.
Please join us in our efforts to declare abuse of any kind unacceptable. Your donation will help victims nationwide reclaim their lives from the horrors inflicted upon them by men like Gregory Sherl. Let’s let no victim go silent any longer.
Thank you.”