Why I am not on social media—stalking trauma unpacked

I mentioned my various experiences with gender based violence in my “coming out of the darkness” blog, but I did not go into any details.  I have recently been sorting through new triggers for old trauma as I continue to speak openly to help my students however, and it has dawned on me that I need to unpack some more stuff—which is what I am going to do here.

I have avoided having an online presence forever—including one on social media, so I want to take a second to go into ONE reason for this, which gets into one of those experiences in a bit of detail.

To begin with though, I wanna say The MAIN reason I am not really on social media is that it is lame.  I was on Facebook in the 2000s when it first came out.  Initially, I was on Myspace because I was in Roller Derby, and I had my skater identity profile there.  When the chicks on my team all transferred to Facebook, I followed suit.  I did not stay on the team long (though they were AWESOME!!!), and turned my Facebook acct, into a personal one for a very short time.

I quickly noticed however, how stupid everyone was acting there, and was sickened by it.  I called out the anti-intellectualism rampant even back then. I ALSO noticed how badly women were treated in that forum, and was triggered—which put me right back into my stalking trauma, and decided NOPE—This s**t is not for me.  I turned it all off back on 08, and for the most part, I have stayed off of it. 

Doing all of THIS though—is bringing me back into that space a bit.  It is very hard to be public with this, but I cannot be quiet anymore, so I wanted to explain here a bit about my experiences with stalking, and shed light on how HARD it is for me to speak publicly.   And also…I have to tell girls over and over, not to let shame keep them from reporting their abuse—that their parents WILL understand—that it is not their fault. But, I have not really been so brave in my own past. I feel like a poser a bit—so I’m gonna try to approach their level of bravery here.

Thinking back on the stalking, I gotta say, there was SO much more seemingly pressing trauma to unpack in my years of therapy; I don’t think this actually ever came up.  But it is now, and I think it's a good thing.

It was a long time ago—before the internet age, and before cell phones (thank god).  I cannot remember the first incident, or when I first realized that something was wrong. My first memories of the stalking are fragmented. I did what I had always done when some guy insisted on inserting himself into my life despite whatever I might have wanted or needed. I did as little as possible, and waited for him to go away. I was also deep into pre-existing trauma from other forms of gender based violence, and had developed some very typical coping strategies which allowed me to function. These same strategies made it very easy for me to pretend that the stalking was not really happening.

So, I am not sure when it all started. I also never knew the identity of my stalker, or even if there were multiple ones.  It seemed to me at the time that there were two or more, but in hindsight, I think maybe there was just one.  I hever knew where he came from—did he live near me? Did he know me from work? Had he seen me out somewhere? Had I talked with him, in passing once? I never knew.

But I did know that he knew where I worked. 

He knew my home phone number.

He knew where I lived.

He went through my garbage and left voicemail messages describing my personal feminine product disposal—and more. 

He called me at work. 

Back then, in the mid 90s, I was a 20 year old who worked at a store in the mall, alone each night.  I had to answer the phone all happy-go-lucky (decidedly NOT me). He called to hear me answer this way, and I imagined that he delighted in the fact that he could possess me fully in those moments, knowing that I could not screen my phone calls there, as I did at home.  I would hear breathing, and then nothing. 

And then it escalated.

He called my work again one day, and instead of saying nothing, he pretended to be a regular person and engaged in chit chat for a minute—and fooled me into thinking that I was speaking to a regular customer. And then, all of a sudden, he asked me what I sounded like when I scream.  Shocked, I could only choke out one word, “Why.”  He replied, “because when I rape you, I want to know what you will sound like.” I hung up, and tried to come up with a plan.

I was still years away from unpacking my other trauma, and still had other ones lined up for me in the future. I forgive that scared child for being frozen in fear then.

I had ignored all of the other acts, but I knew that he was getting serious, and that I was in trouble. 

I called my supervisor, and asked that I be transferred to another location, and moved into another apartment in a very different part of town.  I also had a live-in boyfriend at the time.  He was tall, and he made it clear to anyone around him, that sniffing around me was not an option.  He was also much older than me, and very controlling—-a whole other issue of course.  But I think that his presence back then probably helped with the stalker.

In any event, I cannot recall another incident after that.

The work location I was transferred to however, was a very toxic one which scarred me worse I think than the stalker—I was subjected to chronic, daily, sexual harassment.  The new location I managed was located in a mall of shops connected to a large and very reputable hotel.  When I reported the sexual harassment to the HR staff there, her reply was, “No, that’s not possible, no one associated with [this hotel] would do something like that.” So, I lived with it. 

Day after day. 

I could not even walk down the halls without hearing things from the staff. I had been flirted with by a valet, and as usual, I had no idea how to bow out of that situation gracefully without injuring his pride.  Apparently, saying “I have a boyfriend,” wasn’t good enough? After that encounter, most of the hotel staff were in on it. I felt like I had already used up all of my “Get out of jail” free cards with the corporate head quarters of the retail chain with which I was employed, so I lived with it.

But when I went to therapy—again—I did not dig into any of this stuff, because I had other, bigger traumas to unpack. Before now, whenever I would think back on this time in my life, I really only connected with the sexual harassment at work, not the stalking.  I am not sure why.  I suppose, the work place sexual harassment was in a lot ways, harder to ignore and compartmentalize—which was my coping strategy at the time.  Anyways, the stalking was left alone in a box, on a shelf, in my brain. 

Doing this work—going public here—has forced me to go back to that dusty old forgotten box, and open it up.

I am so much stronger now. I journal—a lot. It helps, and I can see that I really did need to write this out, and see it. Its real now, if that makes sense. This happened to me, and it affected me. It lives in the cells of my body whether or not I acknowledged it. Fortunately for me, I have had a lot of therapy, and I have a lot of support, so I will process and integrate this. My students are nowhere near as lucky.

When I think back on all the crap I had to deal with just to BE…its staggering. So many men have zeroed in on me, and forced me to figure out how to get out of scary and life threatening situations. I am also just such a weirdo that I never could accurately get a read on a situation fast enough to understand the danger that I was in. I did eventually figure out how to be, but I wish someone had sat me down and given me “the talk” about how to stay as safe as possible as a woman in the world. But we don’t,—can’t—have those talks with our girls, because it means we have to talk about sex with them, and lord knows, we are not gonna do that! Our internalized shame about sex holds us all hostage, and keeps us from arming our girls with the knowledge they need to be much safer. This fear adults have of talking about sex and sexual violence with our kids is the biggest barrier we face in the fight.

If you are a child dealing with gender based violence, and you are reading this…please know that it gets better, and there is hope and safety out there. If the adults you tell at school don’t do anything, or don’t believe you—keep telling other adults.

Here are some numbers that you can call right now:

1-800-656-4673 (National Sexual Assault Hotline)

800-799-7233 (National Domestic Violence Hotline)

Love,

Me