Follow up on my post from last week...more on SA recovery

 It's a very good day to sit down and write this out. My husband, son and in-laws are on their way to the airshow on the Air Force base. I guess it's kind of crazy that I have technically been an military wife for 11 years now and I know so little about it because we never lived around my husband's unit. I know that they are all thrilled to actually get to go to an airshow. I guess it can equate to miles and miles of walking so I really couldn't go even if I wanted to. My daughter is at a sleep over with a boy her age from her wrestling team. I would have never thought I would be ok with a multi gender sleepover but Bubs made a lot of sense when he said Abby has been having sleepovers with her boy cousins since she was a baby and that's probably how she sees a sleepover with her new little buddy. The boy's parents are super nice and an active duty military family and the mom is going to show me around on base and how to make use of all the stuff I have access to that I never had when we didn't live near a base. I guess what makes me the most sad is I just got Evie on the road to Yuma. She is going to stay a week to get a feel for the town and then come back a week from Monday and stay that whole week. I can't even begin to say how much having her around has improved my mood. The kids adore her, she is an amazing cook, she seemingly jumps in to help out of nowhere but is not underfoot like some house guests can be. Plus when we are together, its a never ending stream of blather but I honestly think that I'm so extroverted, that's what I need in life. 

So as for therapy last week. A lot of this is kind of a follow up to this post from a couple months ago as well as linking it in to what happened last summer. For a very, very short description I worked at a chain restaurant where the manager was an absolute piece of shit. One night he forced me to keep serving alcohol to a table of very drunk guys, two of whom grabbed my breasts and said some really disgusting things to me. I slapped one of them and I was fired. The guys waited for me in the parking lot and it was truly terrifying until my boyfriend and his friend picked me up. A few weeks later I ran into one of the guys on the street where he harassed me again and I punched him which led to months of legal trouble. 

Now that I have the backstory out of the way, last Monday I had an online therapy session with the SA specialist. To be totally fair, I'm still not quite over the argument Bubs and I had about him routinely taking my little brother to boob restaurants when we were dating. I don't know why but it really bothers me. So with that I let her know that I used to be a waitress at Hooters. She asked me how I came to work there and if I saw it as victimizing or empowering. I answered the second question first and said I found it to be very empowering and still have good memories of it. Since working at Hooters was the direct result of getting fired from my previous job, I described to her what I said in the last paragraph. 

One thing I love about this therapist is that she's amazing at making the sessions conversational so it really surprised me when she paused me abruptly and said "I'm going to tell you something that you may not even know or may be hard to hear, but you were sexually assaulted that night and I think I might have some  insight into why you are struggling now." By struggling she meant the fact that I still am upset with myself over the fact that I froze in that hotel room. 

I told her while I realize that those guys were assholes, I always saw it as more of "boys will be boys" type thing rather than an assault. She said unlike a lot of her colleagues, she doesn't like the phrase but at the same time she doesn't dismiss "boys will be boys" out of hand. But that my situation was in no way that. Her point was I was grabbed once--if they had stopped there I may be able to say it was drunk guys getting out of hand. In the best case, "boys will be boys" means one minor mistake and then a heartfelt apology and then a promise to never do it again. These guys grabbed me once, heard I didn't like it than did it again and then waited for me in the parking lot. Not only that, they remembered me, and continued the harassments when I happened to see them out one night, weeks later no less. 

To be very honest I had never seen it that way but the way she described it made a lot of sense. She then asked if maybe I went to work at Hooters so shortly after because instead of being a victim of my sexuality, I saw it as a way to make it empowering and a way to take control of what happened to me. I told her I never thought of it that way but it's possible. I told her I know that despite being dressed to enhance my tits and ass, I always felt safe there in a way that I never did at the other restaurant because the manager was such a terrible person. She asked why I chose the phrase "tits and ass," to which I responded it just came out. She said that may be more evidence that in an unconscious way, I took the job there because I wanted to empower myself over what happened to me. Again I told her I had never thought of it that way but it may very well be true and it makes a lot of sense. 

She then asked to retell the part about how I got fired and then arrested over the incident at the old restaurant. To paraphrase she said "from what we've talked about in our last few sessions, you've expressed to me that  you've set up your sexual identity to be very controlled in that you had very clear standards for yourself. Even though you loved your now husband, you made him wait to have sex until you had been together for many years. You've had some other experiences that some would see as taboo or risky but you set them up in a way that was defined by lots of rules and check ins with your husband, is that correct?" I thought about it for a second and said yes. She continued "so when you were put into a situation where you tried to exercise control by cutting of the men's drinks and they ended up grabbing you, your feelings of control went out the window?" I agreed with her. Then she said "and the person who had a legal obligation to protect you, the manager, not only took away your control but fired you for defending yourself. And while what happened to you in the following months after you punched the guy while may have been legally correct, the 'system' took away your control by holding you at least as accountable as the men were for a situation you did not start but only reacted to." I said yes, that is probably correct. 

She asked if I could see what she was getting at in light of what happened last summer and why I need to stop holding myself accountable for freezing. I told her this was already a lot and I didn't. Again paraphrasing, she said "the last time you were sexually assaulted, you ended up fired and in months of legal trouble because you acted swiftly to defend yourself. In some little little corner of your brain, when that man started to do things that you did not approve of, you weren't sure how to react because the last time you did--you were in at least as much trouble as the perpetrator. Does that make sense now?

I told her yes, it made a lot of sense and it may not have been as unconscious as that. I chose to stay in the room with him when he fell asleep because I was legitimately terrified that he might choke on his own vomit or otherwise die in his sleep and I would be the last person seen coming out of his room. I knew I wasn't responsible but could I convince the hotel staff or police that? No matter what I would be stuck in Mexico for days or weeks longer than I wanted to and all I wanted to do was see my family. 

She said that's her point exactly, in the trauma of the moment I froze but in a way I was already rationalizing what could go wrong because I had already experienced all the ways it could go wrong for a victim of sexual assault. But it only took me a couple of seconds before I reacted in a way that took control of the situation, got away from him and started to make a rational plan about how to best protect myself and my future with my family. And that instead of continuing to beat myself up, I should start seeing it as I empowered myself. She said it may take a while for me to get there but this was an important step in getting there. 

I have to say it was a great session but it kind of put me into a bit of a tail spin last week and I was very glad to have all the support in the house that I did last week. I am doing better now but I've always hated thinking of myself as any sort of victim. My Episcopalian work ethic and Texas upbringing don't really leave a lot of room for victimhood  but I guess that was her point--that even victims take steps to empower themselves and I should be proud of myself for what I did when my control was taken away.