Anonymous: Thirty-Six Laps in a Mile

A few words about shame...

So, it’s deep, this shame I’ve been swimming in for years now. It got so deep there for a while I stopped noticing it, like when you dive into freezing water and at first you can’t fathom how you can stay in one second longer, but you do and you do and then the merest of moments later, you hear yourself calling out to anyone who will listen, “Come in! The water’s fine! It’s fine in here! I’m fine! I’m fine! I’m fine!” And what’s more, you believe it. And then eventually, it becomes the truth.

I was fine for a really long time in that water. I stopped noticing the shivers and tingles and numb. Things are changing now.

I thought for a really long time that the shame was, in fact, actual shame. But as it turns out, the shame is really more fear than anything else.

I wonder if you already knew this. Perhaps you are nodding.

I have been told, and more than once, that what I classify as “coping skills” are not coping skills at all, but instead “avoiding skills.” The people who tell me this sometimes do it with a measure of disgust and impatience and fury. Like this was something I was willfully and childishly refusing to hear, like I wasn’t listening, like they couldn’t stand me for not hearing them.

But, the fact is, I already know. If there’s one thing I know, it’s that (well, two things – I can also give you pi to 14 places). Of course my coping skills are avoiding skills. Of course they are. It’s so much easier to be ashamed than to be afraid. So much easier. You can function with shame; you can breathe right through it. Shame is mostly about failure, and failure is fixable. It can be controlled. Failure can mostly be done over, gotten right next time, tried again. But fear – fear stops everything. Suddenly, you’re back to that first second in the cold water, lungs constricting, brain telling you, “Out! Cold! Death!,” limbs pulled in tight, everything sucking in closer and closer, braced and fragile.

If it was all my fault, then it wasn’t terrifying. Not really. If it was all my fault, then it was just mistakes. Just a series of miscalculations and stupidity and error. But now I’m being told this is wrong. Worse yet, that it is destructive. Let that go now, I’m being told. Recognize I didn’t have even the tiniest fraction of choice I want to believe I had. Recognize now that he had a plan – A PLAN – that started long, long before that day and that my only mistake, my only miscalculation, was playing right into it. Without knowing, of course. And how could I have known? Outwardly, he was the gentlest of men. He laughed easily, eyes authentically lit. He leaned in to listen when I spoke. He opened doors. He wrote notes about my many graces and left them for me to find. He charmed me. He was safe. There was no one safer.

But it was all grooming, really. All part of the plan. This is what I’m being told now. It feels true, I suppose. Pick the young one. The one who blushes when you say something kind. The one who clearly lacks in self-esteem, roots, connections. And hook her. Once thusly hooked, there was no getting away, regardless of struggle. Not until I was released. Not until he released me. I had some choices, and the few I made were wrong. But they were, in fact, very few, and also, they were not really choices. Choice implies the weighing of options and decision-making. I never decided anything.

I know this. If I stop and think about this rationally, I know it immediately, sharply. It was not my fault. But as soon as those words wrangle together into coherent, reasoned form, my brain rebels. It is rebelling right now. Because after logic comes emotion and no, no, I cannot go there. Not all the way there. Not all that way. The moment I start to feel that I had no power is the moment I realize I was not safe then, I am not safe now, I will never be safe. There is no such thing as safety. It was not my fault? But then there’s nothing I could have done differently, do you see? And nothing I could do now to keep it from happening again in a million different vulnerabilities-wide-open kinds of ways.

How do you wrap your heart around that? Your brain, sure, but your heart? How are you supposed to carry on in a world where all it takes to destroy you is a PLAN.

I want to accept this. I am trying very hard. This is where I am right now, perched here on this fence. I am dying to accept it. Leap, leap. I am drowning in my pool. Jump, jump. But crossing that line from shame to fear – how? How? I don’t know how. I can spell it all out, everything not my fault, but I can’t embrace the list when I’m done. Immediately, the logic reconverts to shame. Shame is warm. Shame is home. Shame is safe. Shame is easy.

(Come back, Shame!)

(What, someone had to make that joke.)

I didn’t tell the room service man I needed help – I didn’t know I needed help then; how could I have known? (I was stupid; if only I’d been smarter, I could’ve gotten out.)

I didn’t fight back harder – I knew I would lose any fight I started and I didn’t want to die. (I was a coward; if only I’d been braver, I could’ve gotten out.)

I didn’t tell when I got home – I didn’t know what had happened, not really; I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t have the tools I needed. (I was weak; if only I’d been stronger, I could’ve gotten out.)

I lied to people about it later, people I loved, people I wanted to trust, people I wanted to trust me – I couldn’t process the truth; it felt safer to lie; it’s understandable, it’s okay. (I was gutless; if only I’d been more confident, I could’ve gotten out.)

When he called me a “tease,” that’s when I stopped resisting. I thought, “Oh. Oh, of course. Of course that’s what’s happening here. Of course I did this. I did this. Of course this is what happens when you are like me. Of course this is deserved. Yes, yes, naturally, of course.” Did you know – I have been learning this – that they almost all do that? They almost all say that? The thing about being a tease? Rapists, I mean. That’s why they do it. That right there.

That is the first time I have ever called him a “rapist.”

(This would boggle anyone who heard the story, I think. But try it sometime. Try that word out. Say it out loud. It isn’t easy to say -- that word. It shouldn’t be easy. I already want to take it back. I will not be taking it back.)

Peace is coming. I can feel a buzzing tremulousness from it, a ringing, a flutter, usually in the mornings when I first open my eyes. It’s coming in the shape of a boat, a shore, a blanket, something warm. A transition. An allowing. A recognition, realization, acceptance. I can’t see it, that peace -- it’s still... it’s still over there somewhere [waves hand vaguely, in some direction or another]. It’s over there somewhere in the distance. I think maybe just over that bobbing blue horizon. Or just past that one hill. A corner turn away. No further.

I think I can feel it. I think that is what I feel. I think what I’m starting to feel might, in fact, be peace. And all I have to do, all that really needs to be done at this point – I think, I think, I hope – is to start swimming and not stop.

Only kick a leg now, thrust an arm forward. Start swimming, little girl. The water may be cold, it may be deep, but it is not wide. There are shores in sight, and several to choose from. Pick a shore. Take aim. Don’t look back. Look back.

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This piece is being published anonymously for now. Perhaps just for now. Just until a shore is reached. Maybe just until then.

Aurora Nibley: Wish Upon a Starbucks

I always get a pastry when I go to Starbucks, and only God can judge me for that. I like pastries.

But the other day, I went to Starbucks and the girl who got my pastry out put it in a bag and handed it to the guy who was going to charge me, and he (not having seen its retrieval) thought it would be cute to try to guess what it was by feeling the bag. Now I understand that this is hardly an outrage on the level of being fondled by TSA, but watching what should have been a sweet and delicious breakfast get palpated by some sweaty stranger who thought he was being funny pretty much ruined my morning. It was a scone, by the way, and there was icing on it. I try to make it a point never to be rude to cashiers because I assume they all hate their jobs and I don't need to make it worse, but my, “Hey. Next time, just fucking ask me what's in there,” did not feel inappropriate. Especially because (did I mention?) he didn't know that the bag contained a scone, because he had refused to take my order (“She'll take care of you”), even though he had been free when I got to the head of the line and he knew all along he was going to have to ring me up.

You don't need to start platituding at me; I know that if this kind of thing is the worst problem I have, my life is probably pretty all right. And it is. But the cut is especially deep because the particular Starbucks location where I suffered this indignity was, up until very recently, a place I looked on with great fondness. I might even go so far as to say it was a refuge for me. Therein lies the sad, ill soul of my generation, right there.

I thought of. Starbucks. As a refuge.

Mostly it was just that one specific Starbucks; it's a block away from my job and all the employees there were surprisingly smart and competent. I could tell when they were having their off days, but I wasn't their only regular, and several of the staff would greet multiple customers (including me) by name. I always ordered the same drink, and there were a couple of times when I went in during a lull and they actually had my drink ready for me before I got to the counter. When life was rough, and it was early and the weather was bad and I felt battered from my public transit commute, I knew that I could go into Starbucks and somebody would smile at me and make me a pretty drink.

But that all changed in October. They shut down that Starbucks location. It wasn't permanent, just for a couple of weeks while they remodeled the place, so nobody worried. This is Brentwood! There are plenty of other places in the neighborhood to grab a morning beverage, and who doesn't love a good remodeling? People remodel their faces here, they love it so much.

Starbucks lost no customers by being closed for two weeks. I went back in as soon as they reopened and it was as crowded as ever. One of my old acquaintances from pRe-modeling days was working, and we had a nice chat, and all seemed to be well. Which may have been why it took me so long to notice that all the rest of the staff had changed. I thought that all my favorite, multi-ethnic hipster baristas were simply not working when I showed up, for a while. But it gradually became clear that I would never see them again. They had not been supplemented by a couple of new employees, they had been totally replaced by the moon-faced white guys in their mid- to late thirties who sang disco music while they mixed my drink in the wrong proportion, and didn't wait for the line to thin out before they decided to restock the fridge bar. One of them even introduced himself to me one morning, in a strange, forced, Dale Carnegie kind of way. So you have to understand, the scone palpitation incident was not an isolated case of bad judgment. It was the last straw in a string of indignities.

And now I find myself at a crossroads. I feel that continuing to patronize this Starbucks location can bring me nothing but sorrow and frustration. I have other options, as mentioned, but for some reason most of the drinks at Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf taste a little bit slimy to me, and Peet's has the best pastries hands down but I dislike the feeling I get there of being raped by my coffee (it may be a bit late to point this out, but I am actually not a coffee drinker. My beverage of choice is a green tea lemonade, which neither Peet's nor the Coffee Bean have on offer). Also, the local Peet's has virtually no place to sit.

I suppose I could make a drink at home in the morning, or not, and skip the whole beverage-purchasing part of the morning, saving myself both money and time. But the drink was never the point. The point of going to Starbucks, for me, was that whether I was in a hurry or I had to kill time before work, I knew that someone would smile at me and give me a nice treat, and maybe ask about something that didn't matter, like whether I was in a play, or if I had a vacation coming up, and I didn't have to worry about what I said because my entire relationship with this person was being played out right there in the Starbucks. No feelings, no commitments, no possibility of insult or injury. Just some lemonade and a pastry. It was my five minutes of Utopia.

And now it has been replaced, by a fat pastry molester.

Aurora Nibley lives in North Hollywood with her husband and cat. She used to write about football, but gave that shit up. If you want to look at the things she Tweets, find your way on over to http://twitter.com/auroranibley