My corner of the world continues to be hit by nameable storms that coalesce within weeks of each other. They roll up the coastline from Central America one after another. Polo, Simon, Trudy, Vance… aspects of El Niño keep appearing during a time when dry winds are supposed to blow from the deserts. The sunny Southern Californias aren’t exactly known for humid wet atmospheric chaos, but here we are in an flipped weather cycle. And it has been rather wild for a mild place. The obscenity of being in 105f degrees in the month of October got me thinking nature was trying to finish all its pan de muerto baking before Day of the Dead. The building I live in easily turns into the Easy Bake Oven I never wanted as a child.
So the heat jumps. We dry and fry to dust. Then we are “relieved” by the potential of flooding, sink holes, landslides, ‘clean’ water and power outages– what elsewhere is known as 'a bit of rain.'
And I, being the Highly Sensitive Person that I am, can feel the storms.
Hurricane Polo, over a thousand miles away, and not even heading in my direction had all my spidey senses off the charts. I think I’ve never been that close to a category 5 or something. I was giddy as all hell, like I had been day drinking and it was Christmas and my birthday at once or something. But then I walked down to the beach to face the open water. By looks nothing was out of the ordinary. By feel, however... woof! The barometer was down. The air currents were moving in very different ways, carrying very different information. And it felt like Dracula himself was about to pop by on the Demeter for a little Lucy snack. Dread filled my chest. The hair on my arms stood up. I started panic breathing. Everything in my being was screaming at me that death itself was out there– well, at least something too strong for a lil ol’ me to experience. People were happily enjoying their Friday evening at the beach. There was a live singer at the coffee shop. It was perfectly chill for everyone else, but the only way I could chill out to a functional giddy state was to get the hell away from the water. The only other creature that seemed to share my sense of things was a dog that approached on a cross street. It was curious, then after a few sniffs started barking, tried to snip at hands. I was so weirded out already that I didn’t even have any fear reaction to the canine and kept walking. Polo arrived with the Harvest Moon.
I went to the water again before Rachel hit directly and it felt like… a big storm. I was giddy and all, but the height of it felt more like a dizziness rather than pure dread. There was already bad flooding at some of the beaches even before any rain hit, yet the whole thing didn’t feel so awful as a category 5. Rachel arrived with the new moon.
Rachel brought only a few bolts of lightening.
I was outside running errands when one of them flashed. I did the light to sound count to determine distance. It was far off. I wished for more. I have a fondness for lightening. It is somehow a rare occurrence where I live. Which is probably a good thing, but I miss it. I love lightening storms.
Once I was struck by lightening when I was a youngster. It was nothing overtly dramatic. An indirect hit. A small tendril of energy zapping through the heel of my right hand and exiting the heel of my left foot on its way to ground. I had been storm watching. Of course I was. I was hyper and looking out into a thunderstorm for reflections of that buzzing, excited feeling had within myself.
Leaning out of a third story window to see this strike hit a far corner of the apartment complex building I was in meant that I was touching a metal window frame. Whoops? I saw the brilliant white / purple at a distance, but it was sort of extra bright inside my head, yet blank too. Surprise and actual shock will do that. Immediately after it happened— and I wasn’t dead— I was worried something might still be medically wrong, however, since I put myself in such a stupid position, I kept the incident to myself. Within seconds of being touched by lightening, however indirectly and painlessly, I was dreading the social repercussions of revealing the incident to any of my eight immediate family members more than anything else. I anticipated the callous, 'well you fucked around and found out' and the 'you know better' sentiments. All those people and I was in a dilemma of who could I tell.
These days I have been thinking perhaps I did die there in that apartment. My heart did stop and everything is getting progressively more fucked up because I am in hell and I haven’t figured it out yet, or that was the moment I was jumped into the worst timeline.
According to some traditions, I am sort of qualified to be a shaman.
But for the same reasons I didn’t tell anyone what happened are the same reasons I don’t go prancing around with a tambor covered in animal hide fringe encouraging everyone to find their spirit animals and drinking Windex so I don’t smell like a human. I can’t even afford to commit to the look never mind the whole lifestyle.
It bothers me that I felt too uncomfortable to tell any of my many siblings, or my parents. It bothers me that often I feel too uncomfortable to speak up for myself.
Random sexual assault in the home was just one more thing I was quiet about because– hey, it was no big deal. I was not on the floor half strangled, bleeding from any holes I’ve never bled from before. So why make a big deal about nothing anyway? Why, indeed?
My parents were out. The Little Mermaid VHS tape was wearing thinner in the living room. If I remember correctly, three of my brothers were there. Two of them were older and certainly old enough to have taken action when the guest in our house felt bravado enough to enthusiastically exclaim something to the effect that he would totally fuck Ariel and then proceed to slap me on the ass.
What he did wasn’t personal. I was the nearest female shaped thing with the kind of ingress he would like to experience– regardless of my age… especially because of my age. He didn’t have any designs on me in particular. He was just being hormonal. And I was just within striking distance at the time. But would he have hit any of my brothers in the same manner? Hark? What is that noise? Methinks I do hear a multitudinous host screaming an emphatic NO.
I didn’t feel more grown up, certainly not like a woman; nor did I feel honored that he became so comfortable in my home that he forgot any sense of formal comportment. I certainly wasn't one of the boys either. I just felt sort of lamely used. So lamely used that the tale has not even felt worth the telling. There aren't enough salacious hooks to keep people shoveling snacks into their drooling pie holes. Who will pay attention long enough?
Just as the lightening strike had left me, I was stunned, without any response. The movie kept playing. The evening went on. What would I even say as a Christian child who was conditioned with corporal punishment to be behave, be quiet, respect my elders, turn the other cheek, etc. The dude slapped both my cheeks… what else should I submit him to hit as a good Christian? Because he made it clear really that he wanted to hit “it” at the time.
I’d tried to express my dislike of situations before and was treated like I was being a weird little brat. Because obviously any small person perceived of as a girl is being nothing more than spoilt when they try to express things they are sensitive to and uncomfortable with, but lack the language to explain and are never encouraged to find that language… obviously.
What even are “womanish” tears and shouts of protest anyway except some noise that means: ‘What? Continue with the status quo? Double down on that harder, you say? Why yes, I will keep waving my metaphorical, lording dick around.’ Just like silence clearly means: ‘He-he. I got away with it. He-he. I will do it again. It’s clearly my right to do so. He-he.’
There are so many ways to say rape culture without saying rape culture.
I was a premenstrual eleven/twelve. He was eight(?) years older than me so it is possible to call this person a kid(?!) Kids are unsteady, and learning. They mess around all the time. But as I recall, I was not directly interacting with the boy-boor. This was my brother’s guest to entertain, not mine. I was existing in my home. I was enjoying wholesome expressions of queer– interspecies love and longing, drinking far too much OK Soda. I did not consent to a demonstration of statistically typical heterosexual patriarchal behavior. While my brothers sat right there.
Family, friends, home, town, state, country, and the God are lousy protection from the bs of mankind. Even with the gift of discernment, who is safe to turn to for aid when opportunistic devils can be/are everyone and the mighty drags foot with swift retribution? We are communal animals and it takes a village, but I am horrified of the villagers. Isn’t that neat-o? Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? Me, Mr. Shadow sir, me! I know! I’ve known!
When I was a few years younger I remember playing at staff fighting with some neighbor boy of similar age. I felt so cool. We were both equally armed and it was an agreed upon combat situation so I hit him for real at some point in our play sparring. An overstep on my part. He was so upset that I had dared to hurt him that he gave me a impressive crack to my knee with his staff. I wasn't fast enough to make a block and I fully accepted his retaliation. In my mind, he was within his rights to deliver that consequence so I stood there as unflinching as possible. I let the pain splash brightly through my system. I did not allow myself double over. I did not cry out as he did. I showed him how to take it like a cabrona. I got a festive purple and blue polka dotted bruise on my knee afterward. This is what happens when children pick up weapons. People get hurt. The boy was not at all impressed with my learning / teaching moment. We never played after that.
But for this boy-boor sitting on the couch in my living room, in what part of his mind did he think we were on the same playing field, playing the same game? Oh, wait. Oh. He was too hormonal about a cartoon character to have the synapses firing between his two functioning brains cells governing reason and logic. I have read reason and logic are very Apollo, very illuminated– very masculine traits. Eh… As if the sight of G rated animated seashells, bare skin, and, um, fish scales would logically be enough to drive everyone’s minds toward the same reasonable longing for aggressive self-satisfactory friction. Mars, Thoth, the Christ, the Buddha, Freud would like a word. The switchboard is lighting up.
I’m certain I’m the only one who’s kept any memory of that casual, dare I say, jovial assault. I have frequent occasion to consider my “good fortune” at having been dealt a mild example of SUCH MALE because => Release the Epstein files; hashtag Me Too; hashtag I am Jane Doe; choose the bear; Gisèle Pelicot; a story my mother told me one time; the stuff I heard about my sister…. It doesn’t take the full visceral experience of a violent gang raping for a Highly Sensitive Person to deeply comprehend the trauma suffered regularly by… about 4 billion people. Why waste time with invented horror when you know you are in a sea of it?
The concepts of safety and justice are jokes in your so-called civilized societies. Whether I am in suburbia New England dodging pedophiles, on the streets in New York navigating perverts, or camouflaged in some dumpy shack in Mexico… where is there a safe place from abusive, cowardly animals who want to get away with as much as they can for their own petty amusements? To the detriment of the entire human race.
The perceived "weaker ones" desire to live without constant threat, but for some reason, there is built in bloatware, bonus features of abuse you can't simply delete. We are lied to/lie to ourselves and are pitted against one another in shame, anger, jealousy... for scraps– in a manner that has nothing to do with healthy competition. We shred each other for meagerest tatters of power. It’s so much fun! And wow, you can’t imagine all the facetious fun I’m having since you haven’t the empathy to do so because empathy isn’t a real thing anymore! Woo!
I have to constantly feel out humans and storms alike because therein lies the potential of total ruination. It’s exhausting either way when you are lacking trustworthy infrastructure. Storms are innocent, honest things in their terrific power. Humans on the other hand– those are convoluted pieces of shit. I would claim kinship to a storm faster than kinship to some of you, many of you entities with your over-proud, entitled tiddies all in my face. It's pathetic that you can't turn me on quite like low pressure systems do.
🎶
Wanderin' free, wish I could be
Part of that world
🎶
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