Safety & Coping

Let's talk about safety as a woman and what can happen after trauma. Big trigger warning this week involving assault, abuse, and shame after experiencing these things. 

Main topics:

• Masking
• Shame in reporting 
• Assault in a romantic relationship 
• Increased occurences of abuse/assualt in vulnerable populations 
• Thoughts of self-harm

Resources: 

World Health Organization regarding violence against women

https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/violence-against-women

National Domestic Violence Hotline: 800-799-7233; https://www.thehotline.org/

Suicide & Crisis Hotline: Dial 988; https://988lifeline.org/

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:32

Howdy, friends. It's me. Coming to you live from live ish from the laundry pile. That is my life. But actually, and the room with the laundry pile in it.

unknown 0:44

Oh.

SPEAKER_00 0:45

So today is not gonna be a light one, I fear. Not that I've had many light podcasts so far. It seems to be all trauma dumping and sharing all the things and trying to get happy at the end. Listen, life is a little bit difficult most of the time for most people. So unfortunately, these are the facts. These are the facts of life that we always have to deal with. The way I got to where I was going today, I listen to podcasts routinely for work, right? So I listen to a podcast that I have flagged on my website. It's called WTF is Audi HD. And it's two sisters who kind of talk back and forth about their late diagnoses and all the things they've dealt with, and they're really funny and they're really knowledgeable. So I really enjoy that podcast. I don't know that any of the rest of you have like reason to listen to a podcast specifically about like education behind autism and ADHD, but I do. So if you're ever curious, it's a good place to go because they're they're really entertaining. I was listening to an episode about the likelihood of females on the spectrum or with ADHD having a higher likelihood of abuse or assault or neglect, etc. And these girls were just being really candid about their own experiences and all the things that they've gone through and like kind of living in a world that always tells you like it's no big deal, you're overreacting, like don't worry about whatever it is that you're thinking about. And it was really refreshing, sad, and triggering to hear about their experiences because you don't think about these things. So yeah, trigger warning. I have a general trigger warning at the beginning of every episode, but like I'm gonna be talking about some some darker assault type things today. Something that I grapple with a lot on this podcast is like giving too much of myself to the world, I guess. And I think it just becomes from like people kind of telling me my whole life that I'm oversharing, or like this isn't like polite conversation, or this conversation's gonna make people uncomfortable. Well, yeah, it should. It also made me uncomfortable when these things happened to me and I wasn't allowed to talk about it, so society said. So get over it. You know, I share a lot about my experiences and all these kinds of things, but thinking about the reason why I do these things, listening to that podcast from those girls really like nailed the point home that this kind of stuff should be talked about, and it's uncomfortable and people don't like to hear about it, and it's like it makes people squirmy, but I don't think a lot of people realize how prevalent it is to have these like traumatic things in the closet of your life, and nobody wants to talk about them. Luckily, in my friend group, we are pretty open about stuff, and like the people pretty close to me like know all of these stories already, so if you know them, my bad. But for the for the odd person who's listening that doesn't know me or is listening to the first time or you know doesn't know the in-depth ins and outs of my life, they might take comfort in this, and they might feel less alone if they have had similar experiences. I don't even know how to start this. I have some places I think I'm gonna hit on, but I'm just like not sure where to go. Something that I had to think about pretty fairly recently. I think it was on my cousin that was living here like three years ago, four years ago. I had interacted with someone, it was maybe one of my friends, who like knew someone who knew someone. She was uh Latina doing her graduate program or her PhD, I can't remember which, but she was doing a study about Latino women who had been assaulted in their life, and if they came forward, how they came forward, why they came forward, and if they didn't, why? Why didn't they? I like had to check with my spirit to make sure that this is gonna be okay for me, and I decided to participate in this study because I know so many people would say no. I talked to her and a lot of things kind of came up about what happened to me and how and why and all that jazz. I'm not gonna like go too too terribly far into like the specific specifics of everything, because it's like not super necessary, and it's also like a lot of my family who's listening, and I if you don't know, I don't want you to be like upset, but that the shit is the shit it happened. If I reverse the clock, as I so often do, back to I don't know, it was probably like six or seven, I don't um old enough to remember, it was one of my first memories, most likely. I was in the basement with my brother sleeping, and we had like a family friend over, and uh my parents really did absolutely everything possible ever to like keep me safe and keep me out of questionable situations. Like the whole time I was growing up, my dad was telling me, don't ever like get close physically like to men you don't know, or even if you know them, like don't don't be like sitting in their laps or wearing like inappropriate clothing or whatever, like you just never know. And in that same way, like I had friends. I my parents like scanned and kind of went through parents very, very like with a fine-toothed comb to make sure that wherever I was they could trust that I was there. So, like if my friends had brothers, the sleepovers were like minimum to none. They did everything that they could to prepare me in any way, every way to like keep myself safe. But the shit of it is that you can prepare your children as much as you want and tell them, hey, like here's all the things to do to avoid putting yourself in situations, but like the shit of it is still that I can do whatever I want to, but if there's a predator on the loose, the predator is gonna predate. It doesn't have anything to do with me. And you know, like the focus is really to put on women still. Don't wear these clothes, don't walk on the street at night, don't do this, you've gotta protect yourself, you've got a self-defense, you've always gotta be on alert, you always have to be on the defensive because people are out there getting ready to do whatever it is that they can do to you because you're a woman and you're vulnerable and whatever bullshit the society is telling us. It's less focused on teaching your children, not in my house, my brothers were solid, but like it's less focused on teaching your your sons or your children in general, I guess, because there are female predators as well. Don't be a dick. Like, don't be out here being creepy to people, don't be out here wandering around and touching people you're not supposed to be touching and doing whatever it is that you're supposed to be doing. So more focused on here's what the woman did to not protect herself and not focused on here's what the men did to cross the lines of safety and boundaries and trust back on schedule here. I was sleeping in my brother's room, as I do use my brother, safe, cool, family friend who was like family in the room on the floor, and I don't know. I was trying to sleep, I was chilling, and like I felt hands on me and I didn't know what to do. So I sat there frozen, and I was like, maybe if I sit here frozen, he'll stop. Like maybe this I don't know, maybe he's like sleepwalking or something. I don't know. So I'm sitting, I'm chilling, and I'm like frozen. I don't know what to do because I'm young. I'm I don't know what to do. So I felt him put his hands in my underwear and he was feeling around, and I was just like trying to lean and get out of the way because I didn't know what to do. Eventually it was it stopped, and I was like, okay. So I went to sleep and I didn't really know how to respond, and I didn't really know what to do. Now my mom have told has told me forever and a day, please tell me anything, everything, ever. If anything is making you uncomfortable or making you feel unsafe, and you know, so I had like a culture in my house where I was cool to say whatever it is that I needed to say, but for whatever reason, this just felt like so unreal. And I was like, did that happen? Did I imagine that happening? Like, what the fuck? Well, I didn't know the word that at the time, but if I did, I would have said it. But I was just like, I I was flabbergasted. So the next morning I wake up and he talks to me at some point and he says, Hey, sorry about last night, I was sleeping. And I'm like, what? And I just like I carried on with my life because I didn't know what else to do. Riddle me this, batman. If you're sleeping when you're trifling or doing something you're not supposed to, then surely you wouldn't remember. This man, child, whatever, like he was significantly older than me. Probably four to six to eight years older than me. He had the faculty to know what he was doing, full on, and to say something to me about it later and be like, oh, I didn't know. Something happened weird when I didn't bring it up, like you told on yourself, but I did I'm telling you, I didn't know what to do. I did not know. And it I don't know, even as a small child, I think maybe just like having that rhetoric of like, don't do this because someone will touch you, or someone will do this, or someone will take advantage of the situation. I was in my own home with my brother, who I knew was a safe person, and this cousin, family, friend thing person who I had been around millions and trillions of times. There could have been no safer position for me to be in. And I was young, so it wasn't like I was a teenager sleeping around in the basement with boys or whatever. Like I was little, we were all fairly like still young. We weren't, again, like teenagers or adults or whatever. Like, sure, that would have been weird, but we're just having a sleepover, like a normal fucking thing to do. I was flabbergasted and I didn't know what to do. And again, like having that that thing just like in my head, like, what did I do? What did I do wrong to like invite someone to touch me inappropriately? Like, what did I do? What what rule did I break? Like, was I not wearing shorts? I was wearing like a long t-shirt, I'm sure, and shorts, whatever. Like, what was I wearing that like made him think that that was okay? And like he said he was sleeping, so I I guess it's okay, but like I kind of buried this stuff. I didn't think about it anymore until I was in high school. From then on, uh like my trust in people was broken without me realizing it. Because you always kind of have that like radar of like, I don't think I feel safe here. And again, I don't think I said anything to my mom because I felt like shame over something that was absolutely zero percent my fault, but like just going against you know life and just hearing like you should be doing this and this and that. Like, I felt like I had done something wrong. Not the fact that this was an older boy who decided to like prey on me, not the fact that he decided to do this, not the fact that I had nothing to do with it and I was like asleep. I'm just a really light sleeper, so I felt it when he touched me. I said I wasn't gonna get graphic. I guess I didn't go like too far, but like that's what happened. Yeah, I don't know. It was just really strange to like take in, and I think that I suppressed that pretty quickly. I suppressed that down deep down in my memory, and I like never talked about it ever again. But I was really uncomfortable around him for the rest of my life. I actually saw him oh, like I don't even live in the same city anymore, but I saw him maybe I don't know, in the last 10 years or so. I was like picking up my sister-in-law from a work release program or some nonsense, and he was there, and I froze again. And I was like, what the fuck? How can you talk to me? Like, knowing that you know what I know. And he was an adult and he was like, hello little cousin, it's been so long. And I'm like, what the well, first of all, why are you here? Second of all, why are you talking to me? Like, just did you forget? I'm confused. So I don't even know. I don't even know. That's that's mostly what to say about that. But I kind of unlocked this like hidden memory, just so you know, again, like psych psychologically, your darker, kind of like traumatic memories. Sometimes you block them, sometimes you have them and you lock them down deep in a little box in your brain, and you don't ever want to thinking about it again. And then it might just like pop its little head up years later when you've forgotten and you don't think about it. But like somebody says something super close to what happened, and you're like, Oh, oh no, wait, I remember everything. Oh shit, where has this been? Why am I dealing with this now? No. So I think I was talking to my college roommate at the time, it was before we went away uh to college. I was talking to her about something, and I don't even know what it was, but somehow, somehow, I was like, wait a minute, I just had this memory like very vividly of all this stuff that happened to me, and we kind of talked through it, and I'm like, I don't know where that came from, and I don't know how long I've been holding on to that. Like, I had no idea. And then once I kind of told her and we like talked about it, so many things kind of unclicked for me, and I was like, oh fuck, this has affected my whole life. This has affected my whole life, and I had no idea. As I was growing up, after this happened, you know, I was generally fine. I didn't think about it, carried on with my life. But like, I've always been hyper-aware of other people touching me. It's not necessarily like females, I didn't mind it so much, but like when males were touching me for any reason, I was like, are you supposed to be touching me right now? Because I don't I don't know. And I remember I think it was my when I was doing my confirmation in Catholic school. I don't know how old you are when you do your confirmation, but I was that old. And um we went on a retreat, I guess. It was like a way to a sleepover camp or something. And we had a uh a chaperone who one of my good friends knew. So everywhere we were, the chaperone was, and he was like an older man, whatever. He's a real touchy dude. So he was always like playing with girls' hair and touching them on the shoulders and patting their backs and hugging them, and I was like, ugh, I don't like this. This doesn't feel good to me. Because he was always around my friend, and it wasn't just her, it was me, it was whoever, whatever girl around he was touching at the time. He was just like a real touchy person. And again, looking back now, I think that I was totally correct in being creeped out by this. Not to say that he was doing anything inappropriate because I have no idea, like his wife was there if I recall. So like she would have seen whatever was happening, and maybe people just like dismissed it because it was like an old man. Not like super old, but like, I don't know. He was like not in his 20s or 30s or 40s, it's probably 50 plus. But just like I don't like people massaging my shoulders or touching me without my permission. It's always giving me the skebies, and I know now why? Because I don't fucking trust people. And I don't know, I said something about it. I think I did say something to my mom about that, maybe possibly. And if I didn't, I don't know why. Uh, because at that point I was like, no, I'm gonna tell you something's going on. Because I remember running into him at church after the fact, and he was sitting in the pew behind us, and he like squeezed my shoulders, like, hey Sam. Well, first of all, don't call me Sam, disgusting. There are people in my life, we just saw, oh my god, what is it? My confirmation teacher last week or two weeks ago in the community when I was home with my family. He never creeped me out, he never gave me the creepies. He had two or three daughters, and they were close with our family, and I knew he was like a cool dude. I didn't worry about it. He was also like a real gruff, grumpy guy. But like, had he ever touched my shoulder or whatever, I would have been like, all right, it's cool. You your family, you're not gonna hurt me. Cool. But this other guy, I was just like, I don't know about this. We're a bunch of like preteen to teenage girls, you should not be touching my hair. It's weird. You shouldn't be squeezing my shoulders, it's weird. You like so many things that were just like giving me the flags, so I like stayed as far away as possible. And like, being a woman, again, in this society, it's like had I said anything to my friend, to be like, yo, this like makes me a little bit uncomfortable. What's the deal? She'd probably be like, what are you talking about? He's a friend, he's fine, you're being dramatic. Or had I said something to my confirmation teacher, to be like, yo, I don't know what the vibes are, but like this is making me uncomfortable. Would he have been like, you whatever, he's fine, he's a chaperone, he's safe, he's on the clear list, whatever. Or would he have been like, I can see how that would be uncomfortable for you. Maybe I'll say something to him. The likelihood of that second possibility happening is like 10%, I feel like. And maybe I'm a little pessimistic, but I just feel like that probably would have been the answer. Not even necessarily from him, but just like generally any adult who wasn't my mother. Kind of pay attention to those gut feelings. Like, even if you're wrong, you gotta keep yourself safe. Because I would rather be overly cautious of myself and my body and my safety just because of where I have been, than to like let my guard down and let something else happen to me. Again. Like, I'm just thinking of like the kind of standout moments in my life. When I was working with my mom at the factory over the summertime in college, there was somebody at her work who was again like really touchy. I'd be like eating my lunch or sitting at her desk or something, come up behind me and like squeeze my shoulders, or do this or do that. And I'm like, just I don't like people touching me. Please stop. And like he would think it was funny. And then I told my mom, like, listen, this dude, I have told him and I have like given the very clear body language that I don't want you fucking touching me. I don't like it. You're making me uncomfortable, you're you're creepy. Quit it. So my mom said something to him, and from then on, he was like, snarky. Oh, well, don't touch Sammy. She doesn't like people touching her. Re-examine your actions. If someone telling you that you're making them uncomfortable makes you defensive, something is wrong with what you are doing. Duh. So he was like shitty to me after that. And I'm like, I really don't care. You're like an ugly old man. You need to relax. Don't fucking touch me. I will let you out. There's nothing else to say about it. I'm an adult now, I'm ready. Like, I worked in a paint shop. I will drown you in chemicals, whatever. Just you know, a lot of things throughout life, in all of these ways that people are telling women, well, you shouldn't do this and you shouldn't do that. I shouldn't be penalized for existing. I shouldn't be penalized for being born with a vagina. I shouldn't be penalized for having boobs. I can't help any of these things. They are What they are, and also it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter what I look like, doesn't matter where I'm wearing, doesn't matter what my body is doing, it doesn't give anybody the right to put their hands on me ever. And like all of those experiences have made it. So even when I am like in situations with people I trust and I care about, sometimes I cannot handle being touched. Like a sensory of being touched, and again, probably in like an ADHD thing, but also with my history, like if you put your knee on me and I move away, it's not that I'm like not trying to be an asshole, but just like I am hyper aware of all of the the things touching me. And with like the people that I absolutely am like 100% quadrillion percent comfortable with, it's easier. Like I was terrified before I got into like the one safe and secure relationship than that I've ever known, you know, the person I married. I was always worried about people like being too close to me and me getting overstimulated, and like the guy that I dated before my husband, I had told him in the very beginning before we even like started to talk like seriously. I was like, listen, there's probably gonna be times where I'm just like, uh, I need you to like separate yourself from me physically. Like, you're I don't know, for whatever reason, you're like, I'm overstimulated, can't deal with it. And um, like the fact again, so many, so many signs that I should have been paying attention to in that particular situation, I don't think I ever felt like super comfortable with this person. I never felt very secure with this person. And I remember having conversations with him where he was like, listen, like every girl that I've met on a dating app has just like trauma dumped. And I'm like, I don't even want to talk to the girls who have trauma, like, ugh, you're like such a pick me. And I'm like, you don't want to talk to people who are like telling you their stories. And I'm like, how am I sitting here right now? And in the back of my mind, again, I'm like, what is this? What are we doing here? I think I had just been like so single for so long at that point that I was like, he lovebombed me in the beginning, and I was like, oh yeah, yeah, this is the person I'm gonna be with, it's gonna be great. And then, like, very, I mean, probably pretty quickly, all the red flags started popping up, but I just like chose to overlook them, which makes me feel really stupid. And I'm still like kicking myself for that now. And like one of my friends, my friend that I referenced in the last episode, was like, you give yourself so much shit for that, like let it go. It's okay. Like, you made a mistake and you learned from it. It's okay, you gotta give yourself some grace. And I'm like, I'm just I'm not dumb, I'm not a stupid person, but why? Why did I let so many people treat me so shitty for I can't even say for like so long because I definitely didn't date for a really long time. But it was like the guy I was with in college, we broke up my senior year, and I was single from then until I don't know, eight, nine, ten years later, I dated someone at work for a very brief minute. He was terrible to me. And once we like stopped talking or whatever, or stopped being involved, he st he treated me like I didn't exist. He would walk past me in the hallways at work and he would not look my direction. He would not acknowledge that I was standing there. He would just walk past me like I was a ghost on the street. And he's the one who kind of like initiated our our dalliance, I guess, but he got spooked because it got too real too fast or something, and then he like hard pulled out and like hard went to a different direction and just like decided that regardless of whatever I was doing, and he would just like dump me like a bad habit. Again, circling back to what I said in the last one. If you don't want to be with someone, or you don't want to be involved with them, or you're not having the same feeling, so you're not on the same page anymore. Uh if you're listening to this, fucking say something. Do not waste people's time. Don't do it. If you don't want to be with this person anymore, you're not involved, you're not interested, just don't. Just say something. I'm not feeling this, I'm not interested, whatever. Unless I guess this person was like super, super terrible to you and did something harmful, then by all means, chop, cut them off, gone. Block them, block them, block them, block them. Uh, that is part of my mantra, also. Once I'm no longer with someone in the past, I'm like, all right, block, delete, get it all out of here. I don't want your contact in my phone. I don't want your social media, I don't want any of it. I'm not, I'm not playing this, like, let's look back through the times game. Hell no. Get out of here. Just, you know, a lifelong of feeling shame for the mistakes I've made or feeling shame for the things that were done to me that I didn't really have any say in. And then a lifelong like issue with having people physically close to me. I don't like it. Like, I don't like to let people see me cry. I've gotten better about that over the years, but like my parents have very rarely seen me cry, aside from like when I was a child, because I just don't like I don't like to let that out. That vulnerable part of me that like my defenses are down and whatever. I don't like to let that out very often. And like, I don't know, maybe that's a normal thing for people to want to do, but I've I like really have a problem with like opening up to people in that way. And something that I think I've always kind of struggled with is like being severely open with people when I first meet them, because I'm putting them through the ringer. It's probably not fair to do, but like this is something I do when I meet you. I'm gonna give you the light layer of my like trauma. I'm gonna give you like, yeah, trauma light to see how you handle it. Because if you hear the light version of whatever it is story that I'm telling you, and you can't hack it, or you're really uncomfortable, and you like get all freaked out about it, then I probably don't need to keep you in my life, because that's there's more coming. And there's probably gonna more be more later. Again, defense mechanism. Like, if you can't hang for the good stuff, for the serious stuff, for the bad times, I don't think I wanna waste my time with you. And that's again, I'm a deeply flawed person. This is not something that I suggest you do, but it's just something I've always done. So, you know, there's a handful of people who I can completely let my guard down with. And even then, I wouldn't if I didn't have to, but like I gotta let my stuff out sometimes. If I don't, I'll implode and it'll just be a mess. There are some people that have gotten all the all the nitty-gritty of things, and the breakups and the sadness and the disappointments and the frustrations, and you know, there are a few people that have been privy to full strength support, I guess. You know, they have the the paid subscription to the front row of my nonsense. It's taken me a really long time to kind of cultivate who's safe there. And you know, I think like part of it is because of what's happened to me in the past, but like I don't know. You know, I've kind of explained before that I don't like to invest time in people who aren't gonna stick around for like the long haul. And again, defense mechanism, that maybe not the healthiest thing to do, but like if I'm going to bear my heart to you, if I'm gonna open myself up for your scrutiny and your criticism and all that jazz, like I want to make sure that you're worth it. Because if you're not, then like for what for what reason did I just like dump out my whole life? And I think it's important to make sure that the people in your life who are close to you that you want to maintain relationships with kind of know where you're coming from. Because there's gonna be some things that you're like, there might be some some days where you're triggered, and like we overuse that word a lot, but like legit, like this whole you know, assault situation. I have been triggered a few times by it, and maybe I haven't said it out loud, but then like my affect changed and my behavior changed, and like then I was like thrown off for the rest of the day, and nobody knew why. And you know, you don't want to like explain the whole backstory that day when you're already feeling raw and tough. Like, you don't it's not something you want to do. And the fact that like like I don't have to worry about this right now. Again, like I've kind of sorted out my safe space, but so many women and people, not generalized people who've been assaulted, are assaulted by intimate partners or family members. And uh pulled up statistics today because I needed to. So from the World Health Organization, estimates published in 2023 globally, one in three of women worldwide, that's about 840 million women and girls, have been subjected to either physical and or sexual intimate partner violence or non-partner sexual violence in their lifetime. One in three. One in three. I don't think that people understand how significant that number is. The fact that I can't remember maybe any women that I've ever encountered that are close to me, or just in general, that haven't had some story of some time that somebody touched them inappropriately, or like they were taken advantage of in a in a way that they weren't expecting, or like it's it's unreal how prevalent it is, and it does it's not talked about enough. I think it's getting more talked about now. I mean, following like Harvey Weinstein and the Me Too movement and the Epstein files and everything going on, like I think this conversation is coming more to light, but with it come so many people who say, Well, why did you wait so long to say anything? Because people don't believe us. It's that simple. Why dig all up all of the sadness and all of this trauma and all of this pain and like lay out everything, whether you have evidence, whether you have whatever, for people to look at you and say, Well, she's doing this for money, she's doing this to ruin somebody's life. That didn't happen. It wasn't as bad as it could have been. Like, my situation could have been a hundred percent worse, but that doesn't mean it wasn't traumatic for me. My worst day might not be half of somebody else's worst day, but it's still my worst day. The fact that women have to think before we do anything, because we have to wonder, is somebody gonna say, well, maybe we just won't say anything because this guy is a prominent figure, he's a good person, he's a kindergarten teacher or whatever. Like, he goes to church, so obviously whatever you're saying is just like incorrect. There's no way that people are multifaceted and definitely don't have secrets in their closet. No, there's no way. I did unfortunately, this guy is gonna keep coming up because he's a pretty big deal in my life. The I referenced this last episode. My best friend's friend, who I dated for a year and a half or some change, he was like that charming guy that everybody loved, and he was just like this goofy teehee ha ha kind of guy. And like my parents saw something in him like at the jump that they were like, mmm, I don't know. But my parents have always been pretty good about like letting me make my own choices, my own decisions, and like kind of figuring things out for myself because I'm also really bad at taking guidance, and if you push the subject too much, I will purposely go in the other direction, just because it shouldn't be that way. I wish it wasn't, but again, I don't know, I'm real stubborn, Scorpio. It is what it is. So my parents kind of flag something wrong with this person, like pretty early on. But I'm like, no, you guys just don't understand. I'm in love. He's also like two years older than me, and I was in high school when he was in college. Again, not a huge age gap, but like once he went to college, the the differences were pretty prominent when he was like going to parties and stuff, and I was like doing homework. A few key points here. For the first six months of our relationship, everything was cool, we were spending time together, everything was lovely, he loved me, yay. But as time went on and we got more quote unquote involved, things started to change, as they so often do. There were times that he would tell me that I wasn't pretty enough, I wasn't blonde enough, my boobs were too big, I didn't do this, I didn't do that, blah blah blah blah blah. So I was always never enough from the jump. And again, all of this was tied up in like his jealousy for me being close and connected with his best friend, our friend, who's in the military, slash my brother-in-law, whatever. So he was always feeling a little insecure about that connection, and just like he was the the definition of negging. Just like, here's all of the ways that I'm gonna put you down to make myself feel better. And nobody knew, nobody knew any of this was happening because I was good at hiding it, except for like my very, very best friend who like stuck with me through the whole thing. Somehow, some way, I don't know, it kind of like started small, I guess. There was some day that we were like, I don't know, we were like play arguing and he pushed me, and I was like, ha ha ha, whatever. And I pushed him back and he got really angry. And he was like, Don't you ever do that to me, don't you put your hands on me? And I'm like, did it didn't you just do that to me? I'm confused. So again, flabbergasted. I am not like a weak-hearted person. I'm pretty scrappy. The fact that that happened and I didn't immediately punch him in the face was confusing, but I let it go because I just wasn't sure. And more and more and more things like that kept happening. I don't even know what happened, but like he was pissing me off one day, and it like bit the tip of his nose because he was irritating me, and so he like bit my arm, he left bruises on me. That was one of his ways to go. He would leave bruises on me in like places people couldn't see with his teeth. And I was like, that's really fucking weird. It's not something you should be doing to somebody. There were a time or two that he would like wrap his hands around my neck and tell me, do you trust me? Like, I could like stop your breathing right now. And I was just like, okay. So eventually, in spite of whatever was happening, we broke up like all the time. It was just like it was not a good situation. But after a while, because he would like punch out at me to see if I would like flinch or whatever, because it like, huh, he like made him excited. And so I stopped reacting after a while. I like schooled my face and my features and my body to not react to anything that he was doing because it made him angry, and like that was the one way that I could fight back without making it worse. And again, you are thinking to yourself, most likely, why would you do this? What is the reason? Why would you stay in this relationship? Like, that's so awful. Because I was young, because I was young, and I thought that this man loved me, and I couldn't quite comprehend that what was happening was happening. I did not realize I was in an abuse relationship, even though all of these things were terrible, and like this is one of the things that I kind of glob on down to how do you feel when you leave this person? If you hang out with this person, your friend, your family, your boyfriend, your girlfriend, your person, whatever, if you leave them, how are you feeling when you're in the car on your way home? Are you happy? Are you fulfilled? Are you satisfied? Do you feel better off? Are you sad? Are you mad? Are you frustrated? Are you feeling shitty about yourself? Hmm. Let's think about it. As all of this was happening, I was getting like further and deeper into a hole of depression because I didn't know how to get out of where I was. And I didn't want to tell my parents because my dad would have like ended this man. Like, I didn't want it to go super sideways, and I didn't want it to I didn't want it to get out of hand because I was like, how did I get here? Like the shame of being in this relationship was overtaking me, and I didn't know how to extract myself safely. And I don't like so instead of doing that, I went numb. I just like blanked out. And like I said, I don't know, a few episodes ago, there were a few periods of my life in this time where I don't remember anything. I'm super glad that I take, like I was writing my journals at the time and I was writing letters back and forth to my friend in the military because there are periods of my life that I blanked out because I was trying to survive. I was like a shell. I was a shell of a person. I was going to work, I was doing whatever, but there was just like nothing inside me anymore. I was dead to the world. Like I was going and hanging out with my friends, but he didn't like my friends because my friends would take him away from me. Or vice versa. He didn't like my best friend Matt at the time because Matt was clued into his bullshit and he knew he could he was seeing all the things that was happening. He would tell me all the time, like, this is not good. Whatever this is is not good. So he really didn't like him. He started to isolate me from my family because he was saying, Well, they don't understand you and they just want to pull us apart and you know, blah blah blah. Like he just started to isolate me from everybody, and I let him do it because I didn't know what else to do. You know, you look back so far into like this pit of your life that you've gotten into, and you're like, What the fuck do I do now? How do I get out of here? And so super trigger warning, guys. Uh, at this point by now, again, I had accidentally gotten pregnant. When I first told him that I was pregnant, he told me I was gonna tell you today that I wanted to see other people, so that sucks. And I'm like, okay, this is the reaction that you give me. This is it. Okay, I was terrified. I didn't know what to do. I didn't tell my parents for quite some time. I told my best friend, two best friends, and they both told a bunch of other people. These were two friends that I thought that I could tell anything to, and like this doesn't seem big deal in a big, like a grand scheme of things, but I only had so many people in my corner at this time, and to have my best friends be the ones to like leak it to the whole school, and the reason that I got put on a slut list and people talked match shit about me and my reputation was in the garbage, like I didn't really care about what people thought about me, and then I realized that people I had never talked to before were like again compiling slut lists and putting me on it. Like, what the fuck do you know about me? Like, I've been with one person ever, and I'm in like a long-term committed relationship. Like, what is happening here? Like, I know the girl sitting next to me at this table who's also talking shit about me has been with like 10 guys. Like, not to like sludge, that's not cool, but why are you doing this to me? You don't know anything about me. That was a bad time. Found out I was pregnant and I was like, cool, it's my senior of college. I was gonna go to college, I was gonna get out of here. It was gonna be easier to like break from this guy because I was gonna be hundreds of miles away where he couldn't get to me, and I'd just be like, well, we're done. And then it would have been like poof, it would have been fine. But that wasn't the case because I at that point, again, I didn't tell my parents, I didn't really know if they had like contingency plans because I didn't want anyone else to have to deal with the mistakes that I had made because that wasn't anybody else's responsibility, it was mine. I was like, Well, okay, when we told his parents, his parents immediately said, Well, you're gonna get an abortion, right? And like while had that had crossed my mind at that point, I was so disillusioned and so pissed off with everything that I looked him in the face and I said, No, because I had a plan. I had a plan. I was gonna have this kid and I was gonna force it on them because they made this monster, and then I was gonna exit stage left. I would no longer be on this earth. I was done. That was my plan, and a few people know that. I think I told my mom. That like way after the fact. And I mean, like, I would come home from hanging out with him and just being like so upset and thinking about all of the things that I was losing in my life. And on the way home, I would just like get closer and closer and closer to like the guard whale. There's a lot of information, guys. If you don't again, if you don't know me, ask thori. Hello, you know me now. But there were like a multitude of ways and plans that I was like gonna leave my shell of myself behind. Just thinking more and more every day. So when you go to therapy, one of the first things they ask you is like, you know, how are you depressed? Have you thought about I don't know how to like put this in a way I'm not gonna get flagged. Like, have you ever thought about harming yourself? Have you ever thought about like leaving this earth? And you know, if you say yes, they ask you more follow-up questions. Did you have a plan? Yep. When you have a plan, it's like really time for intervention. And that's what I have to do with my kids in school too. We'd have to do a risk risk assessment every um every behavioral plan quarter. We had to do a risk assessment if they said at any point in school something concerning, so I'd have to roll down there immediately, go ask them all these questions. And if they said yes, I had to ask more questions, and yes, I had to ask more questions. And eventually, if you get to enough yeses and you have enough information, you have a plan, you have a date, you have a time, it's time for you to go to the hospital to be on suicide watch. I should have been there, but nobody was paying attention because I wasn't telling anybody, so I was a flight risk, essentially. And like, you know, I've told family members this before, and like maybe not so long ago. My mom and I were talking about this, and she's like, dude, we were gonna like let you go to school and raise your kid for you while you were gone. I didn't know that at the time, because why would they have told me that? But they were already in like in in play to like help me out and like let me go on and live my life, but I didn't want to do that. I didn't want to make them pay for the choices that I had made, especially because both of my parents weren't teenage parents. They knew very, like, very well what happens when you like have to give up your life for your child, and you would do it if you had to. Now, my plan was based on, you know, not having this child and not actually knowing, and whatever, whatever. So like before me and after me had different plans, but I just didn't want to be a part of it anymore. And that was kind of how I got so far along that I just didn't I didn't want to be involved. I don't want to be involved with this life, I don't want to be involved with a person. I did not want to be tied to this person for the rest of my life, and that was like the traditional answer. You guys are gonna get married, right? I'm like, no, why would I don't even want to be with him now? Like, why would I tie myself legally to this person forever? I would rather die. Literally. I I don't know how I got on this big, like in-depth story of all these things, but I don't know. We're gonna fast forward a little bit. Long or short, I had a miscarriage because I was in an extremely stressful situation, and my body said, No, none for you. And whatever intervention God had planned for me said, I don't think so. This is not where you were supposed to go. I lost that baby, I dumped that guy, I got out of there. You know, I was able to like resume my life, resume play, go to school, do all the things I needed to do, and it was fine. Everything was fine. That was the best thing that could happen to me. But long of the short to say, someone that I deeply cared about was terrible to me. They treated me like property, they put their hands on me, and I was also terrified. Again, best thing that probably could have ever happened to me. If you were gonna put your hands on me, what would you have done to a child? Where had our where would our kid have been someday? And like that makes me sad to think about, and I'm kind of glad that things happened the way they did. I'm ecstatic that things happened the way they did, truthfully. But like, you know, again, someone who's supposed to love me and care for me and like all of this stuff, you love me so much, you simply can't live without me, blah blah blah. Like, this is how you treat somebody that you love and you care about. Suffice it to say, being a woman or general person is really difficult because you just don't know what people are gonna do and when they're gonna do it. And everybody says, I would never let that happen to me. I would never be so weak. My friend, you might. If you sit in that boiling pot long enough and you don't realize that it's happening, you might. But let's not like ask why didn't you leave? Why were you so weak to make these choices, whatever? And instead of asking, why did that man think it was okay to do the things he did to you? Why did that man think it was okay to isolate you from your family? Why did that why did that man think it was okay to hurt you? Why did that man think it was okay that when you were vulnerable and told him that you were pregnant to say, Oh, I wanted to break up with you today? Why didn't he think that that was acceptable? Why did that person hurt me when I was a child? Uh come to find out also later that that person themselves had been abused by their father. Hurt people, hurt people, baby. Hurt people, hurt people. And that's what happens when you decide that you want to avoid everything that happened to you in your life and not do anything different to change your future. Being a woman is difficult, and again, I don't wanna like don't want to diminish the experiences of men or people who have experienced abuse or neglect or whatever, but largely most of the time, it's women. We have to worry about what we're wearing, we have to worry about where we're going. At any time ever, we have to be aware of our surroundings in the same way that I, as a Hispanic woman, have a different set of roles to play by. People hear my name and they think, well, first of all, they can't, they can't pronounce it most of the time, but they hear my name and they see my brownish skin and immediately, where are you from? What, you know, blah blah blah. In the other episode that I explained, you know, because we marked that I spoke Spanish in school, I got like discriminated against for that. Um, you know, as a woman, people see me on the street and they're like, oh, if she's five foot nothing. If I wanted to grab her and run her away, I could. No problem. If someone wanted to physically overtake me, it probably wouldn't be that difficult if I wasn't prepared. It's just the fact that it's so focused on what we're doing as women and what we're not doing as women and what kind of situations we put ourselves in, rather than really focusing on the fact that like there should be higher prevalence of like teaching people that no means no, that it's not okay to isolate people, that it's it's not okay to weaponize love, and it's not okay to weaponize your feelings or your someone's love for you to manipulate them into whatever it is that you want to do. You know, like the safety of women or children or whatever, it's like it's laughable. It's laughable, you know, and more and more, like I'm chronically online and I've seen a lot of posts about like if you have that creepy uncle coming and you tell your daughter you can't wear XYZ because your uncle's gonna be here, it's not your daughter's problem. It's not your daughter's responsibility to wear whatever or to like present herself just so or not be perceived. That uncle shouldn't be there. That's it. He should not be there, he should not have access to your life. If you have any questions ever about whether or not this person is safe to be around your children or your family, it's not your family's problem to be there, to conduct themselves just so. That person doesn't need to be around your children ever protect your fucking children. I get really upset about that. It just sucks to have to have this conversation and know that I've had varying versions of this conversation a million times in my life with a million different women and knowing that the women I love and the women that are prevalent in my life have similar stories, if not worse, stories about how they were taken advantage of by someone they trusted. And it is fucked up. It's fucked up, it's not okay. Fast forwarding or thinking about the future to if I ever have children, if I ever have a girl, like what I would do to keep her safe and to protect her. And again, like my parents did just about everything they could to avoid me ever having to go through this, and yet I did. I was in a safe house. I was not allowed to go many places, not a lot of people were able to like and my mom kept the same rules. If we had someone coming over, I hadn't like girlfriends over, my parents, my brothers, my dad were not allowed to be there. They were somewhere else because my mom didn't want to have people worry about that, and I think that's so fucking solid. Good for her. You know, again, I was just I was kept as safe as possible, and things still slept through the cracks, and that's not like to blame my parents for anything. Obviously, again, it's like not their problem. It's the problem of the person who betrayed my trust. It's a weird world, and it's really unfortunate that so many of us have these stories to share, and I really wish we didn't. But the reason that I talk about so many like uncomfortable and really personal things is because I think it's important to highlight the fact that like so many of us are dealing with so many more things than we've ever talked about, and like something that happened to me when I was six or whatever has shaped who I am. I'm 37, it's been a long time since then, and this is still affecting parts of my life. I still tell the people I work with all the time, you know, let's keep our boundaries intact because I don't like people touching me. So if someone tells you I don't want to hug, I don't, I'm not interested, I'm uncomfortable with that, you need to recognize that and not take that personally. My nephew is on the spectrum, and his mom was telling us, you know, he just like hugs by putting his head on somebody. I think that's cool. That is absolutely acceptable. And I love that she has embraced that and let him just do things the way he wants to do them. Because, you know, it's definitely probably not the same situation, but like his sensory overload, he might not let people touching him for whatever reason. You know, he wants to keep his boundaries, and like that's something that I'm probably 100% gonna do when I have kids. You know, if you don't want to hug this person, don't. If it's family and you don't want to give them a kiss or whatever, and they're gonna be like salty about it, I don't care. Your body is important. And like one of the things that the girls were talking about in that podcast I mentioned was like people on spectrum or people with ADHD, like early on, people are telling you that these are the social boundaries and this is what you're expected to do, and whatever, whatever. So, like, so often as kids with those girls, they were expected to hug people and to, you know, be involved and do whatever it is that they didn't want to do because that's what society was expecting of them. And from that age, they were told that their bodies weren't totally theirs. They had to like submit to whatever it was society was expecting of them. And like that is such a prevalent idea that you have to like bend yourself so people are not offended by you. Meanwhile, your autonomy and your body and your safety and your feelings don't matter because you have to be pleasing everybody else. So when I have kids someday, like in the Hispanic culture, it's like very normal to like hug and kiss when you see somebody. I definitely didn't always want to hug and kiss people. People make me uncomfortable, but that was something that I did because it was just part of our culture and part of something we needed to do. And like COVID, again, was my favorite fucking time ever because nobody could touch me and have to shake hands with people. Like one of the most nerve-wracking things for me was at church when we had to like offer peace to everybody and like handshake with everyone around us, and I would just get really stressed out because I'm like, if I don't turn around, like somebody might be holding their hand out, or what if I just like stare at the floor because I don't want to touch anybody? I don't know if these people are sick, I don't really want people touching me. Their hands are sticky and clammy. I don't know you. Please don't perceive me. Like, let me just be here in my hole. I don't wanna don't look at me. So, you know, like I think that when I do have kids, that is something I'm really gonna highlight, you know. Like, if you don't want to touch this person, or if you don't want to be involved, you don't want to do whatever, no, thank you. I would I don't want to. And that's it. That's it. People can be salty if they want to, but it's not up to them to decide what my future children will be comfortable with. Like I said, it's a heavy one today. Sorry. More often than not, it's heavy, and I don't mean it to be, but like I don't know, I feel like the reason that I want to do this and to continue on with this is to empower the people around me to like really listen to their bodies and check in with themselves and see what it is that they need, and maybe if this like need is unmet or whatever, like how to how to talk to people to get it or to understand why or what in your history might have gotten you there. Like, I just want people to feel seen and understood, and even if I don't know who you are listening to this, if anything that I've said has brought you like some kind of comfort or made you feel like not such a lot like a weirdo freak, I'm here for it. That's what I want to do. I'm like, I rip myself open on this podcast all the time. And like the thing that I think about sometimes is like, if my boss heard this, would I still have a job? Yes, I would. Uh my boss is real chill, she's really cool. And I think that if I like sat down with her and we just like had coffee and shot the shit someday, and I shared all this with her, she'd be like, holy shit, that's a lot. I'm sorry that you had to go through that instead of being like, Well, why would you share that on the internet? I did have a boss one time who told me I talk too much and that I'm too open and too honest with people. I'm like, well, I think that's a pretty good sign that if you feel that way about me, you probably shouldn't be in my life. And that's okay. I don't I don't like bullshit interactions. You know, if I'm gonna invest my time into talking to you or being in your life, like you should know. You should know what I'm made of. And it might make you uncomfortable, but like the facts making you uncomfortable does not negate the fact that they happened to me and the fact that they shape how I react to people every day, and the fact that the people in your life that you interact with have probably had lots of stories like this, or whatever interactions of their own that have molded them, however, and if it makes you uncomfortable to hear them, then you need to re-examine yourself. You need to re-examine how much you want from people because if you want surface interactions where people don't give anything to you, then that's okay. But you have to be aware of the fact that like people are probably not going to uh confide in you, I guess. Like, I don't want to shame anybody for like being uncomfortable with like discomfort, but you know, we're all real people with a lot of stuff in our closets, and it's not fair to just like have to mask all the time, play hunky dory, like everything's cool. Like, I have to deal with a lot of emotions in my job. I have to deal with a lot of like re-traumatization for things that aren't actually happening to me. And again, I have to like try and keep those things separate from me so I don't fall too too far down a hole. But I'm a human who's experienced a lot of things. So when I hear about them or I have to help people work through them, of course I'm gonna think about my own interactions or you know, how would this how would I deal with this? And you know, how would I go forward and whatever? I don't know. You know, you just have to like think about your foundations and how you got through stuff and how you're going to conduct yourself in the future. If you didn't know, now you know. And I'm sorry, kind of, but I'm not really. If you chose to be here, you probably know what I'm up to most of the time. I'm a pretty open person for better or for worse, but the last thing I want to do is like lie and mask on a place that I chose to be safe for me. You get like the unmasked version of me most of the time. And I think that's kind of the point. Just like empowering people to not give in to societal expectations when possible. Obviously, there's some things you have to do to like be a professional and survive in the world, but like there are some places you should be able to let your guard down and situations where you can open up to people and let them know what you're about. I would apologize, like I have before, but I won't. These are these are the real things that happen, the real vulnerable communities that you probably don't think about the next time you're going to judge somebody for staying in a bad relationship or even a bad work relationship or a bad workplace or something, whatever. It's really easy for us to judge sitting on our side where we've either gone through the things and survived them or not experienced them at all. But everyone's going through something. Like that's such a cliche, but like legit, everything is going everyone is going through something. Well, my friends, I think I have run out of sadness to share, and my brain is tired and fatigued, so I am going to fold this giant laundry pile that I've been waiting to fold until podcast day, and I will catch you on the flippy flip, guys. Uh, hold on. Moral of the story. People have gone through shit, and so have you. Be nice to people. And like maybe if you see your friend is like having a hard time and they are uncomfortable or not themselves, at least give them the chance to explain it to you or to ask them if they need any support or whatever. It might make you uncomfortable. People crying in front of me makes me really uncomfortable. But it's important to give people that space if they need it. So, as usual, care about the people you care about, love all the people you love on. Life is hard, and we only have each other. Give yourself a little high five and a little love today, guys, because we're all doing our best. We made it. Okay, I will see you guys next week. It has been real, but real. Bye.