My Arms
This stupid idiot I work with, I don’t know what is worse: that she is a total Obamabot or that she considers herself some kind of radical when she sit eats meat, drinks beer, etc, one day last month said something to me about how men don’t have to concern themselves with rape. I retorted that men can be sexually assaulted and that it is a definite issue. She really deflated the importance of it and scoffed at my concern.
That night, as I pondered this, a memory was triggered in my mind about my own sexual assault as an adolescent. I took notes!
One of the shittiest things to happen to me as a kid was the year I was lured into being beat up twice by fake love notes. They were both from a girl named “Kristen,” who was real, I think, and instructed me to report to a spot in the woods to hang out. I got beat up both times, why did I go back twice, but I remembered that night, while considering what a fucking asshole my coworker was, that the second time was one of the times a boy molested me. The details are pretty fuzzy, but I can remember the after effects very vividly.
I did keep coming back for more, and this led me to have severe trust issues that remain with me to today. Still, I have a very hard time trusting or spending a lot of time around others. My teen years were spent being super paranoid that everyone was out to screw me over, lie to me, steal from me, which happened a bunch, or otherwise try to ruin my life. I’m still very paranoid about this. Even when people have the best of intentions, I question it to the point of scratching at myself until I bleed.
I went on two different dates a few weeks ago. When the ladies in question asked me out, my first thought was “is this a joke?” 31 years old and I still think like that immediately.
My arms. That kid, who wrote the notes, I figured that out later in the year when I had to grade one of his exams in science class, used to make fun of my arms all the time. I had very skinny, still do, arms as a kid because I was heavily medicated and, thus had difficulty with eating, and, I’ve realized in recent years, an undiagnosed eating disorder, and he would constantly make fun of them. He would talk about my arms and ridicule me. Around this time, I took up burning myself. Little burns up and down my arms, especially where no one could see them in the winter.
I began wearing more and more layers as my teen years went on. I still do. I think this ties into a lot of sexuality issues as well. I think one of the reasons why I have such problems with anxiety and…performance…even when I really want it, the other night I was imagining how great it must be to just fuck someone like a normal person, is tied to trust issues.
I’ve been ridiculed in various parts of my life for not being the right body shape, for not getting the girl, for not thinking normal, for having deviant thoughts, for not wanting to fuck every girl that moves, for not adequately pleasuring a woman. It’s all bullshit, obviously, but once it is in your head it is very hard to get it out.
