I went to see a counselor a couple of weeks ago.
Not for a mental health thing or anything. I don't trust counselors like THAT any further than I can throw them. After knowing too many people who become dependent on having a diagnosis, and knowing too many people who allow their "cures" to lie entirely in the hands of someone outside of themselves, I'm simply not willing to talk to THAT kind of counselor. Not if I can help it. A short manifesto: I WILL NEVER BENEFIT FROM HAVING MY BRAINS PICKED AND MY HEAD SHRUNK.
If I can't figure my own head out, on my own, I don't deserve to possess that head. I mean, I'm at liberty to say this because I don't have any life-destroying chemical brain disorders. But I'm still saying it. Loudly.
Sorry. I'm rambling.
Anyway, I went to see this counselor. I had to ask her what to say in my statement to the court about Jake's case. To achieve my purpose, I needed to meet a few criteria. One, I had to convince the court that Jake's a nice, decent fellow. And two, I had to convince them that I'm halfway sane, and not just a codependent battered woman who doesn't know which way is up.
It's that second part that's hard. Not because I AM a codependent, battered woman -- I'm not. But because that's what the court, and the lawyers, and the counselors EXPECT that I am. Social workers and prosecuters of domestic violence cases do not like to hear, "Everything's okay now, we're going to work everything out." They think that means that in two weeks, the poor battered woman is dead of a "ran-into-the-dresser" injury. This is not the case. But evidently, this is the kind of case they're used to, or at least the kind they expect. And it's extremely difficult to get somebody to believe you're something other than what their predetermined idea is.
So I went to a counselor. "What," I asked, "Does a battered, codependent woman sound like? Because I must make it clear that I am not that. I must make it clear that I am already empowered, and that I have the clarity of mind to genuinely state that Jake is a nice guy and shouldn't go to prison."
The counselor was very nice. She still said I'd been abused, but at least she was nicer about it than the counselor who told me I was an alcoholic and that I should go into treatment with her before I poison my baby. Oy.
The counselor had me tell her the whole story. So I did. I told her everything, front to back. Everything. Even the dorky parts, like the time Jake decided he wanted to prove he was a badass, so he named my stuffed cow "Napalm," and proceeded to talk softly to it every night thereafter. (Sorry, sorry, sorry -- *I* think it's REALLY cute, so whatever...)
The counselor told me what I should write in my statement to avoid sounding like a codependent, battered woman. She said I WASN'T, in fact, a codependent, battered woman, and that that should be enough. She said that what I'd already written was fine, but that I might organize it thus:
Part one: What Jake did was not okay.
Part two: I have given the situation a ton of thought.
Part three: I have come to the conclusion, based on my ton of thought, that Jake and I can work things out for ourselves, and that we need to do that together, and not through iron bars...
So I wrote it, and it's done, and I can't revise it anymore because the county clerk has a copy of it now, and the county clerk is sort of like God or something.
But it's always in the back of my mind... Today's entry is going to be about the first part of my statement: the "not okay" part.
I woke up at 3 AM or so this morning. I went to the bathroom to see if that was the problem. But it wasn't. I drank some juice to see if that was the problem. It wasn't. So I figured I'd just lay there until I either fell asleep or HAD a real problem.
I lay in bed, reading a magazine article about ayahuasca. Or something spelled sort of like that. It's a South American drug that makes you see neat shit and then puke your guts out. Great imagery.
I stared at the bay.
I lit a red candle and accidentally dumped a bunch of wax on "The Collected Short Works of Fyodor Dostoevsky." That's okay; the works aren't short anyway.
I read a magazine article about the Japanese tradition of wabi-sabi: seeing the beauty in imperfect things. To me, this idea does not require a magazine article. This idea requires, as its sole example, falling in love with somebody with a freaky nose, or a big ugly mole, or a record of voting Republican. Or, a study of the freaky moss on the freaky tree behind A-Dorm at Evergreen. This concept SHOULD be innate; it shouldn't be some trendy, super-special Japanese religious thing. Duh. Just duh.
I still couldn't sleep. I listened to the radio and tried to mentally compose an essay about the main themes of classic rock: outlawism, leavin', and something else I can't remember. Oh, and fucking.
At 5.30 AM, I heard a shriek. It echoed off the sides of the building, and made its way into my apartment.
A woman screaming, and screaming, and screaming. She started sobbing, absolutely hysterically. She ssaid, "get the fuck away from me!" She yelled something like, "I'll kill you if you touch me!" She said, "just leave!"
THAT was when I got a legitimate problem to keep me awake. Two of them actually. One, two of my neighbors were maybe killing each other. And two, I had suddenly come down with a NASTY case of something like morning sickness.
NONE OF THIS WAS OKAY. AT ALL. THIS WAS NOT OKAY. NOT OKAY. NOT AT ALL OKAY.
I sat by the window, listening to the fight. I hugged Napalm (the stuffed moo-cow) and my knees, and rocked back and forth for awhile.
I was really afraid. I can't explain this yet. This is something I will be working on for awhile -- not with a counselor, just with my own head. This is a problem. An "issue" if you will.
The thing is, what happened the night of Jake's arrest was not, by any stretch of the imagination, okay. And hearing that woman screaming, and hearing the man sort of screaming back, it ALL came back to me. And there was Jake's picture in the front cover of my notebook, looking up at me with sweet puppy-dog eyes, but it all came back to me: the words, the expressions, the gestures... The six-foot-two drunk man threatening to kill me... Me sobbing on the futon; the futon where I've been sleeping the past few weeks. Me cowering against the wall next to the window. Jake laughing. The knowledge that Jake had no fucking idea what he was doing, maybe didn't even know who I was. And if that was the case, maybe he really would kill me.
That's SO not okay.
Jake didn't know, later, what had happened. He thought he'd had one too many drinks and yelled a lot. And, yeah, that's what happened. But he didn't know... he didn't know the words he used. He didn't know the gestures and the noises and the laughing. He thought I'd over-reacted. He didn't know -- really had no idea -- that I believed he'd really kill me in that state. And you know, while I'd never say this to the lawyers or the judges, or whatever, I STILL believe that if I'd stayed in that room, he would have hurt me, probably very badly. And that's not okay. NOT OKAY.
Over-reacting is not okay either.
I didn't over-react.
I love this person, see. But I have to be safe, and alive, and not afraid.
So this was not okay, at all.
And then, last night, there were these people fighting, and I couldn't block out the noise. I turned on the radio as loud as I dared. I turned on the television, which was playing static. I thought of closing the window but figured it would only make me feel more like hurling. I could still hear the woman sobbing and screaming and her boyfriend yelling back at her. I couldn't tell what the fight was about. I only knew that it was pretty ugly.
I remember once when my parents fought. I was about six or seven. My mom was really freaking out, and she threw a saucepan at my dad. It missed his head, but it made a dent in the wall, and the dent stayed there until the day we moved out. I grabbed my little brother by the arm, and hid him under the victrola in the living room. I hid under the couch. I don't know how the fuck we managed to FIT under those things, but we did. My brother fell asleep, I think, after a little while. I kept guard, thinking that these screaming people were not really my parents anymore, that they were some sort of demons, or zombies or something. When my dad found me under the couch later, crying, he dragged me out, gave me a hug, and put me and my brother to bed. My parents never fought like that, ever again, at least not around their kids.
I don't fit under the couch anymore.
It's not in my nature to yell or scream. Once, I tried to break a bottle and it didn't even break. I'm LOUSY at violence. I can be a bitch, but I can't yell or hit. Okay, okay, I can yell, but I'm really not very good at it, especially not when somebody else is yelling at me. I'm extremely frightened of yelling and hitting. It ISN'T okay to yell and hit. Or to threaten via yelling or hitting.
I sat by my window, listening to the screaming. I cried for about a half an hour before the police showed up at the building.
Now, just for the record, I DID think of trying to figure out which apartment the screaming was coming from. I thought of knocking on the door and making sure everything was okay. Ordinarily, I probably would have done exactly that. But not with the baby. I don't give a shit about myself in situations like that; but I need the baby to be safe. I suppose that's one of the main reasons I ran that night Jake was arrested, even though I didn't "know" it at the time.
I also thought of calling the police. But I don't have a phone. And besides, I trust cops about as much as I trust the water in Gary, Indiana. Probably less.
Somebody else called the police. Maybe it was the screaming woman. Maybe it was her boyfriend. Maybe it was their neighbor downstairs. The officer strode in quite confidently. They're getting used to my building, apparently. That made me cry harder.
The screaming stopped. The sobbing stopped. And fifteen minutes later, the policeman left the building. I watched him get into his car. He didn't have anybody else with him. I was very relieved. Why? Because the screaming had stopped, AND nobody's going to have to go through what Jake and I are going through. Probably the officer just ticketed them for being loud.
After the cop left, I started feeling a little better. Didn't feel so much like losing my breakfast. It still took me about an hour to fall asleep, though.
This is not okay. None of this is okay. Screaming and yelling -- especially at 5.30 in the fucking morning -- is NOT okay. That kind of anger, that kind of rage, that kind of HURTING is not okay. And so help me, I'm never going to be in any situation like that, ever again. I'm not going to be the hurtful one. I'm not going to be the one cowering against the wall. And I'm NOT going to be the one hiding under the couch. And neither is my child -- not EVER.
I'm okay now.
I've thought about things a LOT.
And I want to talk to Jake, dammit. How much longer am I going to have to wait?
I'm hungry now. I'm going home.
~Helena*