#500wordsaday: I'm Not Afraid Anymore (spoken like Kevin McAllister)

1) A time you lied
2) A time you were hurt
3) The last time you were happy for a week straight
4) Family
5) How you wish you started your day (and then why you aren’t doing that already)
6) Your most authentic moment
7) When you really loved yourself
8) When you were scared
9) Why you long for love
10) Something about you that you’re hoping people don’t notice   / Something about you that you’re hoping people do notice

500 Words a Day: When You Were Scared

A time I was scared?? I don't know...I can't think...

**fast forward 3 hours**

According to one of my girlfriends, I have writer's block on this subject because I don't scare easily. Which is true; aside from monkeys and outhouses, of which I have real fears, I just don't find myself all that afraid, all that often. Plus, I have written several blogs about facing my fears, overcoming fears, and the likes...so I felt that to make this a different post, I really needed to think of a specific moment of being afraid, not a general fear.

But I still can't think of one. Because I have writer's block, hence why I needed this blog challenge to get my wheels turning.

**fast forward another hour**

It's no secret that several years ago, I found myself smack dab in the middle of an abusive relationship. After he smacked me in the face with a Tupperware plate only a few weeks into dating, somehow I was moving into this guy's apartment, then buying a house with him, cooking all of his meals, raising his daughter, and living in a shadow of what I used to think was my life. It was weird.

It's still weird, after a lot of time and a lot of therapy. I'm the opposite of the "type" of woman who gets abused by a guy. I'm tough. I'm strong, confident, and stubborn. And at that time in my life, I was also controlled, manipulated, and bullied. I made decisions out of fear, constantly on edge and trying to avoid starting a fight. I was certainly not myself.

There was a summer when we were together, that two of my cousins were getting married, just a couple weeks apart. Of course, being the typical abuser, my boyfriend hated my family and didn't want to attend either event. We compromised though, and he agreed to attend the first as my date, and that the second - in which I was the Maid of Honor - he'd skip.

Clearly, I actually think not attending a wedding with your girlfriend makes you an absolute douche bag, BUT at the time, and in my state of mind, this seemed fair enough.

So the day of Wedding #1 arrives, and I am really excited; I borrowed this sexy vintage wrap dress of my mom's that I worked out tirelessly to fit into, and I am so excited that he's finally coming to something with me. I spend an embarrassing amount of time getting ready, curling every one of my individual ringlets so they're perfect - even though I have natural, bouncy curls - and perfect my makeup. I come bouncing out of the bedroom, ready to go, expecting that he's ready and waiting for me - as any decent man would be.

He's in basketball shorts on the couch, watching basketball.

"Are you going to get ready? We need to get going in a few."
"Nah, I'm not going...there's a Lakers game on."
"But...you said you'd go with me to this wedding."
"I don't want to."

My obvious disappointment is showing on my face, and I get upset; I find myself practically begging him to take me - my family was waiting, I was really excited for him to come (who the fuck knows why). And now 10 minutes from go-time, he literally is like, nah.

Angrily, he throws on slacks and a shirt and walks to the car, as if I have somehow done something wrong. I blindly follow and get in the car, and am already pulling up the directions to the church in my GPS before he's even out of the driveway.

We've not quite made our way from the house to the freeway, when my gut signals my brain in a way that I can't quite explain. You know the feeling you get when someone is following you in a dark alley? It's like that. A sort of light-headed, uneasy feeling, like all I want to do is dive head first out of the car. I don't say a word, just sit patiently and still, letting the GPS in my phone direct us from the southbound freeway, over the Fremont Bridge into downtown Portland. He's been yelling since the freeway on-ramp. I'm ruining his life by expecting him to miss this basketball game. I clearly hate him and want him to be miserable. He hates me, his daughter hates me. I'm fat and ugly, and I disgust him, and maybe if I didn't have these horrible tattoos he wouldn't be so embarrassed to take me out on a date or to a wedding.

And while he's yelling at me, I'm just sitting in the car, listening to the GPS, trying to keep myself composed. No reason to cry, no reason to yell back - that will only make it worse.

"You need to turn right at the end of the bridge."

And in a second, he went from yelling at me, to a white-knuckled, brow-furrowed silence. Because you know, repeating GPS directions is a clear no-no. As he aggressively flipped his blinker, I flinched, and with that, he snatched my phone out of my hand, and from less than a foot away, threw it - full steam - at the side of my head.

From the second the hard plastic hit my temple, I didn't move an inch. He didn't say anything else, nor did I. I picked my phone up from the floorboard, and we sat in dead silence, with the exception of Siri's voice, directing him to the church. My heart was racing, my lower lip trembling, my eyes staring straight ahead; I don't think I even blinked. My throat was dry, and my thighs were trembling, until finally he pulled up at the curb about a block from the wedding venue.

I don't know exactly what came over me, but I practically leaped from the car. The second his foot laid on the brake, I had my purse and cell phone in my hand, and slammed the passenger door in his face, and was halfway up the block before I exhaled the breath I'd been holding for what felt like an hour. I didn't turn around, didn't look back, just walked as quickly as my inappropriately high heels would carry me towards the church, as he drove towards Vancouver, probably seething.

This was a turning point in our relationship, as I could no longer deny what was happening. I was being abused. I had just had a cell phone thrown in my face, and had then been left on the side of the road in downtown Portland, by my boyfriend, who I had been scared to get into a car with. This was a moment of true domestic violence, of which I was an obvious victim. I knew, walking into the church, that my family knew something was wrong. But I still didn't say a word. And I still had a great time at the wedding, danced all night with the groomsmen at the wedding (and considered going home with any one of them, if just to prove a point), and got incredibly drunk before getting a ride home at the very end of the party, in the wee hours of the night.

While the fight we had when I got home was far more heated, far louder, an far more physical, it was nothing like the part of the evening where I was stuck in the car being verbally assaulted by someone who was supposed to love me. I wasn't scared at home, fighting, being slammed against the front door. I wasn't scared of that, because that was routine in our house. It was far scarier being stuck in a vehicle with him, while part of me wondered if he was considering driving it off the side of the Fremont, just to avoid me getting to spend time with my family.

This would sadly not be the defining moment in our relationship, where I would realize I could never make it better and needed to leave; that moment was still more than a year in the future; but this was a defining moment in which I realized I lived with someone I was afraid of, and whom I deeply hated. I would never ask him again to attend an event or party with me; we lived essentially separate lives from that night forward, two people in the same house, who rarely even made eye contact unless we were fighting.

Ideally, I would never have met this guy, and would never have fallen victim to a manipulative narcissist, but several years later I can at least look back confidently. I know I suffered a lot, tolerated a lot, and was bullied a lot - but I did learn to always stand up to what I'm scared of. It's easy to think of things that scare you, or moments you were afraid of something - but what really matters, is that you are able to overcome it all.

And that you don't allow your fear to keep you from forging ahead. #nofear

50 Shades of Kinky Fuckery

So, I just got home from a movie; a handful of my girlfriends and I went to see 50 Shades of Grey. And it was pretty good. I think we all enjoyed it - and not just because it was 20% sex scenes (that didn't hurt, of course). The books were certainly written at an easy reading level, and there were a few too many descriptions of Anastasia's vagina, but they were a quick, fun, easy read - and we were all enticed to see the film adaptation.

There has been a ton of hype surrounding this movie, and a ton of criticism as well. Specifically, I've read several articles about the ways that this movie's portrayal of the dominant/submissive relationship glorifies domestic abuse. There is no shortage of people writing blogs in protest of the film, because of all the different ways Christian Grey is abusive, controlling, and manipulative, and all of the different ways he is violent toward Anastasia.

Umm. Nope.

As someone who has been abused, I can speak from personal experience that in no way does this movie glorify, support, or encourage domestic violence or abuse in romantic relationships. Because a desire to dominate someone in the bedroom does not a violent abuser make.

The plot line to 50 Shades of Grey - in case you were born last week and haven't already heard - is that of a dominant/submissive relationship in a young couple. She's a virgin, he's a head case, he wants to dominate her, they eventually fall in love and the story goes another route. Your basic Disney romance, with some nudity and bondage scenes. But of course, no one can just watch a movie, enjoy it, and go about their day. We all have to analyze it, critique it, and tear it to shreds about all of the underlying meaning and all of the wrong messages it sent to the young women out there.

#BARF.

First of all, there is a huge, HUGE difference between a dominant/submissive relationship and an abusive one. Key differences? Trust, love, and respect.

In dominant/submissive relationships, there are boundaries. There are safe words. There are rules and hard limits. Also, there is love. There's respect for your partner and a desire to give each other pleasure. The relationship is not about control or torture, or wanting to cause pain to the person you love; it's about causing pleasure. And maybe it isn't what you're into in the bedroom, but that doesn't make it evil or bad or wrong; that doesn't mean it isn't erotic or passionate. And it certainly does not make it abuse.

In an abusive relationship, on the other hand, there tends to be a lack of trust. And certainly a lack of respect for your partner. There are no boundaries, no safe words, and no rules. With abuse, there is not love and respect and a fair partnership. Abusive relationships are not about pleasure, they're about control. Abusers are manipulators who need to be in control, who need to be in charge and making decisions. Abusers don't respect the people they're abusing. Abusers don't care about your hard limits, your desires, or really about you at all. Not. The. Same.

In watching the fictional relationship unfold on the movie screen, it was clearly very much about two people who cared for each other, expressing their feelings and desires, satisfying each other sexually and, eventually, emotionally as well. In living a real life domestic violence scenario, there is no healthy expression of feeling and desire. Sure there's sex. It'd be unrealistic to think there wasn't. But there isn't healthy, romantic, passionate sex. It's obligatory sex. It's sex because you have to, because it's expected of you; it's sex with the lights off because you've been told repeatedly how unattractive you are and how awful it is to look at you. Sex in an abusive relationship lacks passion, lacks romance. You do it when you're asked, you don't enjoy it. You don't even have orgasms, so you're certainly not exploding with pleasure while blindfolded and handcuffed to the headboard. Sex with someone who abuses you often ends in a fight because you did it wrong, or because you said the wrong thing, or because you tried to say no. Sex with an abuser is quite the opposite of a dominant/submissive sexual relationship.

Repeat after me: Sex with someone who loves and treasures you and respects your boundaries, is nothing like sex with someone who controls and manipulates you, who criticizes your every move and belittles your existence.

50 Shades of Grey was a book-turned-movie that has gotten a lot of play (see what I did there?) because of the erotic language and juicy sex scenes, and because it gives light to a form of sexual relationship that people in general may not consider the norm. Repeatedly throughout the script, even the main character asks why her love interest doesn't have sex "like normal people." However, just because it's not the norm, doesn't mean it's ugly or abusive. Some women (and some men, really) aren't into anal sex, but some are - that doesn't make it gross or ugly, it just makes it a personal preference. Sex - what you like, what you don't, what turns you on - is all personal preference.

As long as you're with someone who respects you, respects your limits and boundaries, and understands that sex should make you feel safe and satisfied, it's not wrong, no matter what it looks like. You can be into the kinky fuckery with someone who loves you, cherishes you, and protects you. Or you can have vanilla, quiet, "normal" sex with someone who controls you, forces himself on you, and puts you in danger more often than not. It's not bad because it's kinky, nor is it good because it's vanilla.

It's not black and white.

It's grey.

What it really comes down to is, it's not about the type of sex you're having, but rather the type of person you're having sex with. Nothing else is relevant, so don't let other people influence what feels good (or bad) to you.

Even if that means you ask someone to blindfold you and smack your ass with a riding crop.