#metoo

#nofilter #goodhairday

Yep, that hashtag in the title means what you think it means. But that's not what I want to talk about today.

I was cruising around on Facebook the other day and was overwhelmed by the number of posts in my timeline that said, simply, "Me too." Blown away. It is the nature of this particular beast that we are certain that we are the only one, especially if we have the opinion that the trauma was of our own making. But that's not what I want to talk about either.

What I want to talk about is the legacy that it leaves, and how I'm looking back at my life now through the #metoo filter. Y'all that know me know what I do for a living. If not, I'm a sign language interpreter. Sign and the Deaf Community have been a part of my life since I was a kid, and it is often my go-to when, as I am want to say, I lose my English. But it is also my go-to when English, specifically auditory English, is too much. My second language has led me through two tours of duty in higher education and a decade of working in mental health, and if I'm honest I have no idea which is scarier, more dangerous, or more triggering.

Enter the self-reflection stage. I posted awhile back about how I feel like I navigate a great deal of my life with my eyes closed. Why do I do that? Fear? Uncertainty? Perhaps because it is just nicer inside my head than out? I think I found out in something that I felt led to respond to another #metoo-er on Facebook. She had posted that there are those creeper moments that you feel you have been violated in some way, nothing has really happened that could be reported, but the icky feeling is still there. My response was this: "In my day job I get this creeper feeling sometimes and I can't put my finger on what is causing it. I try to remind myself that it is not me in the situation, but the two people that I'm interpreting for, and my past creeps in and wrecks my compartmentalizing. That's different...that's me...but when I feel like I'm being addressed directly by a look or inflection then...well, this. Ugh. Throw in the vicarious trauma that just comes with what I do for a living, and I am just never sure but always hyper-aware and it is EXHAUSTING."

I'm not going to detail what happened to me or with/by whom or any of that, it does no real good at this point to rehash all of that. No one has been or will be reported, at least not by me. But I guess I need to talk about the after effects. The hyper-vigilance. The destruction of my ability to trust...not right away, oddly enough, but over the course of the 30+ years since, as I follow the same path over and over and am reinforced in my belief that if someone is kind to me, there is a price tag on that kindness. I'm lucky beyond measure to be married to someone (now, not the first time around for certain) that, if he has a price tag on his love for me, has hidden it so well that I will never find it. I have friends in my life that I adore that I'm fairly certain will have my back, but the little nasty voice is always there telling me that I have to do whatever I can to keep them there.

It's the little stuff too, that this #metoo has made me stop and pay attention to that led me to this post, to share what's in my head in the hopes that it will make a difference. The after effects are real and are at times harder to manage than the actual event. "Dying is easy, young man. Living is harder."