voice

Hi Maggie,

When tests come, they come in bunches.  Your new son will be testing you, but he will do so less and less.  Was he smoking by himself?

I love the fact that you challenged him about expecting to be bored, or planning to be bored.  Perfect!!

I'm glad your husband was not crazy abut the hypnotist.  Apparently it was your test, and he was the channel.

With the dreams, I think I am finding my voice, as well as recognizing what most likely happened to us. I'm still not quite to a point where I own it, because I don't remember. But that is the point of sexually abusing infants. They can not verbalize besides screaming. And many things make them scream.  Sexual abuse is not one of the first things we consider.

I feel like much of my life has been one long, silent, voiceless scream.

That sentence brought tears...I never thought that before.

In my dreams, I am screaming. I am furious.

In the first, I was simply screaming I can't stand this, I don't want to see/know. In the second I was screaming at the perpetrator. In the other, which may have been chronologically second, I was screaming at the victim, trying to keep them awake and aware...not to bury...

This weekend we worked on white privilege.  I did not know that there weren't white people before it was invented in the 1700s, I think, as a way to create racism. I did know the separation was created, because I read my Howard Zinn. Before racism was created, people identified by nationality and religion, but never by color.

I had a talk with another woman.  I don't remember how it started,but I challenged her to think about being a woman and being unsafe walking down the street. Strange men feel they have the right to comment on our bodies. We are not safe, we are not free.  She acknowledged that she felt bemused by men when they did that, like she was looking down on someone rather simple and stupid.

I wondered if that is the way people with darker skin who have been disempowered feel about people with lighter skin who are oblivious. 

But to me it is just a cover.  We use our bemusedness to cover our clear comprehension that we are just a body that can be taken and used. We are not a person and we are not safe.

Then someone else told a story about a soc class where the professor asked everyone to take out a piece of paper and write down all the steps they take each day to make sure they are safe.  The female students began writing furiously. The male students were dumbfounded.  What do you mean? They had nothing to write. And so we keep thinking, keep analyzing, maybe keep screaming...

Love and hugs from Clare