Having Nothing to Say
And letting yourself write about the hard thing despite the nothing
This week’s newsletter briefly mentions sexual assault/rape further down, about paragraph 6 onward. There are no graphic details, only the general mention of it, but please be gentle if needed.
This week I am sitting with not having anything to say. It’s Saturday night, this will come to you tomorrow. It could be a writing block. It could be loss of motivation. Perhaps it is that things are unstimulating right now. Some things are scarier, which often puts me into a freeze state. I’m not really a ‘flight’ type of responder, you’re either getting fight or freeze out of me. I don’t have a lot of fight in me right now.
There’s things I want to be able to speak to, but of course fear overrides: perhaps I do not have enough knowledge on a topic or event I’d like to express thoughts about or maybe the thoughts that I do have might make me a target for scrutiny and judgement. That’s worth sitting with, too. The fear and discomfort that whatever I could put out of my hands and out into the world might be judged so harshly that I’d never want to put something out again. Maybe that’s how I got into this state of hiding. Of freezing. Of finding constantly seeking inspiration or a dopamine hit from a screen. I’m always asking myself what I am trying to soothe whenever I’m locked into my phone time, or bouncing from task to task in my home.
I spoke with my mother today, who deals with a lot of these anxieties on a greater level, and I told her: “I feel stuck today. There’s things I have to do, but I don’t want to, and the things I want to do I can’t do comfortably because I have other things that feel like should be done first.” She expressed she knew exactly what I meant. So often I hear her describe how much she wants to read, but can’t. How much she’d like to go for a walk, but can’t. The mind locks in on the anxiety. We do our little soothing behaviors, even if at hour 6 they become an irritant to us, building negative emotions and experiences through out our nervous system. Then the body just can’t.
What am I holding in my body? Today my spouse shared with me that after an announcement of a huge tour, a new article written by Aiyana on Medium recounts her experience of grooming by Jesse Lacey, the lead front person of the band Brand New. This is big news in our house. Brand New and Jesse have been testing the waters on their come back after it was brought to light in 2017 that Jesse had a long history of grooming, manipulating, and abusing young women, often using his leverage as a musician as his “favorite weapon” (the lyrics are the give away, I kid you not).
Brand New was my favorite band all through high school and my 20’s. I am the same age as Aiyana, maybe a year older. I convinced my high school boyfriend, who was my ex at the time, to drive me to Milwaukee for their show in the spring of 2007. He said he’d do it if I paid for his ticket and bought him Wendy’s. In the spring of 2009, I rallied a group of my art school friends to drive to Chicago to see them once again. My friend Sam, also a huge fan, got into a pit of nearly 30-year-old men. We linked arms and waited. “Just try to stay standing” I told her, and as the first song started, we were torn apart by the crowd.
In 2015, my best friend bought me tickets to see them in Milwaukee at Summer Fest. The last time was the most important time in hindsight, because at the time I was in a relationship with someone who is very much like Jesse Lacey. A man who could not see beyond his own experience and did not care who his suffering touched.
Today is that man’s birthday. He is not just my ex, he is my abuser and my rapist. I don’t believe that he knows those things, but I know it. Much like Jesse Lacey’s 2017 apology for the primary callout of his abusive behaviors, having blamed it on sex addiction and stress, I imagine this man would have alcohol and daddy issues on his laundry list of excuses for unintentionally hurting me (and others). I also imagine that today, on his birthday, he had a lovely day with his wife, his family, and felt the pangs of getting older as we all do. I imagine he laughed, missed certain loved ones, and for a time only thought about the future. I imagine he will fall asleep tonight warm and comfortable. I imagine what bothers him in his dreams is something I know very well and, at the same time, nothing about at all. I imagine he will wake tomorrow and life will go on, easy as it can be for someone like him.
Whenever I get news like this, some reminder that we should never put people on pedestals and we should always be prepared to be disappointed by others, especially men in power positions, I can’t help but think about my own up-close-and-personal experience with it. I don’t think about my ex often these days, but when I do, I feel so caught off guard. Who was I to let that happen to me? Who did my father raise? Were none of the stories I heard from other people/women capable of inspiring me to be stronger? I know that is not how abuse works. It took me the last 9 years to understand what happened to me. To finally tell myself that I am not responsible, even for my participation, because I was not the one in power. Now, as a therapist, I am enlightened and empowered to gently guide my clients who have experienced harm to knowing that we don’t have to be wholly accountable for how we respond when we are being harmed/abused/taken advantage of. Sure, we could try to take note and do better, but we could have also not been harmed in the first place.
Aiyana’s reflection of her 2006-2007 experience with Jesse Lacey resonates within me. We may be long past our immediate participation in #MeToo (if you don’t know Tarana Burke by now, you should), but there are still stories worth speaking to. There are still experiences worth examining.
I was so thrilled and grateful to hear writer Jamie Hood speak about her new book Trauma Plot: A Life on It’s Been a Minute with Brittany Luse. In conversation with Luse, Hood references literary critic Parul Sehgal’s New Yorker piece “The Case Against the Trauma Plot,” the outcry and frustration over Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life (a book Hood and I both found value in reading), and speaks to finding meaning in life after experiencing serious sexual violence. For some people, this won’t be the time to read about rape and violence. I am always in praise of being gentle with ourselves if we need to. I am coming to a time in my life and experience where a book like Trauma Plot is needed, welcomed, and desired. I hope you’ll take a moment to listen to Luse and Hood’s hopeful discussion. Luse’s podcast is often the only thing I can muster to put on, she engages in making great conversation, and her voice is a joy in my ears.
I imagine tonight I’ll go to bed and I’ll try to form some kind of night time habit. I’ll think about how I stopped my sobriety this year, after 6 years, and I’ll wonder if I am making the right choice. I imagine I’ll wake up tomorrow, likely very early, to the sound of my dog’s toe nails (is it okay to distinguish that they are toe nails, or do dogs just have nails because they don’t have finger nails?) on the wood floor while my cat gurgles screams of hunger behind him. I imagine I’ll kiss my spouse and we’ll have our usual nice morning exchanges. I imagine I’ll have coffee and anxiety about writing this and putting it out for everyone to see. I’m not one for an exposé at this time in my life. I might be hankering to write one, but not to have people read one. I think maybe it is just better to act like I have nothing to say: clearly, after sitting down to write this, I have something to say. I just don’t know how to say it sometimes.
What I can say is no one is hurting me now. It is never too late to say your piece. If for some reason my ex announces a world tour, then I might. But for now, I’ll just point out that it happened and leave the painful parts in the memory filing cabinet. I’ll count my blessings that I married someone good. That I was able to be okay enough after all that to even marry someone at all. Maybe it is good that sometimes I don’t have anything to say, because maybe that means I am safe. What do you think you might have to say when you feel like there’s nothing to say?
I always applaud you for setting yourself this task and giving yourself room to figure out the thing that needs saying. It’s certainly always important to me. I don’t know when, if ever, I’m going to be ready to write about the joy of having known that supreme safeness you describe (though I can talk about it to certain friends and my therapist). But it lightens my spirit to read about it.