safe?

well, as the superstition goes, bad things come in threes.

i've taken my three punches in as many weeks. it's been a helluva run at my house it seems.

i've been hiding while i sort through each happening, but hiding hasn't stopped more from happening. nothing will stop more from happening.

as forest gump so adequately said: shit happens.

i'm fortunate enough to have great friends that understand both my need to talk out and my need to hide. i've been able to reach out to my sounding boards and support systems as needed to work through some really shitty stuff. i'm also fortunate enough to have a therapist that doesn't deal in traditional talk therapy- i do enough of that on my own and it only gets you to a certain point. she is trained in non-traditional therapies (you may remember me babbling about hakomi therapy lately) and understands the way the body processes and knows physical ways to deal with and eliminate negative experiences. AMAZING balance when i've reached the limit of what logical analysis can do.

aside from the friends and the therapy- WRITING is my biggest outlet. i haven't been writing because- well. it's hard. i don't want to talk about terrible things. i don't want pity. i don't want people to look at me different.

BUT I ALSO DON'T WANT TO HIDE AND KEEP IT INSIDE.

so. here it is. the ugly, horrible month i've had:

a few weeks ago i was raped. one week later my house was ransacked (not robbed, but they made a good mess). last night my son was stopped on his way home from school by a person asking him to get in their van and give them directions somewhere.

any one of those is a pretty nasty blow to a person's sense of security. all three of them together has me reeling. the ironic (?) thing is that i *just* went to my therapy yesterday to get better tools to deal with the rape and ransacking then i get home to my son being violated. still recovering from a left right combo and the universe lands a core body shot.

i don't know how to handle all this. i want to take my son and move far away and hide somewhere. i know however that shit like this happens everywhere. there is no "safe bubble" that we can move to. there is no place that is exempt.

but what do you do when every sense of personal security is stripped away and violated? i've learned tools to work on how i respond to the individual events, but how do you regain a sense of security as a whole?

i know people would say: GET A GUN. what the fuck good would that do me? the rape was someone i thought was a friend. someone that had been to my house countless times and just...i guess decided that respecting me was not on his list of things to do. a gun wouldn't have helped. the ransacking happened when i wasn't home- if there had been a gun on the property now they might have it. not great. and what good would a gun have done my son last night walking home?

i do the easy things- i've cut communication with the rapist. i make sure my doors are locked ALL THE TIME now. i'm researching personal alarms for my son to carry on his backpack (the leading contender).

but what do you DO? i'm the type of person that worries about having the cops at my house two weeks in a row and getting on some annoying citizens list. i don't want to go crazy and install razor wire around my property and adopt 6 junkyard dogs and a personal body guard to walk my son to and from school.

i don't know how to fight back against the unkown. the rape was...easy? to deal with. i knew the person. i cut contact. done.

but when you don't know who's been in your house. when you don't know what stranger is stopping your kid. how do you fight an invisible shadow? how do you feel safe again?

but i'm not giving up this fight. i'll keep swinging even if it's just at shadows. i'm going to make sure my son doesn't live in a bubble of fear. i'm going to make sure our house feels like OUR HOUSE. i'm going to not let one drunk asshole make me scared of being touched.

but like any fight, it's exhausting. i worry too much about burdening other people or sounding like a hotbed of drama by talking about it. so i bottle it up and try to deal with it as quickly and simply as possible. i have days when i feel safe again. then days when i don't want to open my curtains or look outside. and i realize i'm still at the epicenter. these things just happened. i'm still in the first few circles of shock waves. i think (and hope and beg the universe) that all the shoes have dropped for a while. we've taken our three hits. just like when death came calling. it took our three and we found a way to make it through.

i don't know if there's a point to any of this other than just pure brain vomiting. calling the demons by name and acknowledging their presence.

it's been a rough few weeks. but i'm still here. licking my wounds and hiding but still here. staying back and plotting/figuring out a battle plan, but still here.

i have the silver linings- at least my rape wasn't brutal and bloody and violent. at least my house wasn't robbed and destroyed and left a total loss. at least my son knew to run away straight home and i'm not contacting the milk carton company today. i have my pillars of support. i have my horribly morbid sense of humor that handles dark shit like this in a terrible but therapeutic way.

this too shall pass.

painfully like a kidney stone.

but this too shall pass.