Dear Trump Supporters: There is No Timeline for Bringing a Sexual Assault to Light

I suppose it was only a matter of time before the victim-shaming started vis a vis Donald Trump's latest debacle (why don't we call it "Pussygate").

I've spent the last week in a state of shock as I heard Trump boast gleefully about his inappropriate behavior with women. I've been distracted, I've been having panic attacks and nightmares, and it's only getting worse.

My feelings are at a fever pitch today as I've read about women coming forward to allege that Trump's "locker room talk" went way beyond words, that he actually did many of the things he boasted of to Billy Bush according to numerous women, including former People magazine writer Natasha Stoynoff. 

And these women are being crucified by Trump supporters, who are making comments about the convenience of the timing, that they are shooting for optimal financial opportunity and publicity, and even one of my Facebook friends writing, "I have a hard time believing women who jump on the bandwagon 15-30 years later." 

I do not talk about the night I was raped. I have written about it here on this blog, where I have a degree of anonymity and privacy, but I still cannot talk about it.

I do not know my rapist's last name. I do not know where he lives. I do not want to know. I have been fortunate, if you want to call it that, to fall into what could best be classified as "date rape by an acquaintance", which means I've never had to see the monster again.

If the man that raped me--Tom--suddenly started running for public office, if his face was all over the news, if he was spreading hatred, I'm still not sure I would have the courage to come forward publicly. Why would I? The statute of limitations on that crime has run out, and any physical evidence is old and probably useless. 

The vast majority of women (and men) who suffer sexual assault are not going to want to make it a public thing. Those that have the strength to do so immediately, you have my utmost respect, by the way. It eats me up sometimes to think that Tom has probably done what he did to me again because I didn't go to the police (or my mother or a rape crisis center) right away when physical evidence existed, and I could have stopped it by reporting it. I didn't have the strength, though, and I hate myself for that. 

Here's what happens in the aftermath of a sexual assault.   

You have to deal with the physical first. My rape was extremely violent, and there are physical ramifications that still exist today. If you're smart, you get tested for STDs ASAP (I was sort of smart...I did get tested, but I did not share my reasons for wanting this testing done with my doctor). 

After that, you try to find your life again. This can take a long time. Sometimes I think I'm still working on it, nearly twenty years later. You crave normalcy and try to avoid at all costs anything that will bring back the rape in your mind.

By the time you get to the point where you're "okay", you do not want to go back down that rabbit hole. Why would you?

And so you live your life. You slowly learn to live and love and trust again. You do the best you can. Some days are better than others, and blah blah blah.

I wrote that I would probably not have the courage to bring Tom's name forward even if he became a public figure, and I meant it. 

There would, however, be one exception: if Tom was caught on a hot mic joking about raping stupid college girls that didn't know enough not to put down their drinks, particularly if he was running for President of the United States, I would come forward. I would share my story, no matter what people might say about me. 

There is no timeline for bringing a sexual assault to light, and I'd wager a guess that about 85% go unreported. However, we all have a line. That would be mine, and if Tom crossed it, if he lied about who he was and what he did to me that long ago night and how he basically ruined my life, I would still feel a moral obligation to speak up, to not let the sleazeball get away with it anymore.

I suspect Natasha Stoynoff knows that line well. 

Although she no longer works for People, the magazine ran her story. In fact, People might well have been the only major publication that would run it as they were no doubt able to match up her story with a timeline of their own. Was Stoynoff a family friend of the Trumps until that day? Did her professional relationship with them change afterwards? Do the details in her story jibe with what the magazine knows?

Well, a magazine that reports on celebrities believed in Natasha Stoynoff enough to run the story, risk alienating Trump as well as other stars, and issue a statement explaining why they ran it. That would really be going out on a limb for a publication company that depends on maintaining good relations with the people they want to interview and report on.

So to all of you muttering about convenient timing and payouts, please just stop. 

Living with the aftermath of a sexual assault is something no amount of money can assuage, and there is no convenient timing, only the right timing for you in your own personal situation.

That Donald Trump brought about this reaction in so many women speaks to how horrible their experiences must have been, how frightened and damaged they were, and how truly deplorable a human being he is.

He brought about the timing--and the collapse of his house of cards--all on his own.

How You Get Your News: Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

I get my news from a Facebook page called Manchvegas Alerts.  It's a nice little play by play of the police scanners, with commentary, sometimes videos of people fighting in the streets of the grim ghetto of the lovely city, in addition to your basic news stuff.  

Yes, I'm serious. It is freaking epic.

                                    Manchester, NH (affectionately referred to as "ManchVegas"

And yes, by the way, little old New Hampshire does in fact have a news channel, the milquetoast WMUR.  They are scooped by Manchvegas Alerts all the time.  It's really kind of awesome.

I'll get an alert from WMUR that I already read on Manchvegas Alerts, sometimes hours before.  

And the staff is extremely funny.

It got me thinking, though ... I used to teach Journalism, and I always started with the concept of communication.  How does one person convey a message to their audience?  Then we play charades for a bit, then we get into cave drawings, and things go upward from there up to the modern day newspaper.

My family got the local newspaper, Foster's Daily Democrat, delivered every day, and I read it cover to cover.  I didn't always understand it, but it certainly generated some conversation.  One day, when I found one of my neighbors on the DUI license revocation list, my parents talked about trying to keep me away from the newspaper.  

As Scout Finch said in To Kill a Mockingbird, "Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read.  One does not love breathing."  

So I guess I should be grateful that my parents considered that, because, while they never followed through, I had learned the lesson that the news--the newspaper or the nightly news and probably even some books, although not the ones I read at the time--was accessible.  

I was also inexcusably nosy.  I still am.

And I still love to get my news.  In fact, I love it more now than ever.  I don't have to read an entire newspaper cover-to-cover, I can scan through headlines on sites of interest.  I do have the app for WMUR, to be fair, and I also read CNN, MSNBC, and Fox (because I actually try to be fair and balance) for national news.  I love People and TMZ because I have an obsession with celebrities.  

And that's just what's reaching out to me ...

If I decided I want to find my ex-husband on the aforementioned DUI license revocation list, for example, Google does it (and I can giggle with glee).  If I want to know about the new medical condition they think I have, I can go to PubMed.

For Pete's sake, Facebook suggests friends based on your friends and sites or pages based on your interest ... the whole Big Brother thing is pretty overwhelming.

I cannot fathom technology and accessing the news any simpler than on my iPhone.  The newspaper as an institution is long dead, and even news sites are losing steam because of pages like Manchvegas Alerts (seriously it's a laugh riot, but it's the news).

What do you think the future holds for journalism?

Let's Talk About the Weather ...

I hate summer. I just hate it. I know this is an unpopular opinion, that everyone in the world seems to be desperate for the heat to arrive, but I'm just holding onto the cool and comfortable while I still can.

I live in New Hampshire. One season of the year--fall--is a veritable paradise. The mornings and evenings are cool and crisp, there are not words to describe the joy of long walks through gorgeous autumn leaves, and it's just so picturesque and peaceful that I find myself smiling all the time. Spring is much the same (other than I know what's right around the corner, so ...). Winter in New Hampshire is an adventure--snowy, often icy, temperatures averaging in the thirties ... but I've lived here my whole life. I enjoy the winter, even driving in snow. Yes, I think it'd be fair to say that my home state comes through for me three quarters of the year.

Then there's summer.

My biggest issue with summer, I think, (besides the fact that I'm deathly afraid of thunderstorms and we sometimes have a lot of them in the summer) is that it's just impossible to be comfortable much of the time. No matter how cold it is in the winter, you can always put on another sweater or add another blanket and you'll end up warm at some point. Even if you walked around naked in the summer, you'd still be dripping with sweat much of the time ... and there's not much you can do about it.

Yes, we have air conditioning. I guess that goes without saying, or else I'd probably have been assassinated by now since I'm such a witch when I'm sweaty, sticky, and uncomfortable. It's just that I like to be outside, and sitting in an air-conditioned room is just not fun. Expect excessive blogging this summer : )

What bothers me the absolute most, though, is that so many people here in New Hampshire spend the entire winter complaining about being cold and miserable and wanting summer to come ... and then when the temperature starts to warm up, all they do is complain that it's too hot to get anything done. I just don't get it.

So what's the weather like where you live (you can be general)? Do you have four distinct seasons? Which is your favorite? Do you find that most people enjoy the climate where you live? Does it bother you when people complain about the weather ... after complaining about the weather?

It's the Little Things ...

I forced Pythagorus, Addie, and Belle to accompany me to a game for my school's softball team today. Actually, that's not completely accurate--Belle absolutely worships one of my students and, when she found out that her "best friend" would be playing, couldn't get us there fast enough.

Since I've been a teacher, I've made it a point to attend games, sporting events, and other extracurricular activities. I chaperone pretty much every dance, and I buy something from every single student fundraiser (it's starting to be a running joke over who can get to Mrs. L first).

It never ceases to amaze me, though, how valuable those little things are to the kids I teach. The fact that I spent a perfect spring afternoon outside with my family watching a game I love seemed ... kind to the kids I teach, as if I was really going out of my way for them. Their appreciation--not just today and not just these students--for the extra attention you afford them is just so much larger than anything I did ... or do.

But it seems to me that, in a way, it's the little things that do make an impact. Those are the things you remember. Pythagorus used to send me flowers all the time (I hate getting flowers--they just die and you have to throw them away and I feel bad about that) and I can't really remember any one flower-sending experience ... but I can remember the pizzas he brought when he came to do a math tutoring session with my students (no, I don't teach math ... several students had some similar questions, and Pythagorus was kind of thrilled to work with kids again) or the lilacs (our bushes just bloomed : )) he cut for my mother on Sunday.

The small and the heart-felt are rarer ... perhaps that's why they seem to mean more. It's really easy to go to Macy's or Saks Fifth Avenue or Dick's Sporting Goods and spend a fortune on flashy presents.

What I've learned as I've gotten older, though, is that sometimes your presence is the best present. It's often a very little thing, just showing up at a two hour baseball game, yet it means the world to others.

So what do you think? Presents ... or presence?

The People Around Us

I've been thinking a lot today about the sheer number of people one can have contact with in a day ... and the possible repercussions of these meetings.

I've spent the past five days in the hospital (this is not yet another hospital post ... I'm being discharged tonight, and then I'll be free of any last vestiges of medical flotsam on this blog), and I've met a lot of nurses, doctors, nurse aides, secretaries, dieticians, and strangely enough, other patients. I have been unbelievably touched by the kindness and respect I've been shown here--it far surpasses what I've experienced at any other hospital. However, these people are in the business of kindness and respect. I'm not naive enough to think that they'll remember the crazy bleeding IV site (don't ask) or the overflowing pee hat (really don't ask), yet these are things I suspect I will always remember. In a way, it makes me kind of sad that these memorable events will exist only in the annals of my memory.

I once thought that I would remember the name of every single kid I've ever taught, and for the first couple of years I did. However, it wasn't long before they faded away into a larger group with only a few standing out as particularly memorable in the long term, for better or for worse. I saw a former student recently, and the first thing she said to me was, "Mrs. L.!!!!!!! I still miss your class! I will never forget your story about jumping off a moving train." I couldn't remember the poor kid's name, but she remembered my class (okay, scintillating as my class may be, she really remembered a story that was 100% true, 100% unbelievable in spite of that, and 100% the fault of my brother-in-law Jon). This made me sad in much the same way, probably more sad because I felt pretty awful for not remembering what had once made this young lady unique to me (all of my students are unique to me ... at least while they're my students, I guess ...).

When working at a water park, I was checking a guy's cooler for glass or alcohol (neither were allowed inside the park, and he had tons of both). When I told him he had to either toss his stuff or bring it back to his vehicle, he tweaked out and threw a bag of hamburger rolls at me. Does that guy ever remember the fifteen-year-old girl he hucked baked goods at? Does the woman I caught shoplifting at a department store still curse my name the way she did on that day? How about the lady I will always remember for telling me I had a perfect nose and a beautiful hair part (my friends and I started giggling, naturally, and the lady was embarrassed as hell)?

How many people have I touched that I have absolutely no idea about? (I think because of my career path, the number is larger than it would be otherwise, but still ...)

And then I think about the blogs I read, the friends I'm in touch with on Facebook that I haven't seen since high school or, in a couple of cases, even earlier. I've actually become friends with some people on Facebook that I met through similar comments we left on mutual friends' walls. How magical is it that this can happen? And some of the blogs I peruse on a regular basis, I connect with the people that write them, people I've never met in my life, more than I do with many of my real life grab-a-drink-on-a-Friday night buddies.

I guess I've been reminded to always be the best I can be, to do whatever I can for anybody, to live life to the fullest and laugh loudly the whole time because you never know what someone can take away from an interaction with you.