Sleeping in your birthday suit...

No longer fearing the things she can't remember. This year will be magic.

​Sometimes I sleep in clothes. Like sweats and a crop top.

I hate sleeping in clothes. I feel much more relaxed in pretty lingerie or completely nude.

But clothes are a safety feature for someone like me. Because when a bad guy breaks into your space and tries to rape you, the clothes have to come off first. And those moments of struggle may be the difference between being violated or getting away.

It’s a horrible reality. But I’ve attacked more than once in my life. In more than one city. And starting with the time I was a little girl.

​The memories came back a few years ago. 
In flashes and bits.

​There’s a lot in my life I can’t remember still. Whole years vanished. It’s why I don’t have certain cultural references from my childhood. Or why I am unable to tell you where I was in certain years of my life, without looking up photos or notes. And many of those are gone because of ex’s who were jealous and destroyed journals or deleted photos off my phone.

I tend not to talk about my past much. And I’m not going to apologize for that anymore. If you want to know me, get to know who I am today.

It bothers me that so much of my life is a blank.

Trauma induced amnesia is what I was told it was. I even went to a hypnotherapist once who promised to record the session. Seconds later, it felt, I looked over and he was crying.

“You ok?” I asked. It was unnerving.
He looked at me and said.  “You don’t remember what you said, do you?”

Apparently the session had already happened. And whatever I told this man, made him sob. A man who heard a lot of shit for a living. A kinda big burly man who looked like a cross between a biker and bouncer at a dive bar. (Which he said was how he earned money for his degree.)

He refused to let me hear the recording. Said in his professional opinion that it was better for me to either never know, or for my brain to let me remember whenever it was safe to do so.

I didn’t sleep that night. I went to a lover’s place and fucked until dawn to try and erase the chills that crept over me at the thought of making a grown ass man cry over scenes from a life I can’t remember.

Years ago, I also confided in a lover that I had been attacked. I thought it would help him understand why I still have nightmares on occasion.

He sneered and said “what do you expect in the life you live?” 

I never allowed him to stay over again. Broke off the connection. Because in that moment I realized he didn’t get it.

The times I was assaulted were NEVER connected to being an adult entertainer. 

The first is obvious. I was a child. You can’t blame me for that.

Then there was the guy who saw me at the bus stop early in the morning when I was 18. He was drunk. And strong. Came out of nowhere. I was so tired from working three jobs, I didn’t see him until it was too late. A homeless man saved me. Pulled him off me. 

I was 19 the next time that I can remember. A Costco employee took my info from the computer and began stalking me. He broke into my home and left notes so I would know he was there. The police did nothing.

I could tell you about the man who saw me dancing in the street. Fully clothed. Simply enjoying local music. He became so enamored that he researched me, ingratiated himself into my life, stole everything including my sanity at the time, and tried to throw me off a balcony. Pretending to sleep, didn’t stop him from assaulting me either.

These are just the things I remember. But I have scars on my body, and damage internally still, from the memories my brain hides from me.

My birthday is this Sunday.

They say it’s good to let go of your past and forgive and move on. I can’t even remember more than a decade of mine. So that’s sometimes a bit impossible to do.

And in truth I don’t forgive those who saw something innocent in me and did their damndest to destroy it. Because I don’t think it’s my job to give them absolution. Enough blaming the victim and putting responsibility on them to heal the ones who harmed them.

I don’t hate them either though. Because that would imply that I spend time thinking about them. That they still have a right to my energy.

And they don’t. Especially not the ones, who harmed me so much, my brain is determined to hide my past from me.

But this birthday I want to start sleeping in the nude again when alone. Unless I feel like wearing something that makes me feel pretty. 

Because I don’t want this trip around the sun to have any connection to a past I can’t even fucking remember completely.

This birthday, I’m going move forward living in the now.

This year I am fearless and fierce. I’m the girl building a future in which no one will ever create a memory with me again, that I’ll have to forget in order to feel safe.

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