Happiness in a Depressing World

I kept reading people’s opinions about the Stanford rape case to the point of having my nightmares come back. I have been in therapy for about three years now and haven’t had many nightmares about what happened to me as a child and later in life for a very long time. Something about hearing people talk about what it’s like to be a victim of sexual assault/abuse just brought those nightmares back.

I laid in bed one night with tears streaming down my face and asked everyone on my friends list to please stop talking about that case or to block me from being able to see it. I always get way too personal on Facebook which pisses me off about myself. I am not even the kind of abuse victim that needs trigger warnings, but this one story was doing something to me that I was not really ready to deal with just a few weeks after burying the man that I considered to be my hero.

When I woke up the next morning I realized something that I’ve known for a very long time now, even before therapy, there is no way that I can expect the world to keep me safe. I have to keep myself safe. I have to know what I can and can’t expose myself to. I have to be strong enough to walk away when I can’t control what is being written on the internet and those words are creeping into my dreams. I have to know where I am going and watch my surroundings to know when it is no longer safe for me. I have to be aware of myself, my feelings and my reactions. Nobody is ever going to be able to do those things for me, no matter how much I want the world to be the ideal safe place, it’s not and it won’t ever be.

So, I logged out. I have cheated a few times and I have regretted it each time.

I can’t expect everyone around me to know or even care about what I’ve been through and how their words open up wounds that I have worked really hard to heal with the help of God’s grace. No matter how much people say they are advocating for this one rape victim, they forget that there are many of us out here just trying to look at cat videos and not rehash what happened to us. I don’t want to read that victim’s letter, I don’t need to, I am someone else’s victim. But I am so much more than a victim. It’s taken me 35 years to figure that out, but I’m here and I do not want to ever go back to just being a victim.

I’ve been off Facebook for about a week now and I’ve done so many things.

• I mowed my backyard. I almost killed the lawnmower by putting the wrong gas in it, but hey! I did it.
• I have been cooking some great dinners.
• I am almost all the way caught up in my schoolwork.
• I have laughed with my daughter and granddaughter.
• I had a great time at my Granddaughter’s birthday party.
• I cleaned my house.
• I hosted two priests over for dinner.
• I finished two books.
• I made a badass playlist on Spotify.
• I have started watching my diet.
• I fix my hair and put on make-up so I look like a normal human being and not a zombie.
• I text my friends.

There’s more, but really, I am less anxious and worried about what is happening in the world.  I have fallen in love with SnapChat. You can find me by my username leticia_adams10 and follow me! I can’t argue with anyone on Snapchat, I can speak in my own voice so people who don’t know me can’t make up what they think my tone sounds like, I don’t have to see anything that I don’t want and there are no trolls. It’s nice a peaceful for now.

This life is way too short to be buried in ugliness of the world. I know this more than ever at this moment in my life. Good will always triumph over evil. My heart just can’t handle all the evil right now. That’s where I’m at.