Speak: My Story.

Since this is my project, I suppose it's only right if I start things off.

And yet here I am, staring at the screen, not knowing how to begin.

I've hinted that I've experienced abuse. In the foreword to Sometimes it Storms in Winter Rain; in idle mentions, offhand comments in posts. In my diatribe that I went off on the day I snapped on Twitter. But I've never really talked about what happened to me. Not publicly. It hasn't seemed like there was a place for it, a reason for it. It's been my thing I keep inside, this shriveled little knot of awfulness that doesn't need to be inflicted on anyone else. The knot didn't used to be as big as it is. But it's kind of like a rubber band ball. Things keep happening. Keep layering.

Because it's less a story than the continuous footnotes of my life, and every time makes that ball just a bit bigger.

Parts of this may be triggering. I'm not sure yet. I won't know until I get there, and see how this comes out of me. But it's probably safe to assume there are triggers here for physical, emotional, sexual, and psychological abuse. Self-harm, too.

It started when I was maybe four or five. A cousin. Older. Taller. I won't get into details because I don't like talking about children in explicit sexual situations, least of all when that child was me. It went on for years. I tried to tell my mother. She tried to confront his mother, and was shamed into silence. She tried to protect me from him, but still at family reunions he often found a way.

It stopped when I turned twelve and shot up. Six feet. Shoulders like a linebacker. I'd been a delicate, pretty little boy before, but I turned into a rawboned pile of gangly limbs that beat him into the fucking ground. I'd never hurt anyone in my life, before that. I wasn't a violent person. I was a quiet boy, shrinking in a corner with a book, hoping no one would notice me, touch me. But when I found out I could fight back…

When I found out he was touching my younger cousins, too. Girls I loved like sisters.

I tore him to pieces.

And my family exploded.

Everything came to light. Everything. I remember an aunt dragging me down the field near my grandmother's house, her nails digging into my arms hard enough to cut, while she berated me and tried to force me to admit I was lying. They cowed my younger cousins. And even when he finally admitted he'd done it…

He was the victim. Everyone cooed over him and sheltered him because it was so stressful and upsetting to have all these accusations leveled at him.

While I was a violent liar, and my mother a horrible person for trying to bring this to light.

I spent the next few years struggling with myself. Because I had vivid memories of him making me feel good things in that confused preadolescent way, even though it wasn't my choice; it was just an uncontrollable response to physical stimulation, but between that and my family's shaming I felt like I'd done something wrong. I'd brought it on myself because I was dirty. It was my own fault for being pretty the way boys aren't supposed to be pretty. There was the stigma that boys didn't talk about abuse because it didn't happen to boys; not boys who became real men. There was the confusion, too, when I started noticing both boys and girls instead of just girls, and society told me that my interest in boys was only because I was damaged from what a male abuser had done to me, imprinting male-on-male sexuality on me during my developmental stages. I hated myself. I comfort-ate. I ballooned up, then starved myself back down thin, all while trying to keep up with junior high and high school sports.

I'd flinch back violently if anyone touched me. I'd start to stabilize a bit, even dated around a bit and was pretty sexually active, about what you'd expect from a randy high school boy, but it was out of desperation. Trying to convince myself I was okay. I wanted to be touched. I wasn't dirty. I wasn't too filthy for anyone. And I didn't need to hurt myself, with food and blades and anything else I could get my hands on, to make sure I was too undesirable for anyone to touch me and make me feel that horrible crawling feeling again.

And I had other complications. My mother. Absentee father. Being unwanted as a last child, an accident, being reminded repeatedly that my mother had wanted to abort me. My mother's undiagnosed bipolar disorder, which was just an amplifier for her own bitterness and resentment, not a crime in and of itself. Being hit rather often. Being psychologically and emotionally abused. Jerked around. Never knowing which way was up because one second I'd be told to do one thing and the next beaten until the belt left my arse raw for doing as I was told. Learning how to be invisible; learning how to be a small animal in the brush, hiding from the scary thing like in Among the Sleep. Being invisible anyway, sometimes. There were times when she wouldn't acknowledge my existence for days; wouldn't look at me, speak to me.

I have to stop this part of it. I know I'm supposed to be laying everything out here, but I can't get deeper into this if I'm going to get through the rest of this story. There's more with my mother, both in my young adult and adult life, but I can't do that. I can't tell that story. So I need to move on.

That was my life up to college. A life punctuated by still having to see him. I remember being eighteen or so and being curled up in a chair at my grandmother's with a book, him in the chair opposite me, me pointedly ignoring him.

He awkwardly struggled out, "Hey. I…I'm sorry for what I did to you, all those years ago."

I looked up.

He leered at me.

"But you lookin' mighty fine in them jeans."

I don't remember the seconds after that. I just remember adults rushing to pull us apart. I think I might've tried to punch him.

University. Dated a boy who hit me. Tried to control me, told me to "take it like a man." Followed me to another state when I changed majors and changed schools and changed lives. Ended up arrested outside my student apartment. I hadn't even had time for the bruises to fade from the last time I'd seen him over a week before.

More university. Telling myself I'm gay, not bi, because it's easier to quantify my sexuality. Easier to fall into certain circles of young fast gay men. Easier to tell myself I wanted it when I was too drunk to say yes; when I was too drunk to even know what was happening, or remember how I got there come morning. Easier not to call it rape if I only half-remembered in the morning if I'd gone along with it or if I'd fought back, said no. Easier to tell myself it was my fault for drinking; for the company I kept; for trying to drown myself in this attempt to be sexually normal and get past this aversion to touch.

I got really good at telling myself it was my fault.

I've always been good at things being my fault.

Somehow I made it through to the other side of university. Suddenly there was work, adult responsibilities…and suddenly I had things to do and worry about and ground myself other than trying to figure out what this horrible cloud of guilt-sex-hate-need limbo was inside me. I started…adjusting. I dated around. Lightly. Gently, if that's possible. I was gentle with myself. I asked people to be gentle with me. I explored not condemning myself for any part of my sexuality, acknowledging my attractions to men, women, people who classified as neither or both or other. I found my boundaries. My parameters. I understood better, as an adult, what was safe for me. I started seeing a therapist off and on.

I was okay.

And then I got married.

I got married to someone who seemed amazing at first, even if we were…so very opposite. Wild bohemian liberal Independent-voting POC desperate for freedom from the rut of life; straight-up corporate executive-ambitious conservative Republican-voting white seeking stability and material wealth. I don't even know…I think it was the differences that attracted us at first. The respect for each other's intelligence and willingness to see a middle-ground road in these lively, interesting debates we got into. The physical attraction of our differences; I think my ex had never dated someone like me, an androgynously pretty man of indeterminate ethnicity. I’d never dated the typical blonde-haired, blue-eyed etc. etc., as my track record had tended to be brown boys and girls from Kyouto, Beijing, San Felipe. We were fascinated with each other.

And then…I don't know. Things started falling apart.

I was supposed to be okay with my mother-in-law calling me a wetback; my brother-in-law calling me a spick. (Btw, not an ounce of Hispanic or Latin@ in me, but let's insult their cultures, ethnicities, and me by assuming all brown people are interchangeable…) I was "that freaky goth" for having naturally dark hair and long dark eyelashes.

I wasn't allowed to be hurt by my ex's sudden onset of racist jokes. I was too sensitive. Too serious. Why couldn't I see that it was funny?

I couldn't have an opinion on anything anymore, because clearly as a man of color I was missing the "real world" and didn't get "the game." The business game, the way things "really" were. My thoughts were invalid. Constant belittling, reminding me how worthless I was, how inferior to the white perspective.

The derision of my culture. Attacks for speaking in my native languages; I used to have a habit of interjecting little accent words. It was just how I naturally spoke. I don't do it anymore. Not after hearing so many times, "You can stop doing that. I don't find it sexy. It doesn't turn me on. It's stupid; why are you doing that?" when all I was doing was speaking the way I naturally speak.

Arguments. The gaslighting tactics employed. The manipulation. The derailment. Overriding me. Refusing to engage with me. Constantly shifting tracks to make sure I never got a foothold to defend myself. Actively changing events and telling me I didn't remember them correctly, or conflating two unrelated events and trying to convince me they were the same. Telling me I imagined words that came out of my own mouth. Telling me I didn't say what I said; I didn't hear what I heard. If I was bothered by anything, it was my own fault.

The isolation. My friends were never good enough.

The jealousy. The accusations of lies in my sexual history. The guilt trips because I was somehow making my ex feel inadequate by existing, and everything they hated about their body was my fault. Their inability to fix the things they hated about their body was my fault. If I supported them, it was my fault they dug their feet in to spite me. If I kept my mouth shut and minded my own business, it was my fault for not reminding them, pushing them, staying on top of them about it. If they wanted to be better for me, that was my fault. If they wanted to be better for themselves, my fault. Then there was the food pushed on me, the guilt trips if I didn't eat, too. If I tried to avoid gaining weight, etc. The accusations that I was going to leave them for someone thinner, hotter, better in bed. That if I stayed in shape, it was because I was trying to attract someone new.

The large, heavy objects thrown at me with no warning, leaving bruises. The eyerolling if I said "what the fuck, that hurt" and how I was supposed to catch it, whatever, god, stop hassling.

And then there was the sex.

There was the fact that I cannot be touched in certain ways, either in bed or out of bed. There were triggers that could set me off in the worst ways. My ex knew those triggers. My ex knew not to touch those trigger spots. Ever.

My ex thought it was funny to poke those trigger spots over and over again while I shoved and scrambled away, cornering me until I couldn't escape without serious physical violence, laughing and giggling and tittering while I begged stop. Stop, don't touch me, stop, I can't, please, stop. It would continue until I was screaming. I don't care if it's emasculating to admit it. More than once I was pushed to the point of curling up in a sobbing, shaking ball, regressed to the terror of a child who didn't know what was happening to him.

And every time, when I could unlock enough to shout, to be angry, to even find words, I would say I told you. I told you not to. I told you never. Never ever.

And always it was…why am I being such a dick about it? God, they just forgot, they said they'd try to remember but it hasn't been enough time, don't be so uptight, it was funny, they didn't realize I was serious when I was saying no no no no no no no no stop please no no NO, wasn't I just joking?

And then they wanted to know why I wasn't in the mood for sex.

Then they wanted to know why I grew increasingly introverted and emotionally unavailable, cold.

Five years of that. I'm divorced now, obviously. In a stable relationship with someone who respects my boundaries. Still struggling with the mental health issues, with triggers. I didn't have general anxiety disorder before that. At all. I had a pretty wicked case of PTSD, but it wasn't this bad. Nor was the depression. Nor was the self-loathing. The immediate tendency to assume everything is my fault has gotten much, much worse; a tendency that people like to prey on, to hone in on.

And I…I've grown at once more defiant of the things that weigh on me, and more vulnerable to them. I've grown more confident in no longer shaming myself for not fitting Western ideals of masculinity, and yet at the same time I'm sitting here looking at this and telling myself that as a man, I should be ashamed of this. Of this story. Of knowing this is generally a story women tell, but not men. Knowing there are people who will read this and say "what kind of man lets this happen to him?" Knowing that people are judging me as a man because I have been abused. Because I have been in the role of the victim more than once. Because me being androgynous, being pretty, has made me a target for people who want to fit me into a certain role, and I've been struggling so much my whole life with accepting myself that it was too easy to walk blindly into the arms of people who, at first, made me feel wanted as long as they had something they could use me for. Because I'd been taught from an early age that I was only good for what people wanted out of me; that if I said "you hurt me" I'm a worthless liar; that if I tried to run I would be stalked and harassed; that if I fought back I would be cornered and hurt; that if I had an opinion or belief it was wrong; that if I stood up for myself I would be reminded that I'm a second-class citizen with no value, to be derided for my genetics, my appearance, my culture, my existence.

And then people wonder how I empathize so much with women who are put in these positions every day.

Huh. I wonder.

Most people don't know what happens behind my ferocity. Behind the passion with which I speak. Behind the anger that sometimes picks me up enough to make me a force of nature. Most people see confidence in my own intelligence. A bit of social awkwardness that can mostly blend into an easy charm. Dry humor. Some flirtiness. Occasional silliness. Geekiness. Playful grouchiness that sometimes becomes honest introspective broodiness. The random whimsy of tumbling through the various influences of my various cultures, and how much I love them all.

And most people don't know that behind that, I'm having to constantly remind myself that I have permission to exist. I have permission to stand up for myself when people try to push me into the place they want me to occupy. My fingers and stomach don't have to tremble when I think of the total strangers who turn their eye on me, scrutinize me when they find out here's this guy, he wrote some books. I don't have to feel guilty for saying no, respect my boundaries. I don't have to feel like a horrible person for drawing a line in the sand and saying no more when people take too much from me.

But the thing is, I do. I feel like a horrible person every time I start to think I have any sort of worth, that I have any right to anything.

Because that's what abuse does.

It's only one of the many scars it leaves on you.

It's one of the many ways it silences you.

This is the first time I've ever sat down and told this story in its entirety.

Because if I'm going to ask other people to speak…then I will, too.