Time and Trauma = TNT

Caution: This post contains some four letter words. Don't read it if you don't like it. 

This morning I went running on Coyote Ridge with a group of women I run with regularly. It was spitting a light mist and everything was socked in- visibility was minimal. It wasn't very cold but I left the house without much extra clothing, a jacket or a hat, planning on not running more than 10 miles.





The trail was wet but not muddy, and I couldn't see the foothills around me, just shadows in the fog. It has a way of closing you in and protecting you.

It was precisely what I needed.

This past week was the week of the now and forever infamous Senate Judiciary committee hearings on the allegations of sexual assault by Christine Blasey Ford against Brett Kavanaugh, nominee for the Supreme Court.

It's been a week filled with talking heads, 24 hour news coverage, contention, hostility, anger, and ugliness.

I wanted to reach through the screen into that Senate hearing room, beyond the "female assistant" (WTF- she's a professional prosecutor, not your damn water boy), and throttle Chuck Grassley and the other senile fuck faces on the GOP side. I wanted to yell to Kavanaugh's wife, Run!!

We just saw the ugliness of power, of rich white male entitlement, on both sides of the hearing- on the Republican Senators side, and on Brett Kavanaugh's side.

I hadn't planned on watching any of it, I had work to do. I turned the laptop on before 8 am and saw a link to the live hearing, and clicked on it. And at 11 am, I was still in my bathrobe, with a cold cup of coffee sitting next to me, glued to the screen. I had to get out for an appointment so it was time to get dressed and peel myself away from the chair.

A little later I came back and managed to catch the part of the hearing where the prosecutor from Arizona asked Kavanaugh some questions, before they sent her packing.

I have some other blogposts I want to write, like about my 12 hour run last weekend, and my current challenge with having decided to go off statins, but this whole political nightmare has pretty much consumed my focus since the middle of last week. I'll get to those other topics later, but for now...

So much I want to say, but in a way, I don't have the emotional resources to say it now. I am wiped out. This week was so intense, watching the hearings, reliving past events, memories of things coming back that I haven't thought of in forever, many of which stir up anger and resentment even decades later. Some are minor and trivial, others were major and traumatic.

I am where I am. I have chosen to be where I am now. But when I am reminded of the events leading to the ways the course of my life has been altered by male privilege and entitlement and sexism, I go between feeling sick to my stomach and angry and disgusted. Things have not changed that much since the 1980s when I was in college as well. And white male entitlement has not changed much...though it is dying, it won't go out without a fight, as we saw on clear display this past Thursday in front of the entire country.

When I think of the things I experienced and witnessed throughout my life around male entitlement, both the traumatic experiences and the less traumatic but absolutely frustrating and enraging crap, having to endure the attitudes of entitlement, guessing at the rules because they never told you the rules, and constantly resisting and unlearning everything they tried to stuff into our heads about how girls and boys should be...

It's all been said so many times in so many places this week, I don't need to repeat it here. Privileged rich white boy finally runs into accountability- his good ole boy buddies in the Senate try to save him by paying lip service to "hearing" the accusations, but won't change a thing, digging their heels in, until drama ensues...and now we have to wait to see the results of the drama and see if the FBI investigation doesn't get micromanaged in ways that will continue to "protect" the public from the truth, and leading to the lifetime appointment of yet another alumnus of the school of beer-and-dick for brains.

What I am thankful for today are the many men in my life who are not Brett Kavanaughs or Orrin Hatches or Chuck Grassleys or Lindsey Grahams or Joe Kennedys or the other bloviating arrogant aging frat boys who think Kavanaugh deserves this promotion because of what he has between his legs regardless of what he did with it.

And I am thankful that I don't have children of my own who might become the prey of such horrible examples of humanity.

What does make me angry are the women who support this piggish display of male good ole frat boy culture. Makes me think those women are bitter and hurt. That they have never been kind to themselves. That they too have experienced this crap but buried it and did the pull yourself up by your bootstraps number...so they have unhealed wounds and attack other women. I don't know if that's true, but I just don't understand women who think sexual assault is something to take lightly. It makes me think these are the women who raise their boys and girls to be assholes and bullies.

As for Kavanaugh, what an arrogant little shit he was in high school and college, and still is. Not expressing compassion for his accuser in any way. Completely unconcerned with the fact that she is traumatized for life. His wife looks like an abused woman. He looks like an alcoholic, and acts like one in his denial. His juvenile answers to the committee, his lack of self-control in front of the committee and the entire country, who in the hell acts like that except for a spoiled preschooler?

And then there are the trivialities, random memories that came back this week, things that were said and done to me along the way that ranged on the spectrum from disrespectful to earthshattering. And there is a lot more, and worse, that I won't share here. And I won't even begin to talk about the crap I've endured while running. Yeah, #metoo.

• Fuck you you little asshole in the school yard in third grade who attacked me with a tree branch while calling me JewGirl, but I got in trouble for kicking you in the balls. 
• Fuck you little snot-nosed turd in my sixth grade class who told me I was fat, on his way to college at Swarthmore and becoming an attorney.
• Fuck you, asshole hockey player who tried to push his way into my dorm room freshman year.
• Fuck you, forestry professor who asked me if I was there for my MRS degree.
• Fuck you, football and wrestling coaches who wanted me to let their athletes get away with "independent study" to maintain their eligibility for sports instead of doing the real work like the other students. (Funny how the female coaches and female athletes never asked for these entitlements)
• Fuck you, administrators in higher ed and healthcare who wanted me to keep my mouth shut, not ask questions, and put up with your bullshit uneven playing field for women.
• Fuck you, you former frat boys who never matured past your beer-soaked pats on the back unspoken agreements to help each other up the ladder to success while you used our shoulders and our ideas as stepping stones.
• Fuck you, professor Fuck Faces in the 80s and 90s hiring no women professors to act as mentors or examples for us to look up to, so we were stuck with the arrogant pricks who told us things like "Your ideas have no place in our discipline".

Yeah, FUCK YOU.

The fog was therapeutic this morning as I could finally let go of some of the emotions- no one could see my tears or my clenched fists or vocalized rage. But it also made me think, this is how those POWDERs (pasty old white dudes explaining righteously) want us to be- in the fog, unable to see clearly. Keeping the truth from us. Well boys, the fog is burning off. Time's up.

Catching Creepers

Give me back my night!

I've been meaning to blog about this but haven't gotten to it yet. The entire female portion of the Fort Collins running, cycling and active community has been terrorized for the past couple of months by this creep who assaulted 7 different women this fall. The Sheriff's department just yesterday announced they have made an arrest.

I hope they've got the right guy, that's not a guarantee, given the past local history of wrongful imprisonment. But if this is the guy, and I hope so, many people would like to see him strung up by his balls. Lately a lot of active women in town have been imprisoned indoors thanks to this asshole.

I love to run at night, and I usually don't let fear stop me, but for some reason this time it did. I've been having a hard time motivating myself and I really did want to run at night over the past few weeks, and even though the incidents were far from where I live and run, I just didn't feel okay about it.

It was a gut feeling. And I still don't feel too safe, I don't know why, because I always worry about copycat creepers, there have been some Peeping Toms in our neighborhood, and with another house nearby that seems to have some drug activity going on, I haven't been feeling too good about being out there by myself. The price of growth. Fort Collins is becoming more like a city.

There are enough creepers everywhere, even in daylight. I don't put up with street harassment, as I've written about in the past. The older I get, the less tolerant I get, I am of the mindset that I've endured this crap my entire life and I'm tired of it and you would think that people would have evolved by now. But it goes on. Now I just call their employer. And if I end up having to converse with them, I ask them what they would do if some asshole talked to their mother or sister or daughter or wife like that. And I can say it in two languages.

It was refreshing, though disturbing and chilling to see that one video that circulated recently on social media, the one on street harassment throughout an entire day on city streets. No, they haven't evolved.

Just this past week I encountered creepy roofers. Twice. One group of them on a church roof, and another in the neighborhood where I run regularly. The Mormon Church is having their giant roof replaced and you would think with all those kids around there on their missions, the one with their name tags designating them as "Elder" or "Sister", the church would be more careful about allowing them to be up there on the roof leering at the women. But then women haven't exactly been a priority there unless they're making babies.

Yesterday I finally got a spark of motivation, a wild hair or something, but I got out for 90 minutes of running. It was only because I had to take my car in to get the brakes worked on, so I ran home from the car dealer and then ran back to pick it up later. And both ways I have to go by the Mormon church and through this one neighborhood. I was running down one of the streets and there were a bunch of guys on the roof of this one house, and they abruptly stopped what they were doing and looked down at me. Stopped what they were doing, stood there staring, and one called out, "Hi."

Dumb creeps, on a roof. Sorry dude but I'm not rescuing you if you fall. Oops, my trauma nurse certification expired. Don't know what to do. Oops sorry forgot my phone, can't call 911. Too bad you'll have to bleed to death from your crushed skull. But that's okay, shouldn't affect your brain. Their company's liability insurer could hit the jackpot there.

I decided that if when I ran back they said anything else, I'd be giving their boss a call. But they were too wrapped up in their work when I ran back, so I spared them my wrath. Shouldn't have, but did anyway.

While I was at the car dealership dropping off my vehicle I ran into one of the doctors I used to work closely with at the hospital. We talked for a while, he couldn't believe it's been a year since I left. I think the last time I saw him was right around the time I left the hospital. He told me he's over it, ready to get out and move on, health care is so screwed up. Physicians are so frustrated. It's sad, all the focus on big data and the factory model of health care is ruining it for everyone who went into it because they wanted to give good patient care.

Lately things have been interesting with business matters, I'm moving forward on a project I am pushing in various directions at once. I'm learning so much about different aspects of business and marketing, and I have two attorneys now. I'm collecting them. So far I have a contract attorney and a patent/trademark attorney.

Soon I'll have more attorneys than toenails.

All the toenails that were going to fall off after my last race have now come off. I have seven toenails left, giving some the benefit of the doubt. Actually two of them don't really count as toenails, they are more like little cuticles, so that's five toenails.

And I narrowly avoided a panic attack at the grocery store today. I got all the stuff for my Thanksgiving fruit salad, braving Whole Foods and the parking lot from hell, and got out of there before insanity took hold. I will not be entering a grocery store again until Friday, when everyone is busy lining up and assaulting each other outside the big box stores.

Black Friday is a great day for running. Can't wait.

Raising The Hackles: Sexual Assault of a Runner

There are a few things that raise my hackles. Because I love running more than just about anything, well, maybe more than anything... anything that would threaten my running I would fight to the death. I honestly think I could kill for it.

So today when my fellow blogger Heather at 365 Days of Awesome posted this link on Facebook about her friend Elizabeth who was assaulted on her run in Mobile, Alabama, I could feel the little hairs on the back of my neck standing up.

Women are people. We know that.

Unfortunately there are men out there who think men are people, or full-fledged human beings, while women are not people, we are less. As if women are somehow inferior beings, that we are objects that are not fully up to the level of men. I won't even get into the power and control issue, or the criminal, sick psycho mind yet.

There is a rage that comes over me when I read a story like Elizabeth's, just like the rage I feel when someone suggests I curtail my running for safety purposes, or when a man suggests that somehow a woman shouldn't be out running alone.

Such rage is not logical, I know, but it absolutely infuriates me to think that he even thinks that. It just pisses me off that it even has to cross his mind.

One time in a race in the bottom of this canyon in New Mexico I was having a conversation with a guy who suggested just that. First I countered his argument, and I remember being so pissed off that I took off and ran far ahead of him, up the trail to the top of the canyon as fast as I could. I couldn't wait to get away from him.

Why would a man say a thing like that? Because he knows there are men out there who think like that. He's probably heard them talk about women and realizes these sick bastards really do exist. Maybe more of them than I'd like to imagine exist. Or maybe he was one of those sick bastards himself.

I am glad Elizabeth wasn't hurt worse physically. And she sounds like she is strong and has a good attitude toward life. She says she isn't going to let him take running away from her. But you cannot minimize what happened to her today. It is traumatic and that guy touched her body against her will. I want to kill him. But I think justice will only truly be served if he is locked up for the rest of his life. Take his freedom away, because he has taken her freedom away.

Whether a man gropes you or forces you to have sex with him, or whatever in between...it's an attack, it's a power play, it's violent, and the effects are damaging and long-lasting. It's psychologically traumatic and that is what is most difficult to heal from.

It's easy to blow it off if some asshole is leering at you and doesn't physically touch you, but it's still enough to send chills down your spine and remind you of your safety being at risk. You feel like prey.

I feel like I would kill, like I could kill, that predator. I think the rage I have would allow me to kill him. But I think anyone who impacts another person's life like that does not deserve to have their own freedom. I don't think killing them is right or just. I think justice would be having that person locked up for the rest of their life, because the impact of their action will affect the person they assaulted for the rest of their life.

Not that I would be able to kill. At 5'1" and about 120 pounds I'm not exactly at a size or strength advantage. But the force of my rage I think, if I were able to somehow gain advantage, could kill a person. Instead of killing him I might surgically alter him instead. Remove the thing he thinks is his weapon, first of all, but then I think his arms should be cut off, and legs too. Probably everything but his torso and head should be removed. I'd do it myself.

The depth of my rage doesn't even make sense to me. I feel it, and I'm not sure that any other topic has the ability to awaken those feelings in me. How dare you, anyone, take my freedom away.

I don't feel like doing violence to anyone really, except when those hormones get a little wacky and people hang pizza ads on my front door, but this is one thing where I feel I could truly hurt someone.

Elizabeth brings up a lot of good points at the end of her post. I'd like to emphasize that being aware of your surroundings is so important. One of the things I see people doing these days that drives me crazy, that I see a lot of women doing, since the iPhone and all those similar gadgets are out, is texting or talking on the phone while out walking, that is the perfect opportunity for someone to take advantage...

I'm guilty of some of those things myself. The night I saw the little boy on the sidewalk is a perfect example. I was out by myself, at night, visible, running in a familar place, my neighborhood. I don't normally go at the same time or the same route but there could easily have been a creep out there who recognized me. I didn't have my cell phone that night, either. I left Dennis a note, he knew when I should be home and where I was going. But when I'm out at night I should have my cell phone.

When I run alone at night, I do not wear music for that exact reason, I do want to be aware of my surroundings. I love to run at night, and I love to run far, and I like to listen to music under the night sky. I don't do it as much as I'd like to, for the reasons of safety and vulnerability.

When I can find a running partner at night, it's awesome, and my friends Doug and Paul and Shannon have run with me at night when I had to get those long runs in that went beyond daylight. I love the safety of a race, when I'm on the track or a race course and with other people. I can put my music on and zone out, and I don't have to worry. It's heaven, running under the moon or stars to music.

But it pisses me off that I am not as free as a man is. Not that men couldn't be assaulted too. But its less likely to happen, because they are not seen as vulnerable objects to the degree women are.

Running in open areas, in the daytime, even where there are other people around, I've been harassed by creeps, construction workers, and dumbasses working on roofs. I don't take it lightly. I don't take it at all, and anyone who gives me shit, I am going to find a way to hold them accountable. I just don't put up with it. I got some construction guys fired a couple of years back, right before Christmas, and I don't feel bad about it one bit. Let them explain to their wives and daughters why they don't have a paycheck.

If they're construction workers, get the name of the company with the contract, and the project manager. Believe me, it's worth the time. If they're street workers, get a hold of the office of the city or municipality. They'll listen. Do it the same day it happens.

Every woman who allows that shit to go on, or allows her son to become one of those bozos, is contributing to the problem. You just have to have that zero tolerance, back in your face attitude or it won't ever stop. I know how to give it back in Spanish too, because pendejos don't always speak English. Would you talk to your daughter/mother/sister like that? Habla con tu hija/madre/hermana asi?

Be safe. It makes me angry that women have this additional burden that we have to run with. Don't put up with bullshit, fight back with everything you have. The roads and trails belong to us, too.