Yes, you too can be a victim of domestic abuse!

As I sit down to write this I feel uncertain.  What are my motives?  Why do I feel the need to say the things, the deeply overly personal things, I am hoping to say?  Several reasons actually.  One of them being that I know I am not alone in my experiences.  In fact, I am not even remotely unique.  That means there are other women (and yes, men) out there that have gone through and are going through domestic abuse.  And perhaps they are not having the Zen-like detachment and sense of peace about it that I have come to.  It is a terribly lonely place to be.  I remember.  It took a long time to heal.  Also, I very much believe there are a lot of misconceptions about why women and men like myself stay in abusive relationships.  I hope to shed some light on that topic.  I am not here to damn.  I am here to share.  These are my experiences, my views.  

I left my abuser a little over a year ago.  I find that it is easy to let a little bit of shame sneak in when use that term...  "my abuser".  But I am not ashamed.  I refuse to be.  The notion that I was abused, and for so long, is hard to reconcile with the self image that I identify with.  I am strong, fiercely independent, well traveled, creative, professional and quite proficient in my career, one of those young women that came up in the Riot Girl movement of the 90's and knows she can take care of herself all by herself and does not take any bullshit.  I have led an adventurous life.  I have a solid community and super-human female role models.  I am tough and speak bad Mandarin.  These are the things I think about when I think about self.  These qualities and experiences are what I take pride in as being my own.  But, the thing is, these things did not prepare me to cope with or recognize abuse.  I did not see it coming.  I didn't see it for what it was at all until I was in it so deep that when I left I literally crawled out of our house on my hands and knees through broken glass.

For two years, I stayed with a man that threw the furniture at me, who threw the entire contents of our kitchen at me, who once flipped the bed over with me in it and pinned me underneath while I screamed and cried in the middle of the night.  I loved a man that called me a cripple, that talked to me like I was a slow child, that got drunk and frequently roused me from bed and made me stay up til daylight listening to music and locked me out of the house or worse if I complained that I was tired and needed to sleep.  He was and still is an unrepentant alcoholic.  Those two years were fraught with constant anxiety and fear.  Did I remember to take out the trash?  Was my skirt too short?  Did I remember to flip the toggle in the shower after I bathed?  Will I be home on time?  There is traffic on the highway and he expects me home by three.  They seem like completely trivial day to day things.  But any one of them (and so many more) could set him off on a tangent on how stupid, forgetful, whoreish, lazy, inept I was.  Any one of those could lead to me calling my best friend in the middle of the night AGAIN because "Sorry to do this, but he kicked me out again.  All my clothes are in the street.  Can I sleep on your couch?".

Now the first thing you must be wondering is: Why the fuck would I stay?  Why would I keep coming back?  Firstly, it is not as if these things happen over night.  There is actually a very specific pattern to these sort of situations.  Since I left I have done not a small amount of reading on the subject.  Disturbingly enough, my relationship was almost a textbook example of abuse.  It starts like this:  Create isolation and dependency.  Easy enough.  A few months into our relationship my landlord wanted to turn my bedroom into his office.  My boyfriend offered to have me move into his place.  I was reluctant.  We had only been dating a short while and splitting the rent at his place would triple the cost of my rent.  He pushed it.  We were in the late stages of the honeymoon phase still and "Hey you are over here all the time anyway.  My parents pay my rent so it's ok of you are short."  Dependency achieved.  His parents never saw a dime of my money.  The local bars did.  And now there was a lovely little tool of manipulation he could hold over me was I ever late or short.  And he did use it whenever possible.  Isolation was surprisingly easy as well.  We all neglect our social relationships a bit when entering a new love affair.  But when the fog cleared and I started going out again, suddenly he hated my friends.  They were bad influences.  They disliked him.  They were rude.  Their social activities were questionable.  I was guilt tripped out of seeing them too often.  But I was rarely ever invited to engage with his social circle.  Unless he was showing me off.  I lost friends over this man.  There are folks to this day that can't even look me in the eye if we ever find ourselves in the same room.  Isolation achieved.

After that is was pretty much a downhill slide into a cycle of fear and control.  How do they do it?  Like this:
INTIMIDATION
* Threaten with violence
* Smash things
* Destroy property
* Yelling
(Did I mention this guy is a whole head taller than me?)

EMOTIONAL  ABUSE
* Put down, humiliate, shame partner
* Claim partner is crazy or unstable
* Play lots of mind games
* Name calling

MORE ISOLATION
* Limit who she sees, talks to, where she goes
* Limit her social involvement  (That party is stupid.  I think you should stay home)
* Justify this with jealousy

DENY DENY DENY
* Downplay or make light of abuse ( I was just pretending to hit you.  I just grazed your cheek.  Relax)
* Refuse to acknowledge abuse
* Shift responsibility (It's your fault because you forgot to sweep)

And, in my case:  MALE PRIVILEGE
* Defines gender roles
* Treat abused as a servant (see above references to household tasks.  God forbid I forgot to make cookies)
* Make all big decisions (I was making you fly home with me for the holidays but now you have pissed me off so I am cancelling your ticket)
* Act like king of the castle or landlord (Get your shit and get out.  This is my house)

And then you
MAKE UP
* Apologies and unfulfilled promises
* Attempts to justify behavior
* Blames drugs and alcohol
* Make up sex
* Buys gifts ( I bought you flowers.  Let's forget about me pulling that knife on you)

As I stated before, we were a textbook example of dysfunction.  I left him a couple times and went back after he cried and begged and promised promised PROMISED it would be better, professed his love and need for me.  This cycle went on and on.  And it doesn't take long before you start to believe the bullshit.  Yes, I am a terrible person.  I am lazy.  I am nothing without this person.  I cannot take care of myself.  I am the scum of the earth.  Who else would want me?  It is my fault I am in this situation.  I made the choice to stay/come back.   But somewhere there is also this voice that is screaming "HELLO!? You are awesome!".  And that voice really wanted to prove how good she was.  That voice wanted to prove that she was good enough to be treated well.  So I stayed for that reason too.  I stayed and was the best little victim I could be in the hopes that one day he would wake up and see how wonderful I was and treat me the way I deserved.

At a certain point I realized it was never going to get better.  It was getting worse.  This was not the life nor the partner I wanted.  So I left.  It wasn't pretty.  It was violent and ugly and epitomized every reason why I was leaving in the first place.

The whole point of this is that is happens everywhere.  It happens to your friends, in your community, to people you work with.  It is insidious.  We can't look down on (or worse look away from) or pity victims of abuse. It was only through the immense love and unbelievable patience of a very good friend that I was able to get out, pick myself up, start over, and become the reasonably well adjusted person I am today.  I do not hate my abuser.  I am got out of that mess and am all the better for it.  I am not even angry anymore.  Some of you reading this may know him.  Even love him.  Keep doing so.  I have made my peace about everything and there is nothing more to do or say about it.

Memories of Sleep

it's been really shitty, i know, how i've been keeping up with this blog thing. i'm new to technology. but more so i am a terrible documentarian. i should be ashamed about how few pictures i've taken of all the truely amazing places and moments i've had out here. i think i start every one of these damned things with an appology. sorry. i'm really sorry.

ok, so... i'm on tour with a puppet show i put together with a czech puppet troupe. we are mostly touring the aborigional villages of taiwan. to say it has been hectic would be an understatement. to say the whole tour lacks organization or communication would also be an understatedment. i am enjoying it although. the czechs seem not to be. they have real life adult standards and i think are many times insulted by what we are given... or not given rather in terms of information and transportation and sleeping arangements. it's completely pell mell everyday. i dont know the name of the town i'm in or the last or the one before that. dont get me wrong i have had my fair share of ugly moments where i was sure i would be forced to rip the throat out of every person within a 10ft radius. we all get a little testy. the czechs are master complainers. i have come to the conclusion that the czechs as a people are completely unequiped to be happy in almost any capacity. there are so many situations to fill in here. how can i start? i am on the east coast of taiwan. we are quite far south and are seeing here the aftermath of the typhoon. the coast is so littered with drift wood... covered 20 ft high with a whole forest of trees for miles and miles and miles. the sea is also thick with it. sailing here is not a little dangerous. everywhere we go the roads are in a state of repair. so many of them were washed away in the storm. i think we will go no farther south. i think that not far from here the damage is quite bad and travel is acctually impossible. but i am missing all the good points. we are in the mountains and we are by the sea. the people are kind and pure and wonderful. i've just come from 2 days off from shows. we took and bit of a tourist vacation to an island called "green island" 50km off the coast of taiwan. it's like a sort of eco-tourism spot. but it was great. beautiful. why not? there is beautiful snorkeling. like national geographic photo essay beautiful. and there are all these deers there, native to taiwan, called sitka deers. they are small and docile and really special. the hostel we stayed at had a baby one who had lost her mother during the storm. her name was lulu and she was the size of a small dog and i fed her from a bottle. you have no idea how cute this is. seriously. baby deers, people? come on!!! this is world class cute. 2 days of tooling around the island on scooters and now we are back on taiwan. rested. realxed. we are here in this town whose name no one knows waiting for our show tonite. we are staying in the home of a retired professor of acheology who has turned his home in to a museum. i felt very fucking holden caufield last night i must tell you. and what a shame that i couldn't share it with anybody. i guess nobody outside of the states has read "catcher in the rye". what a shame. this is such a sorry excuse for an acctual account of my time here. mostly i just want to let everyone know i am well. my time is almost up here at this interenet place. and i must meet everyone for lunch. well... i'll see who i meet. i woke up this morning to find the house empty and all 3 of our tour vehicles gone. and i was up before 10. really. like i said before... no order or communication. so i wandered around the one street in town for a while before cleo and shang yuen found me and led me here to the interenet cafe. i love nothing more that wandering aimlessly under a tropical noon time sun. really. there is in the next town over is a handicrafts market. but it doesnt open til 4 because even the locals won't work and shop in this heat. i dont know the date or the day of the week but i'll be somewhere sometime playing a damsel in distress for some very nice taiwanese people i'm sure. k-bye.

Dreaming

ok, i'm really really sorry i have not posted in a month. mom, i'm sorry. but seriously i'm really busy here people. i am going to try here and explain just what the hell i've been up to. i have been writting down some thoughts from time to time. i think i'm gonna just transcribe them here. i'll fill in the blanks too. read on. it's weird.

july 7th
this country is so damned hot. i've been here a week now and it seems impossible that so little time has passed. we are all in loudong now working on the parade. it is incredible the amount of work we have to accomplish in so short a time. i am very lucky. everyone on the team is wonderful. i have fallen in with the czechs. there are 5 of them and they are fantastic puppet makers. they are charming people. there is one malasian named goh. i'm not sure exactly what he does but has such a flamboyant and infectious personality you can't help but want him around. he is a very talented designer and has but 2 obsessions: how to make money in the cottage industry and his weight. and then there is clebson. he is a brazilian costume designer and has been living in taiwan for a year now working for dream community. he speaks very little english and very little chinese so i dont know how the hell he has done it. he is sort of gordon's (my boss) personal pet. he makes wonderful fantastic brazillian style costumes that make my heart ache with envy. they have ferrited him away in his own airconditioned studio here in loudong. he has a small army of cute little taiwanese girls working silently, diligently making his costumes. they are very very ornate. seeing his work i have to ask myslef "why am i here?" when compared to my work his is visionary. i asj this over and over. it's not just clebson. everyone here is so talented... professional. i am in awe of my luck for being selected to come here. everything here is so dream like... so sperate from everything that has come before it.

july 8th
let me just for one moment expound on the virtures of the squat toilet. hygenicaly miles ahead of the throne and ergonomicaly correct. it's like shitting in the woods every time.

july 11th (?)
i have a heat rash on my ass and some sort of puss filled rashy sore in my left arm pit. (latter i would also develop a strange burst blood vessel in my eye for no reason)

we are working in the heat every day all day for 12 damned hours under this huge circus tent canopy thing that mostly serves as an oven. it's been about 100 degrees for 2 now. the locals in our community groups dont even show up until nearly sundown. i'm drinking so much water. we all are. and we never piss. it worries us. but walt was right. if you drink enough water you become almost god-like.

i might have to bludgeon the office girls soon. dude, seriously, fuck them. (the girl largely involved in being one big pain in my ass and a total bitch has since been taken off the loudong parade and replaced by inch, who i love)

i don't think i can eat another lunch box. why does every single resturant have the exact same lunch box? why? rice, meaty item, greens, veggie, 1/2 of a tea egg. it's not right. they make me eat fish here everyday. they worry about my not eating meat terribly.

i am smoking a minimum of 1 pack a day. smokes cost about $1.25. we work so much and never sleep and i just can't stop.

july 14

mutiny on the bounty. there is the smell of dissent amongst the troops. (this was our day off and the czechs were experienceing what they call sub-marine affect. essentially cabin fever from working and living and sleeping with eachother too much)

july 15th (?)

there was an earthquake in the night. i have rarely felt smaller or more helpless. it's strange to me, have never experienced it before, how instantly recognizable it was. even as i was shaken from the dead of sleep the knowing was instanteous. i lay awake for an hour or more after. i could not shake the feeling of something so big. (side note: we are on the 6th floor of the hostel.
we REALLY felt this thing. also our hostel is acctually connected to a temple and is for people on religious pilgramages and not so much for alcholic foreign artists.)

july 16th
a funny thing happened last ..... (edited for adult content).... these are trecherous waters.

july 17th
i don't think you can ever get used to this heat. you can only learn to endure it.

i have to stop drinking and start sleeping. (the czechs and myself have by now developed a nasty habbit of staying up too late and drinking and smoking on the 6th floor balcony)

last night michael and i took the scooter to the beach (we have a company scooter at the work shop. i estimate it is around 1000 years old and is a total piece of shit. we all take turns using it after work. we have a beach we frequently go for night swimming, all of us) the moon was a big beautiful orange half moon hanging low in the sky. as far as romantic nites go this ranks right up there with minnesota corn fields and aurora borealis.

i'm tired. did i mention i'm really really tired?

july 18th
lucas last night carried me naked in his arms into the sea. (this was one of the nites we borrowed the dream community van. there were about 10 of us there and it was so perfect and romantic. i am afraid of the ocean. it was just perfect to be held by this guy as the waves crashed over us and our friends were all around us under the stars. am i lucky or what?)

july 25th
(edited material)

stupid fucking bell ringing puppet! i hate you.

last night everyone went to the beach. the water was so calm. it was filled with blue-green phosphorous plankton. i've never seen it before. it was so beautiful to see them sparkle and glow against your skin (we swim naked ok?) i can't explain the magic of it.

i am still smoking too much.

i think i ate pizza with shrimp and snails on it today.

there are many beautiful people here.

i am a lovely golden color.

i completely understand the tern lost in translation now. i dont recognize my voice here. i am speaking in a abridged version of myself. i have completely re-defined the way i use the english language. ( i am the only native speaker of english here and nobody can understand american english. i talk really funny here.)

july (?)
ok so i dont know the date. but i think we are pretty up to speed here. here i am in taipei. michal and i took the bus this morning from loudong. we had to get out. i had to do this internet thing. he hates cities (we are in the suburbs) and is off smoking hash by the lake. i can't help thinking we should have stayed in taipei city a few more hours. this is i think our last week of work for the loudong parade. we are so sick of it. there is a week of parades starting on the first and then a big final parade on the 8th. in theory we will have this week to party and have fun. but after loudong the czechs have invited me to come with them into the mountains. they will be preforming a traveling puppet show for the aborigional communities based on a czech fairy tale. i think i'm the princess. i am also doing costumes. so we have to spend the parade week getting ready for our show. work work work. it's all so un-real. i am happy. i am a manic mess. all of this is true and i know i forgot everything essential and special and.... i left out the texture of all of this some how. there is no way to explain any of this.

i mean i didnt ever tell you anything. not about my job or the weird town or the night market or anything. it's ok. i'll try harder next time.

i dont know when i can write more. after loudong we go to the mountains and i can only imagine that the internet access is even worse than in provincial loudong. also, sorry there are no pictures. i am still really really bad at taking them and already forgot how to get them from the brain of my camera and into the brain of a computer and then on to the interweb.

Arrivals/Departures

ok. so i made it all the way to taiwan. i don't even know where to start. firstly i guess by thanking everyone in new york for such a lovely last week in town. it was rough. last minute visa problems, a death in the family. terrible, terrible. but then i had such a lovely send off. a sushi dinner party friday night and dance parties one after another all weekend. i couldn't ask for a better summer time in new york slice of life to hold onto as i move along on my way.

the flight went well. better than expected in fact. i don't like flying on the best of days and 18 hours of it is really pushing my (and anybodys, really) limits. no seat made by man is comfortable for that long. it's just not possible. the food was edible. they really feed you on those international flights. i guess they figure if you have something to do it's easier. i couldn't help stuffing my face with thier sub-par reheated platters. i can't ever turn down free food. i didn't really sleep at all on my 16 hour flight to hong kong. maybe only 2 hours. my feet and legs swelled up like sausages. gravity works, ok? and it ached terribly making sure i didn't sleep hardly a wink. i played more games of video solitaire than i'd like to admit. in hong kong my layover was just long enough to shuffle from one terminal to the next and be herded onto my conecting flight to taipei. i'm quite proud of myself. i handled it quite well. there wasn't a single moment of creeping panic. i'm somehow able to attain a sort of airplane zen. it's kinda like this detached meditative state. the flight is a blur now. but it was kinda a blur as it was happening. more the better.

gordon, my employer, picked me up at the airport. he's such a wonderful, child like man. so enthusiastic. he took me imediatlely to some street stalls for snacks. mango ice. it's basicaly cubed mango covered in a mound of shaved ice and toped with sweetened condenced milk and brown sugar syrup. you wouldn't believe how good this is. especially when it's 80 degrees and 80 percent humidity at 11pm. the mangos here are of a completely different caliber that what we have in the states. they are like butter. sweet, orange, fruity butter. we also ordered a little bag of fried squid and diakon cakes from the guy next door with the choose your own adventure fried food stall next door. i wasn't even aware i was missing out on anything as far as fried food goes. but seriously, you are. i'm sorry. i don't know what they dust it in but it's wonderful. please, barce yourself. this is only the first in what i assume will be a long line of travel essays expounding on the virtues of taiwanese cuisine. then we drove to the dream community and gordon showed me my room. andrea, it's painted the same color as that one green building you love. it's nothing fancy. a bed. a table. a fan. a small desk. it's directly above the bakery. they mill all their own grain and have fresh baked bread daily. all of their offices are are on this one one or two block strip. there's the bakery, the dorms, the cafe, the dream community offices and apartment complex. it's awesome. and as we drove up i noticed that every door was left wide open in th middle of the night. the bakery and the woodshop were just sitting open for all the world to see. gordons laptop sitting on a desk 5 feet from the door in a completely empty building. i like that. i like that a lot.

i tried to sleep a bit last night. 4 or 5 hours was all i could muster. i had hoped for more but i think it's nerves. i was up at 6:30 rolling around in bed waiting til 9am when someone would be down in the bakery to bug. i came into the offices around 10. i met clebson who is the brazilian costume designer i will be working with all season. his english is really poor but i think we can work it out. he's adorable. he came out last season and stayed. he's been here a year! i met all of the office girls who's names i can't remember. they all jumped up and ran from behind their desks and hugged me, giggling. they are all really sweet girls. i'm glad that they are as excited for me to be here as i am. everybody i meet knows my name and where i'm from and everything. they have been waiting. everything seems really well organized. i think it's going to be really easy to be here. gordon wants me to just chill out for the next 2 or 3 days until we go to ludong. i don't know if i can. i want to explore and if i can't do that i want to be working. i think i'll go bug clebson now and see if he needs any help. so here in is.... the first sleep deprived installment to this trip.

Let's Pretend We're grown-Ups

So I'm already sucking at keeping this thing up to date. Day to day life just isn't that interesting here in the quiet closing weeks of my stay in New York. Although, I did finally accomplish the last pressing task to get me on my way to Taiwan. I managed to convince the Taiwanese Consulate to give me a visa. There was some crying of real tears and a little bit of begging for good measure but in the end I got them to acquiescence and give me a meager 30 day visa. This, for the record, is total garbage. Everybody get's a 30 day visa. You don' have to apply for it or pay for it or anything. They let everybody stay for 30 days or less without paperwork. They kept my $130 application fee, the bastards. But I can't complain. It will get me there. It will do.

That same day I bought luggage. That's a funny thing. It's just one of those things I never pictured myself doing. Buying shoes, a backpack, dinner, yes of course. But luggage? That's so nearly adult. Walking around the wholesale district in Manhattan looking for a good deal on a (gasp) rollerbag felt a little out of character. "Yes, hello good sir. I am going on a trip and I would like to purchase the finest luggage that $50 or less can buy." Haha! It was actually very settling although. That and getting all my paperwork straight. The days are no longer nervous, anticipatory days with my departure date looming over me. Now they are lazy days. Days I wish would actually speed by. I'm ready now and I want to go. Thank you New York for everything but it's time to move along. It is a relief to finally, fully, resign myself to the choices I made months ago to take this trip.

I Heart Puerto Rico

Ok. First post. And what better to kick it off with than Puerto Rican Day? Every year in the city of New York there is a Puerto Rican Parade down 5th Ave. in Manhattan. And every year every Puerto Rican citizen of New York goes ape shit in the streets to celebrate. It's insane. Unfortunately I didn't snap any pictures of when the boys and girls at Hood Ink in Bed-Sty took over the streets and blocked Myrtle Ave. for over an hour. I didn't get any pics of when they started stopping all the buses, climbing all over crowded buses filled with people, waving flags, and tagging every surface in reach with "PR" in white shoe shine. I didn't get any pictures of when they did the same to the garbage trucks and ambulances and anyone else thinking the had a right to be going anywhere down Myrtle Ave. in the middle of their celebration. We are talking about 100 drunken hoods screaming and waving flags in the streets, music blaring, stopping traffic, and -my god!- doing graffiti, as the cops sat on the corner in a puddle of their own flaccid inertia. It's just nice to know that someone out there is getting away with it.


This guy!

Roof top parties!