“Some people aren’t as strong as you are.” – floor mate from freshman year of college
A girl that lived on the same floor as me told me that…and you know what, it made me angry. I know it sounds kind of ridiculous, but hear me out. The first thing that made me angry is that she made an assumption. I take it as a compliment that she said that I was strong, but at that point in time I didn’t believe it. Anyway back to the assumption. My mom always says “Don’t make assumptions because it makes an ass out of you and me.” It makes sense because assumptions definitely do more harm than good. If you look up the word strong on Google and look under the second definition you will find this “(of a person’s character) showing determination, self-control, and good judgment.” In my opinion a lot of the time I don’t exhibit those qualities. Sometimes I do show determination, like at work, or school assignments (most of the time) or at practice. Sometimes I don’t, when I’m stressed and don’t feel like trying anymore or I feel like I was assigned busy work. Self-control, now I do have to admit I do show that…A LOT. People that know me, know that I can have a very short temper and that a lot of things bother me; people sneezing/coughing without covering their mouths, people repeating themselves, people talking to me as if I’m below them and people being childish, just to name a few. I deal with those things all of the time and most of the time people can’t even tell that I’m actually losing my mind. Since I work in retail, I’ve gotten a lot better with that because two years ago, you would be able to read my face like a book. Good judgement. That I’m not always the poster child for. I have made many decisions that are nowhere near being examples of good judgement. Partying, smoking, boys, missing class, people I trust, etc. With all that being said I personally do not see myself as a strong person. So the fact that she assumed that I am strong made me a bit angry. I just realized that this might not make sense to some of y’all. Side note *another thing people who have talked to me know, I tell stories out-of-order, sorry bout it* So to clear this up I’ll give some insight to the situation. We were having an additional meeting after a floor meeting which was called by our RLC (Residence Life Coordinator). So during this meeting, we were supposed to be able to voice our opinions and what not with a little more freedom without pressure from the RLC. There were a couple of ground rules for this talk 1. No accusatory tones 2. No yelling 3. No singling out. Guess what all three of those things happened. I digress. Some girls were saying that they were uncomfortable hanging out in the lounge because my group of friends hung out there a lot and that it was intimidating to come into a room full of people that you aren’t really friends with. They were making it seem a lot worse than it really was. On top of that I was already pissed off because of the meeting that was held with the RLC and the rest of the floor because it was excuse my french, bullshit. I had had enough and had to say something. So here was my smartass/annoyed as all hell response. “You’re crying over spilled milk. Yeah, there’s going to be situations that make you uncomfortable, but this is trivial. You can come and hang out here if you want to, its not like we’re going to tell you can’t. I see my rapist everyday. I see him sitting in the cafe (pronounced caf) having lunch with his friends, laughing, having a good time, staring me down as I walk by. You know what I keep going on about my business, because I have to. Life isn’t easy so get used to it, because it’s not crystal stair.It took me years of therapy to even get close to where I am right now.” And that’s when she said “Some people aren’t as strong as you.” Now you can see why I pissed off that she said it. I didn’t choose to be strong. I was being “strong” because I had to be. If I wasn’t “strong” I wouldn’t be able to function. I couldn’t afford to break down every time that I saw his face because then I wouldn’t be able to do anything. I wouldn’t be able to go to class, attending football games (he was on the team), see school productions or just hangout around campus. That’s why I didn’t see it as “strong”. I was just going about my day as I would before that incident. Now that I’m writing this out, I realized that I did something that I can’t stand. When people compare situations. I didn’t say that one situation was more intimidating than the other, but it’s kind of implied and I don’t like that. I always say don’t compare the effects of different situations because you do not know how something as affected someone. This is the perfect time for an example. Here’s another situation from my freshman year of college…actually it was from the same night as that meeting. So long story short, a girl started flipping out and a friend and I left to go on a walk, because I would’ve went completely left on her. My roommate started texting me. Mind you that I had told her that I wasn’t ready to talk to anyone, since that was the first time that I had said what happened out loud and she said okay. She sent me a multiple page text message that enraged me more than I had already been at the previous meetings that night. First of all, why are you talking to me, when I clearly said that I was not ready to talk to anyone? Why would you pick such a bad time to talk to me. What upset me the most about her obnoxiously long text was the ending. At the beginning of the year I got a little drunk and made a decision that was not a good one and engaged in “activities” with someone while my roommate was in the room. Yes, I know that it was an inappropriate thing to do and that it was wrong, I have apologized for that many times over. She compared being scarred from that to me being raped…Just soak that in for a moment. I was absolutely speechless. How dare you compare those two events to each other. Let’s look at the details. She was fully conscious, she had the ability to take control of the situation, she had the ability to leave. Now, let’s look at my situation. I don’t remember leaving the guy I was dancing with to talk to him, I don’t remember him asking me if I wanted to go to his room, I don’t remember being carried like a koala bear to his room(clearly I couldn’t walk), I don’t remember all of the intercourse, I don’t remember putting my pants back on and I had to hold on to the wall to walk back to the room I was in originally and I think someone was helping me even then. Clearly I couldn’t fight him off even if I wanted to. There was no way in hell that i could have taken control of that situation let alone leave. How the fuck did she think those two things were even remotely similar? Exactly. Gesh, that still pisses me off beyond no end. Usually once I write something I’m over it, but I think that this is going to stick with me forever. I’ve never felt so disrespected in life other than that very night. The fact that I’ve forgiven my rapist before forgiving that is a sign/lesson in and of itself: Never compare how something affected you to how a different situation affected someone else and say that they are similar.
kddubs 