Thanks, everyone, for the helpful responses to my entry a couple of days ago. The idea of working to help others has come up for me repeatedly – both in therapy and in my personal life. My therapist thinks I’d be a great candidate for teaching sexual violence awareness as it’s something I’m passionate about and (self-)educated on.
Before I became a librarian, I went through a little career crisis trying to figure out what I wanted to do. I knew I didn’t want to continue working in the corporate world – it was sucking my soul dry and the stress was ruining my health. Really only three career paths presented themselves for serious consideration. I thought about becoming an acupuncturist, but the schooling is intense. You can’t hold a job during the second year of it and I couldn’t support myself without a job. Next I considered becoming a librarian, which is clearly the path I chose. (And I’m quite happy with that choice.) The third choice, and one given serious consideration, was to become a sex therapist/educator. My undergrad degree is in a psychology-related field so going into some sort of psych career would fit well with my background. I’m passionate about sex. Part of why the assault has hit me so hard is that it totally turned my identity as a sex-positive, sexual person on its head (and still does). I wish more people were educated about sex and having better sex. I detest that our society basically condones rape (it sure doesn’t adequately condemn it). Young men and women need some serious education when it comes to what’s consensual and what’s not. “No means no” is all well and good but it hasn’t gotten the point into the heads of many men. And women need to have enough value for themselves and their sexuality to feel that they can say no.
Life is full of gray areas, and certainly when it comes to consent to have sex there are gray areas. But in a society where women and their sexuality are respected, a lot less assault would go on. In our society women’s sexuality is a commodity to be controlled by men. While feminism has brought things a long way, we still have a long way to go. The insidious forms of sexism remain intact. The victim of a sexual crime is still the one who essentially gets put on trial. “Boys will be boys” is still used as an excuse for rape. It’s ridiculous.
I think sooner or later I’ll end up in a situation where I educate others. It might be the next career change down the road, or perhaps a volunteer position is waiting for me. I just need to get myself organized enough to do it. Blogging has been a great platform to express my rage, my sorrow and my ideas concerning sexual assault. With my old blog, I got a few emails from women who had been through what I went through, and my talking about my experience seemed to help them in some way.
I liked Miss Syl’s comment. “Living well is the best reward.” In therapy this week we talked about how getting control of a phobia I have (using the telephone) might even help me feel better about the assault because it’s a way to have control over my life and what happens. I feel much better thinking about how to have control and power over my life than I ever feel when I think about retribution, or whether the guy feels guilty or not. Those two things leave me essentially powerless (after all, I’m not up for executing revenge in reality – I just think a lot about it.) Maybe that’s the route to moving on – finding ways to have control over my life. (Not in a obsessive-compulsive way obviously, but in a healthy manner.) I feel much better when I feel like I have control over what happens to me. I finally made a phone call at work the other day that I put off for weeks and I felt so amazing afterward. I had beaten the fear that kept me from making the call. I had control for a change. Maybe I’ve finally hit upon a way to move on, or to start to.
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