********sensitive material to follow*************


It's all about timing, ain't it?

I did a huge purge last year and got rid of a lot of things that I had been hanging on to for far too long. I did not, however, go through my dresser. At first I was racking my brain as to what I would use for this task and then I remembered one of my t-shirts that has been sitting in the bottom of my drawer since the day after I wore it. It certainly isn't the sort of thing that goes to Goodwill and for a very long time, it also certainly wasn't the sort of thing that I was ready to let go of.

2005
Sociology class on social deviance
Assignment: Do something that breaks a social norm and then write a paper about it. The social norm you break is of your choosing.

For the assignment, I knew I wanted to do something that truly broke a social norm for me. This meant that I wasn't going to go out to eat and order dessert first or wear my pajamas out on the street. It takes a bit more than that to get me out of my comfort zone. After some thought, I decided that I would wear my heart on my sleeve, or rather, the front of my shirt.

The story: While passed out at a New Years party, years ago, I was raped by an acquaintance of an acquaintance. Except I didn't know that was what happened for a long time because no one had told me that you can't give consent when you are passed out, no one had told me that just because you are promiscuous doesn't mean that anyone can do what they want to you without your consent, and no one told me that coming to and finding that someone is having sex with you does not a) mean you wanted it or b) mean it was your fault because you didn't then resist. The first time someone explained all of that to me upon hearing my story, I was relieved. Relieved to finally have an answer to why I felt small and like a crumpled up piece of garbage every time I talked about it. There was therapy and long talks with trusted friends and tears and rage and hurting and healing. In between all of that came this assignment, and so, for my project, I chose to make a shirt that simply read "I was raped" and wear it on campus for one day. Some people looked at me as though I was contagious and they couldn't get far enough away from me while some simply glanced and then casually went about their day but some people actually wanted to talk to me. Some people just wanted to talk about the taboo of it while others came right out and asked if I had really been raped. Seriously. I told my story over and over again, to whomever wanted to know. Then I went home, wrote my paper and put the shirt at the bottom of one of my drawers.

I've moved a few times since then, but never was ready to get rid of it for whatever reason. I'm ready now and probably have been for some time. So, in the interest of creating rags for my newly made rag box (cutting down on my use of paper towels during my cleaning frenzies), I let it go.