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The Rule and the Raven

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Sorrow at the joy of love.

Sorrow at the joy of love.

Last updated on: April 9, 2016 at 5:29 pm by Anne Carpenter

Sorrow at the joy of love. 2016-04-09T17:29:38-08:00 Anne Carpenter

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"Ophelia," John William Waterhouse

“Ophelia,” John William Waterhouse. For symbolic purposes.

I don’t want to ruin everyone’s day. I feel like that person who got cajoled into going to the party who maybe should’ve been left at home. Now I’m moping in a corner, one hand stuffed in my pocket and the other resentfully holding some water. You told me to have a drink, and I’m having water purely to spite you. Yeah, I’m that person at your party. Because I don’t want to talk about Amoris Laetitia, “The Joy of Love,” the pope’s new exhortation on marriage and the family.

I don’t want you to quote it or give me key points. Yes, Pope Francis is amazing. So is marriage and family. He changed the whatever that also stayed exactly the same. Hooray for us, I don’t disagree, go talk to someone else. I don’t want to talk. Because this is a document that has absolutely nothing to do with me, and that hurts.

See? You wished you left me to be grumpy at home.

Here’s the thing: I was sexually abused. For years. And I had no idea how to say it – none – and no one noticed. Not even my parents. So you might say that I have some profoundly ambivalent feelings about sex, marriage, and family.

I wish no one would ever ask me, ask me anything remotely related to any that, so I wouldn’t have to say it and ruin everything. I don’t like reminding people that this shit happens and that sometimes people get really, really messed up from it. But everyone is talking about marriage and sex and family, and this is all I’ve got. You should’ve just left me home.

I’m pretty messed up. If you didn’t let me just rattle off basic Church teaching, the wounds would be obvious. Reduced to tracing the awful scars of my understanding, I would be asking you with haunted and sincere eyes, “Isn’t all sex violent?” And I’d mean every damn inch of that sentence including the question mark. If you laughed, I’d cry. Because I’d mean it. All I personally know about sex is violent. It is very nearly all that I can imagine about it even now, and I am a few years free of the experience itself.

I cannot stress how serious I am.

All while I am quite aware that the world and the Church imagine much better things – even if they disagree about parts of it. At least they agree that such things won’t make you hurt forever. I do not agree. I don’t fucking get it. But I got twisted up inside, and lots of other people didn’t, and I’ll just… Get out of everyone’s way.

I really, sincerely try not to get upset. I try to believe other people.

Except for today. I’ve had it today. I am so sick of it today. I don’t like being the way I am, and I don’t like what feels like the entire world celebrating while I can’t. I can’t. I don’t believe you people. It’s not real, whatever you say. Not today. I’ve had it.

Sex is violent. That’s what I know. And family? My parents love me. They mean the best. They just – fucking – failed. Like everyone who loves fails. But they failed really badly. They failed badly, but they’re not bad. It’s confusing. I love them with everything I have, and sometimes I hate them that way too. Because sometimes people mean everything good and everything bad happens anyway.

I read news blurbs and quotes about Pope Francis discussing the difficulties of family and I laughed, all hollowed out inside. I wanted to scream. To break my laptop at my desk, to bleed. Anything, anything to pull the pain out of my ribs.

I’m not comforted by the simple knowledge – the notion, really – that it’s not like this for most people. I’ll submit to the truth of that, but it means very little. It just makes me feel even more lost. As if my own humanity was torn from me when I was ten, and then again and again. For years and years.

In certain ways, it was. Which is… Difficult to recover from.

Nor am I comforted by various advocates and theories. The ones that explain and rage over the violence. I always think it’s strange even as I think it, but I’m almost never comforted. I don’t know why. Maybe because I take all the words to be lines. Maybe because I think you’re trying to tuck me away and out of your mind. Maybe because women hurt me too.

I’m not denying Church teaching, or that Pope Francis is awesome, or any of that. I simply have no idea what to do with my anger, my absolute fury and sorrow, that I suffered as I did and as I do. That it made me into…whatever I am. Someone who doesn’t understand.

The Church isn’t talking to me in that letter. And that’s alright.

Sometimes I just fucking wish you weren’t all so happy about things that hurt me so much.

I almost never say that, and I’m sorry. I’ll feel better tomorrow. Just…fuck you guys, sometimes.

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