29Jun/180
Forgotten Sunglasses
Today I felt something I'd never felt before. It was an entirely new classification of emotion.
The thing about it is, I have no idea how to describe it because I've never felt it before.
It's really a mix of emotions, and maybe I'm only describing it that way because I have no idea how to describe it... But it's certainly something that I have no idea how to put it into words.
The thing is, I've had things stolen before. I've had stuff messed with before. I've had a whole range of things done to me in one form or another and I've... what's that phrase? "Taken it like a man."
Isn't that what we're supposed to do? As men? Shut up and move on.
Suck it up.
Wuss.
There's a whole vocabulary that I've had fed to me over the years.
There was a song playing at the staff hang out spot before we all left to head to bed last night... The lyrics were something along the lines of...
BE A MAN
We must be swift as a coursing river
BE A MAN
With all the force of a great typhoon
BE A MAN
With all the strength of a raging fire
Mysterious as the dark side of the moon
Even disney knows the deal.
But I couldn't help my thoughts doing their own thing. And why shouldn't they do their own thing? It's what thoughts do best.
The best I can describe is with a whole slew of emotions coming and going.
So, okay. Last night when I went to go to bed, my personal linens were lifted and used by others. In their inebriated state they had reverted to preserving Maslow's hierarchy of needs on a selfish level.
Can they be blamed? This is the start of my first emotion.
Do you blame someone for something if they are in an altered state? It's a slippery slope.
"They were drunk."
So, is it okay to take someone else's stuff and use it for your own personal gain or comfort? I'm not going to answer that question because I'm probably not qualified to do so.
What I do know is that I did say that. I thought that. Hey, they were drunk. But when I got to my own bed at 3am and had nothing but a bare mattress... Where does that leave me?
It leaves me unsure of what to do. I could have simply climbed into bed and slept on the bare mattress... But I felt uncomfortable. I felt like I wasn't wanted there. I needed to go somewhere else.
I left.
I didn't feel angry at first, I don't feel upset. I just felt, lost... A little confused. Did I not leave my own stuff in a fashion that made it seem as though it was apparent that it was my own?
Was it my own fault that they took my items in their drunken state?
I still feel that way. Blame myself I guess. But I've heard a victim of anything should never blame themselves...
This goes against what I've been told... Be a man... Defense. They wouldn't have scored on you if you'd have had proper defense.
The same goes here... Is it my fault?
I felt upset... I felt humiliated. Everyone would know. I just wanted to have the people sleep through the night, leave, and wash my belongings... and not have a soul know.
But the people who did it knew. If they say something and I don't, does that make me weak?
I felt disgusted, and gross... I felt dirty.
When I returned to my cabin, my stuff was simply left no top of my bags....
Like, thank you, now clean up our mess.
And that's where my mind got the best of me... Was there a mess? As in, did someone use the items in any of the ways that my mind could imagine? Or was someone just not sure what to do and they simply left the items as is....
AKA, did someone just have sex on my bed sheets and leave them for me to clean up the mess?
I felt... Violated. Or... Maybe that's a strong word but... I felt gross, used.
I don't know... Like I said, this is new territory for me. I've had houseguests and washed linens before... But it was okay because I invited them in.
This was a situation where I was expecting to simply go to bed and here I show up and my personal belongings were strewn about and being used in some capacity or another.
But why?
And it was this that then lead to me just feeling unsure, unsteady, unwanted in the community I'm temporarily in.
Like I said, I felt something new... Something that I can only guess has been felt by someone who has had their personal space invaded in such a way that it makes them feel like they could take a thousand showers and never feel clean.
It's made me think that it came down to consent.
That, if I had offered to lend something to someone, it would have felt fine.
But to come back to some one making a decision involving my personal space that I did not consent to just feels... Awful.
There's no other way to describe the gravity of it. Earlier this evening, I started to realize that it's, though not anywhere close to the same level...
It's on the scope of invasion of non-consent.
Take that how you will.
I can only begin to imagine how someone of the ultimate non-consent invasion would feel. It's this crazy range of emotions... Was it my fault? Do I feel angry? Upset? Sad? Do I demand an apology? Do I apologize? Am I not a good enough person to be respected? Did I do something wrong? Why is everyone acting so strange... I shouldn't have said anything, this is my fault now. If I had just sucked it up and kept quiet everything would be normal like it was before.
All of these thoughts stopped in their track this morning when I went back to start the process of cleaning up. I had put the items in a pile, I had started to decide how I would get things back to an OKAY status.
It was then that one of the people who had used my stuff walked into the room.
The conversation was short, she simply said nothing more than....
"I forgot my sunglasses."
And she took her sunglasses and went.
My perception was, heartless. That she didn't care. That she simply wanted to find her sunglasses after the fact and that nothing else even registered on her mind.
But maybe she was embarrassed too. Maybe she didn't realized that I was feeling out of place.
I was half expecting an apology... But mostly expecting some sort of questioning... Something like "Wait... Was this your stuff?"
Or some kind of clarification. Like... "I didn't realize..."
People make mistakes.
Nothing. She just turned and left.
Forgotten sunglasses...
And nothing else.
It made me feel hallow inside. Empty. I knew she was involved. I knew the last several hours had been confusing and strange for me... I knew I wanted to ask questions... "What were you thinking?" "Did you not realize this was someone else's personal belongings?" "Were you THAT wasted?"
But I just said okay. She took her sunglasses and went.
And I felt awful.
But it's not awful, it's something else. It's something new that I don't understand, it's a feeling that I don't get...
I don't have a word for it... It's a feel like...
Everything was okay before, and now it's not.
Something changed and I can't figure out what. I can't figure out how to make it go back.
I'm just here...
Saying to myself, this is stupid and silly, get over it... Move on... Be a man. It's just stuff. Who cares.
It happened... Get over it and move on.
I'm just here wondering how many others have been in the same mindset telling themselves the same thing over a situation that happened.
Which brings me to the biggest question on my mind...
What does anyone do when consent wasn't given by the person doing the giving but it was taken anyway by the person doing the taking?
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