BennyEast.Com/Blog The official blog of Kenny West

My Problem Right Now

I originally had posted this to Facebook and decided to delete it because there's none of the context on Facebook... It's all here in the last couple of posts.

But, here's the post with a little more added...

My problem right now isn't that some people took my bedding, sleeping bag, sheets, pillows, and used it without my consent.  For me, I was able to washing my stuff, and ease the feelings including disgust, anger, embarrassment, humiliation... What my problem right now really is, is that if I feel these type of things with what happened to me and I still feel strange about it, I still feel a little weirded out... and what happened to me is but a fraction of the level of what happens in a different scenario when it's not just stuff that isn't consented to... My problem is, how does someone who identifies as #MeToo feel, and deal?  I can't comprehend how that must feel right now.  Because even this event, which is but a small fraction if anything to how someone must feel when another person invades in an un-consenting way... I can't even begin to imagine that.  But what really gets me is that all of the times I've thought I understood... I didn't.  And I still don't.  Because I can't possibly.  But what I know is in the last 36 hours the feeling was awful.  Coming back to find someone else had taken my stuff and was using it, and possibly in a way that was very personal, the possibility of someone having sex on my sleeping bag and sheets just made me feel sick and shaken inside.

But even this residual feeling right now, the weirdness, the shame, and embarrassment, the question of if it was my fault somehow for leaving my stuff in such a way that it seemed inviting to be used, the anger, the awkwardness, the feeling of people looking at you and feeling sorry, just all of it... It's nothing compared to what someone must feel when their body is taken without consent.

And that's what kills me.  Because the little tiny bit of weirdness and strangeness that I feel, the dread of maybe coming back tonight to the same thing happening again...

It can't even compare.  And that's what I can't deal with right now.  I had a small taste of something that I don't like.  That feels awful.  And if it's just a small taste... I can't even comprehend what it must be like to have an alternative situation happen to someone.  How it must feel.

And it just really hits me hard, I tried to amplify the feeling to imagine what it must be like and just turned off.  I went numb.  I didn't want to know.  I don't want to know.  Because no one should want to know, or should ever have to know what that feels like.

My heart goes out to anyone who identifies as #MeToo... I can't even begin to understand how you must feel.  Not even a fraction of it.  And if the experience I had and the feelings I felt and feel were indeed a small taste of it in any capacity... it's awful.  It's just awful.  NO ONE deserves to feel anything like it, at all, in any capacity, ever.