backpack dreams

I’ve been thinking a lot today. Mostly about which bass guitar to buy, which I’m circling in on. It’ll be either a Sire V5 (whatever color), if it ever comes back in stock. Or, more likely, the Sire V7 New Gen (Forest Green) from Sweetwater. (I only partially mentioned this on the blog before, but I was in a car accident and I will likely get a decent payout from a following lawsuit, so I’ve been spending money like an idiot lately).

I’ve also been thinking about how I was abused as a child. Maybe because I've also been listening to lots of music, reconnecting to my younger self. I started relistening to Sly and the Family Stone, which still holds up. I think I'll finally learn some of those songs on bass, wonder why I never did. But listening to the music of yore sure digs up a lot of old terrible emotions and thoughts.

As a Good Korean Pastor’s Kid (Southern Baptist), I was terrified of the rapture. I’d have nightmares and daydreams of the day when everyone I loved was finally evac’d from my life. Maybe I saw it in some TV show, but I always imagined everyone’s sets of clothes, laid out on the floor. And I’d be left behind to pick up their dirty laundry. I was also told that committing suicide meant you’d go to Hell. If that latter belief wasn’t so baked into my psyche at such a young age, I likely would have killed myself in high school. Or freshman year, more likely. Or shortly after college, when doing comedy was actually kind of good and fun. I’ve thought about it many times with varying levels of intensity and light planning. I use the word “light” as in they were less so actual plans and more so intrusive fantasies. Slitting my throat over the nearest storm drain to the mortuary. Using a dynamite vest in the desert at 10,000 ft up (maybe influenced by Antonioni’s Blow Up). The running trend being, a way to minimize the burden I would leave behind. Unfortunately, as I get older, my burdensome-ness grows wider and more complicated.

I was sexually abused consistently throughout my childhood by a close family member. I wish I could say they were dead (but do I, really?). However, they’re actually thriving. They beat cancer, and the saddest part is, incidentally, I was their person during their diagnosis and treatment. I sat in many waiting rooms, sat beside during multiple chemotherapies, I took happy photos of them as they rung the bell after they finished radiation. From the outside, this might seem completely irrational and impossible. And that’s not to say I wasn’t thickly aware of the irony. Because in the most regimented fashion, I was forced to confront my defining trauma mere feet from it’s literal perpetrator. But in reality, it felt like the most logical conclusion of how I’d been living my life. Cause I didn’t confront these feelings, really, I simply continued to let them blare through my mind and body the same way I had been my entire life. This would have been, perhaps, the best time to kill myself. As opposed to before, it would have been immensely disruptive and painful and complicated for everyone I knew. But it would be a statement, it would have given me a semblance of control I felt I never had. Post-mortem, but still. So if not then, when? Truly, if not then, then never.

Last year, after a birthday dinner as I turned 33, halfway through a bottle of soju, I confronted my abuser. I told them I remembered everything. I tried to explain how deeply it derailed my sense of self and my material life throughout my teens up until that very moment. But I wasn’t ready to make that step, it was cathartic, but sloppy. I don't even remember exactly what I said. My abuser, of course, denied it and continues to do so to this day. But I know they know.

Now I am freshly 34. I am isolated. Sad. (Redacted from my phone while I take a walk.) It’s probably that last part that is bothering me most acutely today. It’s easy to focus on that, isn’t it? And it’s easy because it’s simple. There is a clear cause and effect. The larger pain is that my life has now compounded years of avoidance and suppression and rationalization of things that cannot be rationalized. And that has done more damage than lack of, uh, sex. It has horribly skewed my view of people, of human behavior. In a couple ways, it's been novel and good, but obviously, in most ways, terrible and self-sabotaging.

It’s been exactly a year since my last blog post (matthewbarkbark.blogspot.com). I didn’t realize that when I started writing this. But I just now checked the blog to see if I had written anything about this. Lo and behold, I have, exactly 365 days ago. It’s interesting how timing works out. I still sometimes journal in the same way, but I don’t post it on the blog, obviously. But perhaps I’ll post just this, for the sake of timeliness and continuing the cliffhanger that is my life (and I’ll try to retroactively correct some of my phrasing and presentation to fit the blog, but, uh, whatever).

I still haven’t seen a therapist about any of this, going off of the last post’s description of AffordableTherapistGate. I tell myself I’ve been too busy adjusting to my new job, going to physical therapy from my car accident. I trot forward, in denial of many things, because that’s what I’ve taught myself to do. I do have good insurance now though, so I will. I will, I will I will. Hopefully writing this all out is a step closer to that.

So, here is the trauma dump to the blog that I have still not closed and to the readers that do not exist. It’s a poor substitute for actual therapy, I can guess, but it’s what I can manage right now. I have to remember that life can be good. That feeling wavers. I’m gonna take a walk through Barnsdall Art Park before it closes.

Oh, I should add: the impetus for this entry was a thought I had in the shower. What it might look like if I “came out” as a survivor of sexual abuse on instagram, of all places. What a silly, convoluted fantasy. I never post on there and I will continue to not do so. I’m much happier to just post pseudo-exhibitionally here instead.

In the absurd off chance anyway I know or used to know is actually reading this, I feel obligated to say I am not actively harming myself nor do I have any plans to do so. I’m dealing with things, the best I can. But if you are reading this and knew me back in high school or whatever, if you reach out, I might actually respond this time. I don’t know. This will probably be the last post for a while. Although it’s gonna be weird if you reach out now, because I’ll know you have read this and now know things that I have only told maybe 2 people in my life. And even those people did not get this level of detail, if you can call it that. In any case, the park is going to close so I better hop to it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdPs5YXQTSw