Superman, AC/DC, little girls and Kryptonite...

I Think About You -Don Schlitz and Steve Seskin Everytime I see a woman on a billboard sign I think about you Saying "drink this beer and you'll be mine" I think about you When an actress on a movie screen Plays Lolita in some old man's dreams It doesn't matter who she is I think about you When I see a pretty woman walking down the street I think about you Men look her up and down like she's some kind of treat I think about you She wouldn't dare talk to a stranger always has to be aware of the danger it doesn't matter who she is I think about You eight years old big blue eyes and a heart of gold when I look at this world, I think about You and I can't help but see that every woman used to be Somebody's little girl, I think about you Everytime I hear people say it's never gonna change I think about you Like it's some kind fo joke, some kind of game I think about you When I see a woman on the news who didn't ask to be abandoned or abused it doesn't matter who she is I think about You eight years old big blue eyes and a heart of gold when I look at this world, I think about You and I can't help but see that every woman used to be Somebody's little girl, I think about you When I look at this world I think about you

So this is how my day is going so far…I’ve spent most of it in tears, with my office door closed. At times, I’ve considered crawling under my desk, yes, it’s going that well today. I had a restless night of sleep last night and sleep deprivation is my kryptonite (sidebar…when kryptonite didn’t come up as a misspelled word, I looked it up on dictionary.com and this is the definition they have…”any surviving fragment of the exploded mythological planet Krypton, home of Superman.” Please find that as entertaining and ridiculous as I do…). Like most other folks in the Twin Cities, I could blame this poor night’s sleep on the 65+ mph winds that shook us all night long (see what I mean about kryptonite, somehow I went AC/DC there), but I won’t. My restless night was due to feelings of overwhelming helplessness. Now, when I say overwhelming, I’m not talking I’m-stressed-but-nothing-a-little-yoga can’t handle, I mean holy-shit-life-is-coming-at-me-at-the-speed-of-an-incoming-missile-and-there’s-no-cover.

I hesitate to even broach the subject of why I’m feeling so overwhelmed, but seeing as I’ve already admitted to seriously considering crawling under my desk today, what the hell. Here’s the deal, I just want to be left alone. I don’t mean I want to isolate, I mean I want men to just back the hell off. At the risk of sounding like that don’t-hate-me-because-I’m-beautiful shampoo commercial, I’m tired of being approached by men, wherever I go. I’m tired of getting messages on facebook (which isn’t a word according to spellcheck, someone better get on that because I’m pretty sure society is moving to the place where marriages and divorces will be considered official if announced on there, but again, I digress) from men I hardly know. I know the score, none of these guys really knows me, they know what they see, and for a woman who has been through what I’ve been through, to be viewed merely as a body…well, honestly, I don’t have the words to describe what it does to me. I’m not a personal challenge or a conquest, I’m a mother, I’m a daughter, I’m a sister, I’m a friend. I’m also a survivor of rape who has a hell of a time saying no. For months now, the running joke with my circle of friends is that I’ll accidently get married again because some guy will say “let’s get married” and I’ll say, with resignation “ok.”

I’m also a person going through a very painful divorce, a person who needs some space to breathe, a person who needs to learn about herself, a person who needs to be alone. Apparently, I’m also still a work in progress. I completed Rape Trauma Counseling earlier this month so I should be good, right? Wrong. When “I Think about You” came up on my iPod this morning, it literally brought me to my knees in such emotional pain that I could hardly breathe for a minute. I’m not Lolita for some old man, I’m not “some kind of treat,” I’m still my dad’s little girl, all women are. When I was 8 years old, I was stubborn and willful, and my dad’s little girl. I insisted on doing things my own way. When I was raped, I lost that sense of myself, I no longer knew what my way was. I’m starting to learn what that is again, but I need some time to figure that out and I can’t do that if I’m dating, or kind of dating, or “it’s just lunch”ing.

I need time, I need space, I need sleep and, in attempt to bring this full circle, sans AC/DC, I need my fortress of solitude…