December 6th, and so far I've always remembered. I don't need tattoos to remind me of this one...
...and last year on December 6th, we had a big discussion about men and women and rape and abuse on this mailing list that I feel as though I've always been on... These people have always been a part of my life, teaching me, and listening to me, and crying with me on December 6th.
Last year I talked about rape. I pointed out, after all the men and their rage at being labelled potential rapists by every women they've dated, that despite the fact that *I* know them to be the gentlest, most wonderful humans, let alone men, in the world...
...it may feel like persecution, but it's not. It's pain, and we're trying to share it, I guess, share the fact that one in four isn't just a statistic... Share the fact that I can think of TWO, women that I know that haven't been abused somehow. Just two.
Granted, to so many of us it happenned many years ago...
...but it's not something that leaves you, realy.
And so this evening, I raced out of work, half-late for baby-sitting Dan and Nancy's littl'un so that they could go out to see their first movie since he's been born, thinking of death, thinking of pain, thinking of the hushed tears we shared last year, in text, in e-mail, but they way we all opened up at each other and seared our pain into each other's memories.
And I was also thinking about that time I got pregnant. How Christmas that year was extra melodramatic because I'd decided that that's right around when I would've been screaming and pushing and gasping in labour, and how right around now I'd have a five-year-old to think up a christmas gift for...
Only I know very well that I'm not ready for that, but when Vincent fell asleep in my lap and we curled up on the couch together, the tiny warm imprint of a drooling, freshly-diapered one-year-old clutching desperately at my chin and snoring ever so ligtly into my eyesocket, I started thinking, and now I'm really confused.
It's really easy to be angry, it's really easy to be solitary, it's really easy to live life for my career goals and personal martial arts goals, and seduction games and sex games, and it's fun to talk about geekshit and toys and priorities and whether or not that fancy furniture means anything at all or whether or not I should get a starter for my car because it's FUCKING COLD OUTSIDE, but all that's really hard to think about when Vincent rolls over and blinks up at me, grins a little and falls right back asleep.