Before this happened, what were your feelings about sexual assault?
I consider myself to be an independent, modern, and educated woman. I was and am a strong advocate of women’s rights and equality. I believed in speaking up for yourself, voting, and fighting against injustice. I was also a Sociology major in college with an interest in women’s studies and sexuality. My definition of sexual assault was any unwanted sexual advances in the form including penetration, inappropriate touching, and/or verbal abuse. I was also a strong advocate of the phrase, «No means no!» and was a black belt in karate.
I liked to think I was invincible and could bench-pressed cars and wrestled bears in my free time. That being said, I thought rape and sexual assault were awful things that shouldn’t happen to anyone, but I didn’t think that anything would happen to me. Rape just seemed like something that happened in the back alleys of sketchy neighborhoods that I didn’t frequent. If I did go into those areas, I would be ever-vigilant and made sure that I was either with someone, or prepared to drop an attacker with a well-placed kick to the groin.
Can you tell us about your relationship with the man that attacked you?
We met in college. We both belonged to the same club on campus. We had been dating for about two months before we mutually agreed to split up. He was a tall, energetic guy – the life of the party. I liked his spirit and we had gotten along alright, but it wasn’t meant to be. My friends didn’t really like him much, but who really listens to their friends when you’re dating someone new that you really like?
What exactly happened that night?
After our split, we remained friends. When school let out for summer break, we decided to drive 500 miles to my hometown for a week, where he could visit his cousin. One night, we decided to hang out at his cousin’s place. He had bought a case of beer earlier in the day, and the two of them wanted to drink. Since I had to drive home after, I stayed sober. The two of them drank their way through the entire case of beer (one of the big cases that have like 24 beers in them) while I hung out and watched TV. I eventually fell asleep on the floor.
When I woke up, the cousin was gone, and the ex had just come back in the room after smoking. He came over and started kissing me. Out of habit, I kissed him back, although I wasn’t feeling it. He started taking my clothes off. I stopped kissing him. He mumbled something about «wanting one last time together, for old time’s sake.» I stiffened and remembered a time when we had sex when I wasn’t physically ready. It had hurt. A lot. Also, we weren’t together anymore! Why did he want to be together if we weren’t an item anymore in the first place?? I told him no.
He tried fondling me under my shirt. I squirmed away and told him to stop, but he took off my pants and shoved his hand down them. I tried rolling away, but he was on top of me. I considered using some of my martial arts, but this was a man that I considered my friend. How can you hurt someone you care about? I kept resisting for what seemed like forever until the vast amount of alcohol he drank caused him to pass out. Then I pulled on my clothes and left, angry.
How did he react when you told him «no»?
He seemed to think that I was kidding. He had told me before that I introduced him to «passionate and angry sex» because none of his other partners liked it «rough». And by rough, I mean I liked a little wrestling sometimes, maybe an ass slap here and there. Nothing major. Rape play wasn’t something I was really into (although if you are, safe words are key!). Let me get this straight: liking it a little rough and saying «no» are *two different things*. He apparently thought I was just playing hard to get when in fact, I wanted nothing to do with him.
When did it occur to you that what you had experienced had been an attempted rape?
It occurred to me as I left his cousin’s house that he had violated the terms of our friendship, but I didn’t identify it as «attempted rape». I blamed myself for it because I felt I had «led him on» by kissing him back in the beginning. For half an hour, I sat in my room thinking that it was my fault and that I could have prevented it by not going over there in the first place, not staying as long as I did, and not kissing him. Then I mentally slapped myself for thinking such things. I didn’t ask him to force himself on me. Just because we had a relationship before doesn’t mean he can have me whenever he wanted. It was perfectly natural to fall into old habits with an ex because it’s comfortable and familiar, but that doesn’t mean that I owe him anything or that he could continue touching me after I said no. I felt violated and angry, but I didn’t classify myself as a «victim», nor did it occur to me that I had just survived an attempted rape. Rape was something that happened to other people, not me.
Could you tell us about the aftermath of this attack?
After a long and silent car ride back to the university, I didn’t really talk to him too much afterwards. I was mad at him. I had confronted him the morning after the attack online about the incident and he didn’t even know it had happened! When I told him how it made me feel, he signed off. I never got an apology. We hung out a few times after that with some mutual friends of ours, but he never apologized and never acknowledged that anything bad had happened between us. It was frustrating, and I stopped talking to him.
When Fall quarter started, I took a fantastic class called the Sociology of Sexuality. There was a guest speaker one day. He was from an organization on campus that educated men on how they could educate themselves about sexual assault on women and how to protect the women around them. He started telling this story:
«One day, a young girl goes to a party with her friends. They’re laughing, drinking, and having a good time. She sees a cute guy and starts flirting with him. They have fun, dance a little, and drink some more. It turns out they have similar tastes in music. He asks her if she’s heard the new CD that their favorite artist has just released. She hasn’t. He asks her if she would like to come listen to it in his room. She agrees and tells her friends that she’ll be back and not to worry about her. Her friends look the guy over and tells her to call them if she runs into any trouble. She laughs and says alright, and walks out the door.
«At the guy’s place, he puts the CD into his computer and turns on the music. They sit on the bed together and drink and talk. He puts his arm on her shoulder and she leans into him. He kisses her. She kisses him back. Things start to get a little heated and he slides his hand under her shirt. She stops him and says, ‘I’m not ready for this.’
«He says, ‘That’s fine, I totally respect your boundaries.’
«They go back to kissing. He slides his hand up her shirt again, and she stops him for a second time. She tells him again, ‘Sorry, I don’t want to go too fast.’ He says it’s fine, and they continue making out on the bed. Then she blacks out from the alcohol.
«She wakes up and he’s on top of her. He has taken off her clothes and is inside her.
«Is this rape? Did she consent because she kissed him? Does it still count because they were drinking?»
When I heard this story, I started crying. I started bawling my eyes out right in the middle of lecture because the story resonated with something inside me. I felt like the girl in the story because I felt like it had been my fault. That I had let it happen. That because there was alcohol involved, I couldn’t say anything about it because everyone would say that it was my fault. It was at that moment that I knew that there was something wrong and that I needed to seek help as soon as possible. Luckily, there was a fantastic sexual assault resource center on campus that I went to the very next day.
I started therapy and continued it for about a year. One thing that my therapist said to me that really hit home was, «What happened to you was not your fault. You had no way of preventing it from happening. You cannot control the actions of another person. You can only control how you let those actions affect you.»
I think that year was definitely the hardest year I’ve ever had to face, emotionally. On most days I’d be fine and go about my business, when all of a sudden I’d hear a song on the radio, or read a story, or see a picture that reminded me of him. Of the betrayal of trust. Of the violation that happened. Then I’d start crying for no reason at all. Other times, my boyfriend and I would be getting intimate and I would freeze up because something would remind me of what happened. It was frustrating because I felt like I was healing from my emotional trauma and all of a sudden these emotions would hit me out of nowhere. I kept thinking to myself, «It’s been x number of months already. Why am I still feeling like this? What’s wrong with me?»
Taking baby steps definitely helped me. First I needed to figure out what kind of closure I needed. Once something like this happens, my therapist told me, it’s a violation of trust. It’s a traumatic experience that is different for everyone, and when you’ve been emotionally ripped open like that, you need closure (like a bad break-up). *How* you get that closure is different for each person. For some people, it’s seeking criminal charges. For some people it’s as simple as getting an apology from your attacker. For others, it’s being able to put the past behind them and never speak of it again.
How did the people in your life respond when you told them about this?
I am extremely fortunate to have so many supporting people in my life. My biggest pillar of strength was definitely my current boyfriend (not the ex who attacked me). He is always there to support me, listen to my rants, or simply hold me when I cry or have flashbacks. He was completely understanding, even if he didn’t know what to do. He’s extremely kind, gentle, understanding, and doesn’t demand anything of me that I can’t handle. When I’m feeling particularly vulnerable, I know that I can depend on his support. I definitely couldn’t have done it without him. 
My friends also helped and listened when they could, although they weren’t sure what to do about the situation. They would be understanding, but not know how to react or what to say. Because I minimized the situation, it seemed as though I wasn’t affected by it as much as I was. I think if I had gone to them crying immediately after it happened, they would have gone and tarred, feathered, drawn and quartered the man.
Did you file charges against the man who attacked you?
Sort of. I filed charges against him at my university. The files went on his student record, rather than his criminal record. I did this because at the time, I still wanted to protect him, for some reason. I wasn’t out for vengeance, because I’m not a vengeful type of person. I wanted to *teach* him to be a better person, because I felt like he was a little misguided and needed help to become a better person.
With the school, he had to join Alcoholics Anonymous and take a seminar presented by the person who spoke to my class about sexual assault. I believe they also sent a letter to his parents. I thought that being lenient would help him out and give him a scare, rather than turning him into a criminal and making him register as a sex offender everywhere he went. Of course, it didn’t work and he didn’t learn a thing from it. I’m not too happy about that.
Do you feel that this experience has effected the way you view yourself/men/sex/relationships?
Yes and no. I feel a little more jaded about meeting new people, but I, luckily, am in a long-term, committed relationship with the most wonderful man in the world. However, I am more skeptical of some of the guys my girl friends meet. As for me, I feel like I have a scar on my emotional psyche, but it’s an experience in my life that has made me stronger. I can handle anything else that life can throw at me because I know how I react to emotional stress and how I can recover from it.
How did you finally get closure?
Even with the therapy and the great support of my friends, I never really felt like I got the closure I needed. I knew that he was still the same guy that he was before and hadn’t learned from the classes that the university made him attend. I was moving on with my life, but something about that chapter of my life just holding me back, somehow. I wasn’t sure what it was. I thought that maybe pressing charges against him would help, but I would have to go back to my hometown (500 miles away) to press charges. It would also drag up all the messy details of what happened back into the light, and open all of the old wounds I fought so hard to close.
A few months ago, I found out that he was in an election in the club where we originally met. This would put him in power over many new and unsuspecting freshmen girls in the organization if he won. I made it my mission to go to the election, expose him to the world as the fraud that he was, and ruin his life in the organization forever. But I couldn’t. I went to the elections and confronted him face-to-face, ready to fight… and he told me to get out of his way and to stop bothering him. Then I realized something. I didn’t get the closure I wanted because I needed an apology from my him.
All these years, and he’s never once come up to me, e-mailed, texted, called, or IMed me to say he was sorry. Ever. It was like I didn’t even matter to him. He was just the asshole that everybody told me he was. The second chance that I gave him was a waste. Nothing I said or did would ever make him into the kind, mature person that I wanted him to be. And with that, I let it go. I let all the hate, all the frustration, and all the pain go. I was not going to let this one person ruin so much of my life. I had other things to do. I had places to go, people to love, and real friends who cared about me and who weren’t like him.
I still sometimes get flashbacks, but they aren’t nearly as crippling as they once were. I’ve come to terms with what happened and am finally at peace with it. He’s an asshole that isn’t worthy of my thoughts anymore. Do I sometimes wish I had pressed charges against him? Yeah, but it’s not something that I’m going to pursue because, like I said, he isn’t worth my time anymore. I’m not his babysitter, and maybe karma will come back and bite him in the ass for me.
What advice would you give to other women or men who have experienced something similar?
Find someone that you trust and talk about it. Talk to a therapist. Talk to a friend. Educate yourself on what happened to you, how you can fight against it, and the steps that you need to take to heal. Most importantly: DO NOT BLAME YOURSELF. What happened to you was in no way, shape, or form your fault. It was the fault of your attacker. Your attacker is the one who did this to you. He or she is ultimately the one who made the decision to violate your personal space and trust. There was no way that you could have read their mind and stopped them from doing what they did. Understand that you did not give them consent to violate you. Here’s a great definition of consent:
Consent is based on choice.
It is active, not passive. Silence and passivity do not equal consent.
Consent is possible only when there is equal power.
Giving in because of fear is NOT consent.
Giving in or going along with someone to gain approval or to avoid being hurt is NOT consent.
Consent means two people (or more) deciding together to do the same thing, at the same time, in the same way, with each other.
Find out what options are available for you and how far you are willing to go to seek closure. If you wish to press charges, speak to a trusted lawyer and learn what your options are. Be strong and know that unfortunately, some people will work against you and try to make you look bad. If you are afraid to leave your situation because your attacker is in a position of power over you, talk to someone who specializes in domestic or office abuse. Finally, believe that you *can* make it past this point in your life and that you *will* become a stronger person for it. You will always carry the emotional scars with you, but they do fade in time, trust me. It will take a long time – much longer than you want it to – but it will happen. You’ll have ups and downs and it’ll feel like your life is over and it isn’t worth living, but you *will* get through this.
Some great resources that I’ve found are and The second link is mostly for men who are in an abusive relationship, but I find it to be one of the best resources out there for someone who is currently in an abusive relationship. I also find the campus assault resource page to be extremely helpful, and there’s a section for friends of a victim as well.
If someone you know is currently going through a situation like this, visit the UC Irvine website. Listen to their story. And most importantly, do not judge them. Don’t accuse them of getting into a bad situation. We all make bad decisions. It doesn’t make it any better if you remind them of it. Encourage your friend to seek help. Seek help from a trusted source yourself, because no matter how good your intentions are, you most likely do not have the training to help your friend get over what happened. Professional help is THE best way to get through this for everyone.
I would be more than happy to answer any questions you may have, and if you would like to remain anonymous, send me an e-mail at dinosrevenge @ gmail . com. Thanks for taking the time to read my story and a big shout out to Sarah Von for hosting this series!
Have any of you experienced sexual assault? Any questions for Elizabeth?
*not her real name
The first pageant I entered was a state pageant in the Miss USA system, and I learned so much from watching the girls who had been competing in pageants their whole lives. It was a surreal experience (you really can use hairspray as butt glue!), but it was, also, fun and very interesting, so I decided to try some more.
How many did you take part in?
I have competed in four pageants so far: one state, one local, and two national.
Can you tell us what the other contestants were like?
Pageant girls come from all walks of life, and I am always impressed by the other contestants’ confidence and intelligence. I’ve met some wonderful people including a baton twirler, a Special Olympics spokeswoman, and a marine biology student. The last few years pageant girls have been getting bad press, and I think it is so unfortunate that they are stereotyped as one type of person. Contrary to popular opinion, every contestant isn’t like .
At a pageant a few years ago, my family could not afford to attend any of the events. I met a girl who was competing to help pay for law school, and we bonded over having no one in the audience to cheer for us. Her parents had not been able to make the trip, but when she learned that my family was with me but couldn’t afford the tickets, she bought two tickets for them so that we could have someone in the audience cheering for us. It was a sweet and unexpected gesture, and her thoughtfulness still means so much to me.
What are some common misconceptions about pageants?
1. Miss America is the only American pageant. – Miss America is one of the largest pageant organizations, but there are lots of other systems such as, Miss USA, Miss International, Miss Galaxy…
2. . – Both years it was actually Miss USA; Miss America does compete at Miss Universe because it is a different system. It’s surprising how many legitimate media outlets reported it wrong.
3. You have to have a talent to compete in pageants. – Not all pageants have a talent competition. Miss America does require a talent, but Miss USA and many others do not.
What kind of questions are you asked in the interview?
All kinds. There are books out there with questions to help you train for the interview, but the actual questions I’ve been asked in competition have been pretty random, covering a wide range of topics. I’ve been asked:
How would you describe the color blue to a blind person?
Who is your role model?
If you were a makeup brand, what brand would you be?
If you could ask the President one question, what would it be?
If you could be on the cover of a magazine, what magazine would it be?
Do you think the glass ceiling still exists for women?
What’s your greatest accomplishment?
If your friends described you as a verb, what verb would it be?
What’s the most challenging aspect of doing pageants?
For me, the most challenging part of competing in pageants is raising the money to compete. A lot of girls get sponsors, usually financed by friends and family-run businesses, but I don’t usually have sponsors because most businesses in my area are corporate run and do not contribute to individuals. So, I typically pay most of my expenses myself. Pageant entry fees, program ads, hotel, travel, and competition wardrobe all add up, so you can end up spending a couple thousand dollars (or more).
What sorts of things have you won in pageants?
Pageant goodie bags are wonders to behold – makeup, clothes, jewelry, bags, water bottles, coupons, toiletries… Gift bags are my weakness, but I end up giving a lot of it to friends and family because it doesn’t fit or I have doubles, etc.
How did people react when you told them that you were doing pageants?
People were very surprised. To be fair, I am nowhere near six feet tall and rarely go swimming because it means people will see me in a swimsuit ☺ However, I am a very determined person, so their disbelief made me want to compete even more.
Would you recommend the pageant world?
Yes… and no. I’ve learned a lot about myself from competing in pageants, but I haven’t always found it to be the best confidence booster. While pageants are supposed to build self-esteem, they can, also, have the opposite effect – you are being judged on your body after all – so I think it is important to be confident in who you are before you compete. A sense of humor, also, helps because all of a sudden walking becomes a big deal, and you start thinking things like, “What if I fall walking down the stairs?”
Do you still do pageants?
Last year I took time off to pursue other interests, but I would like to compete in more. I enjoy the drama, making new friends, and having an excuse to dress up. I hope to raise money to compete in another pageant in the near future.
Any advice for ladies interested in doing pageants?
If you are under 24, I recommend competing in a Miss America local because they offer mock interviews, basic pageant training, and the fee is only $100, which I believe still goes to the Children’s Miracle Network. There are a lot of pageants out there (Mrs., Ms., Miss, Teen, Petite, Plus, Heritage, Mail-in…), so with a little research, you can find one that suits you. Do check references to make sure the pageant is legitimate and find out if past contestants enjoyed their experience.
Have any of you ever competed in pageants? Any questions for Amy?
Where do you fall in the order of things?
Could you tell us about your parents’ decision to have a family of this size?
Like most newlyweds, my dad originally swore that he was never, ever having kids. But of course they did, and after my sister Abby they decided that they weren’t having anymore children. But my mum really likes babies, so they had an “accident” baby, Allison, and after that they just kept having kids, I guess.
My parents definitely see children as a blessing, not a hardship. I know it has been hard on my parents, and they’ve made many sacrifices for us, but I think that if they had known this was what it would be like, they would have still had us. Well, most days they would have still had us.
My sister Talia has , genetic disorder, as well as a seizure disorder, , a tumor in her brain (made of fat so it’s benign), requires oxygen, and a ton of other things. Because of all these issues, she is eternally a toddler, stuck the size of an 8-9 month year old and about the same developmentally, although she is crawling now! She is so, so sweet and happy.
Tell us how you fit everybody under one roof!
My dad really likes to build things! We have lived in the same house since I was six; a three bedroom, two and a half bath ranch on almost three acres of land. As the family grew, so did the house. He built a beautiful foyer, a front room, a wrap-around porch, put in a staircase, a front room, an office and eventually a library. It’s ginormous – four bathrooms (two are usable) and twelve bedrooms.
How do people respond when you tell people you have twelve siblings?
“What??! Are you guys like mad religious or something?” Or they say something crude about rabbits. Most people take it in stride, I don’t usually tell people when I first meet them. To me, my siblings aren’t a number; they are people, names and personalities, it isn’t really a big deal to me!
Do you think having this many siblings impacted your relationship with your parents and your brothers and sisters?
I think that I have a good relationship with most of my family. I think that if I had fewer siblings, life wouldn’t be as much fun as it is. I call my Mum at least once every two days. I get along alright with most of my siblings though my sister Alissa is too cool to hang out with me right now and my brother David and I have never gotten along. I’m so much older than most of my siblings, I know that I will never be as close to them as I am with my two sisters Alissa (17) and Abby (14).
I can’t imagine life without my brothers and sisters. There wouldn’t be Talia or Torrey; I would miss Noelle’s awesome fashion sense, and Autumn’s sarcastic personality. I wouldn’t be as food conscious from having Caden around who is allergic to corn, wheat, soy, citrus, and oats, or anything with histamines in it. I wouldn’t have the twins, Maddie and Grace to be my little copycats. I am glad my parents had them all; I would probably have ended up as one of those selfish, «daddy pays for everything» rich bitches, instead of a thrifty, d.i.y., creative lady that I am.
What are the benefits and draw backs to being part of large family?
I was homeschooled until college, so I could never get away from my Mum, never. I was with my family all of the time, and I enjoy being alone, so for me it was hard being around people all of the time.
Being a part of a family, large or small, is hard; it takes a lot of work to not go crazy. I have a good family: a solid relationship between my Mum and Dad. They really do care about us, enough to make our lives miserable when they think we aren’t up to snuff. We never went hungry and I always had someone to be with if I got lonely or bored. What more could you want?
How many children do you want to have?
I don’t know yet, I want to wait until I am out of school to start having kids. I figure I will start having kids when I’m about 26 so that gives me a few years. But I cannot wait to be pregnant, to be a lifegiver, to have a body swollen with baby goodness. I know that I don’t want as large as a family as my parents have, but I also believe that every person conceived has a life force, a personality, so that makes it hard to pick low numbers when thinking metaphorically about children. I’ll just have to wait and see how much it hurts to give birth before I decide how many times I want to go through with that!
Are any of you from large families? Any questions for Ashley?
What made you decide that you wanted to go to an ivy league school?
Part of it was the prestige. I’m very aware now that there are equally academically rigorous schools that are not Ivies, but I grew up as the child of immigrants, who really had no idea that there were schools outside of the Ivy League worth a damn. My father, for example, threw a fit when I said that I wanted to go to Brown — which is actually an Ivy, but was not, in his mind, a «real Ivy.»
Another part of it was wanting to get away from my home life, which was a mess at the time; I wanted to get away from a traumatic graduation year in my hometown. I was running away from a lot, including an abusive relationship and a sexual assault, and going to a place where I could (allegedly) use my brain in exciting ways and meet interesting people was extremely appealing. This doesn’t answer your question about «why an Ivy,» but it does answer a question about «why Yale» — Yale is known as one of the more liberal, artsy Ivies, and that completely appealed to me.
Can you tell us about the application process?
What was the student body like?
The student body at Yale was, when I went, much more racially and socioeconomically diverse than one might think — there were certainly a lot of East Coast prep-school graduates (mostly from Exeter and Andover), but one of my closest friends was from rural Appalachia and I knew a lot of people on scholarship from urban areas. As I’ve mentioned before, there’s a thriving avant-garde, artistic community; for every legacy (a student whose family lineage goes back multiple generations in any given school) with a head full of bricks, there are students who have written a series of plays based on the Western Canon or made some amazing scientific breakthrough or, in my case, published essays with a major publishing house.
And because pretty much everyone was phenomenally well-accomplished, very few people felt the urge to brag about this or that. So if you got a 1570 on your SATs, it wasn’t really worth talking about because you were likely to be speaking to someone who had not only gotten a 1600, but had also made some innovation regarding brain waves and robot arms.
I suppose I can’t speak about going to Yale without addressing the wealth and status of a lot of the student population. It wasn’t until I went to Yale, for example, that I met someone who introduced me to goat cheese for the first time; I had a roommate with a celebrity mother; I discovered, to my utter shock, that there were such things as $600 boots. Not everyone was like that, of course, but I will always remember the first trip I took to New York, and entering a brownstone with a doorman.
How do you think your college experience compared to those of your friends’ who went to state schools?
I can’t really say for sure. I did go to a state school for graduate school, and it was a very good state school for the subject that I studied there. But there’s definitely a difference between the resources one can receive at an Ivy — or at least, at Yale — and the resources one can receive at a state school, if only because of the sheer differences in the size of the student body, money for equipment and visiting faculty, and personal attention from professors and deans.
How did you finance your education?
I’m one of those lucky people who didn’t wind up with student loans. I financed my education with a combination of scholarships, family donations, work that I did in high school and money that my parents had saved for me. Like I said, I was very lucky in that regard.
Did having these schools on your resume/transcript open doors for you?
I’m on the job market right now, and the fact that I haven’t been able to find a job might speak to this. I’m not saying that it hasn’t been at all advantageous to my goals, but there are limitations; having an Ivy on your resume might catch someone’s attention, but it’s what you do with that education that really matters, as corny as that sounds.
Would you recommend an ivy league school?
I guess that I feel like this question is sort of like asking someone, «Would you recommend pickles?» All Ivies are different, for one. Yale is very different from Harvard or, say, Princeton, not to mention Brown or Dartmouth or Columbia. I’d say that what’s more important is to look very carefully past the Ivy label and at what you (the proverbial college applicant) are looking for in a college/university.
There are fabulous liberal arts colleges out there that are completely outside of the Ivy League bubble. I know people who went to Reed or Swarthmore who had a much more intellectually stimulating (and personally tailored) education than I did at Yale.
Any advice for other students looking to go ivy?
This is mostly advice for people who’ve decided that they do want to go to a particular Ivy, whether it’s because they love the Egyptology program at Brown or want to study at Yale with Harold Bloom (which is really difficult to do, by the way). It’s getting harder and harder to get into an Ivy, but I also feel that people — both parents and students — go about it the wrong way. I get so frustrated when I see parents pushing their kids to start practicing the SATs in seventh grade, or hire extremely expensive private tutors, or push their kids into speech and debate or various other clubs because they think that it will pad their applications.
Look: I know from both the admissions side of things and from the college guidance side of things that the kid who gets a perfect score on his/her SAT, wins Nationals in speech and debate, volunteers at the soup kitchen every weekend, and has a 4.0 GPA in high school is one of a very large number of other kids who have similar, if not the exact same, qualifications, and may very well not get into an Ivy at all. Which is not to say that those accomplishments aren’t great, but I sincerely feel that my unique background and accomplishments are what helped get me into Yale and other Ivies in the first place.
Did any of you go to Ivy league schools? Any questions for our Ivy league lass?
Tell us about your relationship with drugs and alcohol growing up.
Which drugs did you get into? And how did that happen?
By the beginning of senior year of high school, I started a methamphetamine addiction that would last for about two years and didn’t take long to completely control my life. Senior year was the peak of high-stress testing for my academically rigorous diploma program. Between six hours a night of chem homework, applying to a staggering 32 high-caliber universities and spending every weekend sweating blood in debate, I wanted two things: to occasionally feel like a kid again, and to somehow fit thirty hours’ worth of work into a 24-hour day. Oh, and losing forty pounds wouldn’t hurt either. What do you know — methamphetamines seemed to perfectly fit the bill.
One day in calculus, one of my good friends — another repressed bad girl — slipped a tiny baggie of white powder into my textbook. We cut English class to snort it in the girls’ room. By the end of the day, I’d finished two weeks’ worth of assignments, drank a gallon of water, not eaten a morsel and lost six pounds. No exaggeration. Plus, it filled me with confidence and a sense of love for everyone around me. It was love at first snort. She hooked me up with her dealer and I was never without a magic little baggie of my own.
How did you finance your habit?
Babysitting. Is that a small-town cliche or what? But when you’re a high-school girl with no interest in fashion, all of your cash is disposable. I made a few hundred dollars a week on babysitting and snorted at least half of it — usually more. Lord knows I wasn’t spending the money on food. By the time I got to university and was snorting (and by then smoking) even more, I had the good luck to be funded with a very generous quarterly stipend. I can’t even begin to tell you how much I regret funding my habit with money that had been given to me as a gift because I was a promising young student. The only thing I can say about my defense is that at least I was never spun when I was babysitting children. Can’t say the same about being sober while taking my classes, though.
How did it affect your grades/relationships/etc?
That’s one thing about methampetamines: they could definitely be worse for your grades. Often when I got spun, I was insanely productive, practically sneezing out term papers and memorizing text books. That is, when I didn’t get spun and stay up all night obsessively trying on all of my (ever-smaller) clothes or tweezing all the hairs out of my legs. But by the time I neared the end of my addiction, I forgot to ever come down and get sane again. I’d write a eight-page paper in an hour, convinced it was brilliant, then look at it a few weeks later to realize it was absolute raving lunacy. But maybe because I’ve always been obsessively academic, my grades didn’t really suffer: the worst that happened is that I had to drop a class the quarter that my addiction hit its all-time high.
Did the people in your life know you were struggling with this?
I tried to keep my addiction a secret from everyone I cared about because I knew they would try to make my stop and in my junkie’s lizard-brain, the most important thing was to keep that from happening. By the time I was in college, I was afraid to speak to my parents and refused to answer their phone calls, for fear that they’d realize something was up. By function of living together, though, my roommates — who were my best friends — realized I had a problem. I’d lock myself up in the room for hours to smoke, then come out as a manic parody of myself. I’d sit in the dining hall with them, picking at a slice of bread, and incessantly smack my mouth which was always cotton-dry despite the gallons of water I drank.
Other people have drug problems, I’d tell them. I just have a drug hobby. And although they sometimes asked me to seek help, they didn’t push it too hard. I think this is partially because they were afraid of completely alienating me, and partially because they — like me — were sheltered academics and had never had any exposure to drug addiction. They wanted to believe that I was right.
Was there a low point that made you decide that you wanted to quit?
I accidentally OD-ed, thank god. My rock-bottom had been flying upward to meet me for a while: after about a year of being almost permanently spun, I’d started suffering from tactile, auditory and visual hallucinations. I’d stay up all night writing pages of whacked-out prose, then become convinced there was a man standing outside my window staring at me, and be too paralyzed with fear to do anything but sit there, my pulse a 220-bpm machine gun.
For the three-week bender that led to my OD, every night when I lay in bed, a rat would chew its way through my brain. I’d smell that vermin sewage scent, feel its feet scrabbling on my cheeks, hear its little jaws closing around my ear drum, then ripping away the walls of my ear canal and getting into my skull. Sometimes I could «catch» the rat and throw it against the wall. Other times, its whole body would get wedged inside my brain, nibbling, nibbling, nibbling, and I would lay there crying until it went away. When it did, I would always stand in front of the mirror for ages, touching my ears and face and amazed not to see any blood.
The day of my OD, I’d been spun for three weeks and had to write a paper, but my mind was already at the brink of insanity and for the first time ever, I couldn’t make words come out. Desperate, I smoked bowl after bowl, trying to regain the feelings of confidence and brilliance that usually accompanied a high. After my last bowl, I had the sensation that my teeth were falling out, so I ran to the mirror. My tongue started talking to me and telling me it would knock out my teeth to punish me — weirdly, my first reaction was horror at the thought of being toothless — who would date me then?!
I realized I was OD-ing and tried to get dressed to go find help, but my hands were melting. If I tried to pick up my jeans, I thought my fingernails would ooze off; when I reached for the door to run outside naked, I thought my hand would liquefy to a puddle of goo and be unable to turn the knob. So I just lay there on the floor, naked, screaming for help until the guy across the hall came in and helped me call the RA.
How did you go about getting help?
After I OD-ed, the hospital kept me overnight and made me eat something substantial for the first time in weeks. After they released me, I was still deluded enough to think I could seek help without telling my parents what had been going on. I asked the Residence Dean to help check me into a one-week recovery program in the psych ward of my university’s hospital. But after about an hour there, I realized it wasn’t going to be a hilarious, cinematic Girl, Interrupted experience. I wanted my mommy. So I called my parents, arranged to get a week off of classes, and went home to confess what I’d been doing to the people I’d let down the most. To their everlasting credit, my parents didn’t scream at me once. They force-fed me and watched me every moment of the day, true, but they didn’t tell me how disappointed and angry they were. They just helped me start my life without methamphetamines.
How has your recovery been going?
Recovery was, in many ways, easier that I imagined it would be, after I got through the wrenching experience of admitting to my friends and parents that I had a problem. I immediately cut off ties with my former dealer; cutting off contact with other user friends wasn’t a problem, as I didn’t have any in college. For the first several months, I would seize up with the urgent desire to get spun — I can’t even tell you how many nights I cleared everything out of the drawer where I used to keep my stash and snorted up every stray little dust mite and paint chip, hoping to find a spare crystal. But because I cut off my contacts, I had no way to get drugs, even in my weakest moments, and after being completely clean for a while, the cliche is true: it got easier every day.
One horrifying experience that helped: I stayed at my parents’ house that summer after freshman year, when I was busy getting clean. One night, after I’d been clean a few months, I got a call from my former dealer, who had stopped using because she’d gotten pregnant. She’d had her baby three nights before and called to ask if I could come over and babysit. She and her boyfriend had missed getting spun, and now that they had the baby, they wanted to go out and smoke meth again.
I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t watch the baby. In no small part because I knew there would be drugs in the house. So I told her no and helped her find somebody else to watch the baby — jesus, that poor baby — so it wasn’t left alone. And the whole time, there was that little voice in my head: this could have been you in five years. Don’t let that happen.
In a few months, I’ll have been five years clean. And most days, when I think about my history as a junkie, it just feels like a movie I’ve watched rather than a life I’ve lived. But every time I smell a dollar bill or watch someone snort a line in a movie, I know that all the obsessive junkie tendencies haven’t just gone away. Even thinking about smoking meth or snorting a line makes my muscles seize up and that old lizard-brain start kicking in again. I still drink moderately, I’ve smoked pot a dozen times or so, I’ve even snorted one or two social lines of coke after being clean on meth, and these things haven’t been triggers for me. But I know I can never do methamphetamines again, not even once, or the junkie beast will come roaring back to life. And I can’t let it happen again.
Any advice for others struggling with addictions?
Tell someone. Right now. You know all those people you’re shutting out of your life because you don’t want them to find out? The reason you don’t want them to find out is that they love you and they will make you stop. But it will be better that way. And if you’re anything like I was, you might be thinking, «I’ll tell them soon. I’m just in too deep now — give me a few months to sort out my life and start recovery one my own!» No. That’s the addiction talking. I don’t care if you’re superman: you cannot quit an addiction on your own. Your friends and family, the people who love you no matter how dumb you’ve been or how much what you’re doing is hurting them, they are what’s going to get you through this. And they’re not going to hate you for it. They only want you to get better.
If telling your friends and family is too big a step, then just tell anyone. Tell a doctor at Planned Parenthood, tell the cashier at the grocery store, heck, email Sarah Von and let her forward it on to me. The secrecy eats away at you just as fast as the drugs do. You don’t have to walk alone.
Have you struggled with addictions? Any questions for Laura?
*Not her real name, obviously.
This is part of our ‘True Story’ interview series, in which I interview interesting people about fascinating/challenging/non-traditional things that they’ve done. This is the story of Anna.
For the unititiated, could you give us the definition of a transgendered person?
Let me begin with the usual disclaimer. I do not represent every transgendered person and my opinions and thoughts on the matter are just one person’s viewpoint, blah and etc. I think the stock answer is that transgendered is an umbrella term for people who, for one reason or another, cross gender boundaries.
So, transsexuals, cross dressers, intersexed, people who identify as gender-queer, butch women, femme men, two spirits, drag kings/queens, and people who present as androgynous could be considered to be transgendered.To strangers on the street, I identify myself as a woman. To friends and people I feel comfortable with, I identify myself as a woman who happens to have started off as a male to female (MtF), preoperative transsexual.
How old were you when you realized you were different from other people of your gender?
I started feeling out of place from an early age…maybe six or seven. I think it takes a while for a kid’s gender identity to develop, so for the first five years, I felt like any other happy, almost genderless kid and I behaved how I wished. There wasn’t any one defining moment or realization, it was a lot of little moments. Like, when I was six or seven, I wanted to take ballet classes with my sister sooo badly. I knew that boys could enroll in the class, but I knew it wouldn’t be the same. I’d have to dress differently and would be treated differently, so I never asked.
Gradually, I started to feel out of place and increasingly uncomfortable with having to behave like other boys. I distinctly recall knowing the word transvestite in the fourth grade and I used to wonder if I was one. Writing this, I realize that this experience isn’t much different from the one a lot of «different» kids had growing up.
When did you ‘come out’ as transgendered? What was the reaction to it?
I suppose I ‘came out’ to myself during my first year of college. We had a ginormous library on campus and I spent my first year reading everything I could on the subject. This was just before the Internet was widely available, so my reading choices were limited to super boring graduate psychology papers and the occasional mention in literature (Orlando, et al.).
I told my younger sister, my only sibling, about twelve years ago. I had played around and talked to people online before that, but my sis was the first «real life» person I told. Her reaction has never wavered from awesome and supportive and she has always been my rock. Nothing really changed after I told my sister. I still lived a sort of double life and only presented as female after work and in night clubs on the weekends. I wasn’t ready to go further than that, so I spent the next eight years trying to cultivate a «normal» life. I worked, went back to school, graduated with an engineering degree, got engaged, and slowly progressed from merely wistful to a deep, desperate depression. My body’s annoyingly good at showing me the way to go in life and I have major visceral reactions whenever I get lost.
Anyway, after my fiancee and I broke up, I decided it was finally time to change things. I started electrolysis and went to see a psychologist and my physician to get clearance to start hormone replacement therapy (HRT). I sent a novella-sized to my friends and family about five months later in October 2008. At the time, reactions were mixed. My mother was so not happy and father didn’t reply. Most of my friends were supportive. My cat remains indifferent.
I spent the next five months thinking of a way to come out at work and not drive myself insane with worry. I wrote about it some and . I had a meeting with my boss and our human resources representative about a month before I went back to work. The place I work is kind of small, so we decided it would be a good idea to get everyone together to talk about my transition while I was on vaca. My boss read to everyone and then they all took turns whacking a pinata, having coffee and doughnuts, or doing whatever it is you do after having a So your coworker’s a transsexual? meeting. I went back to work the next week and it was a non-issue. I work with a bunch of smarties and they have either been super-supportive or quiet, which are both fine with me.Since then, I’ve reestablished good relationships with my mother and father (they’re divorced), gotten closer to some friends and lost others.
How does being transgendered affect your daily life?
Being transgendered is my daily life; it’s not something I can take off or change out of. There are constant physical reminders…I’m 5′9″ and taller than most women, I’ve had about 100 hours of electrolysis and I still go for an hour every Saturday, I take pills every day, and on and on. As I move further away from my first day back to work, I think about gender less and less (and I hope to get to a place where I don’t think of it at all), but I think it will always be there.
I don’t generally have a problem with being accepted as a woman in public, but I’m always evaluating people’s reactions and how they treat me. I am self conscious and still too aware of the 152,396 things that are wrong with my body…but so are a lot of women. It’s easy to forget that when you’re up in your own head all the time like I am, but it’s important not to. We all have our own body issues and crappy days, but they shouldn’t define us and how we move through life or treat other people.
Does being transgendered affect your dating life?
How doesn’t it affecting my dating life? I think dating is an awful experience for just about everyone, but it’s extra fun when you have to disclose your surgical status right away lest you get assaulted or murdered. I wrote about how hard it is to find someone . I identify as a straight woman (gender identity doesn’t have a thing to do with sexuality) and have been dating for the last eight months or so. I and we dated for the last four months, but just recently broke up. So, if y’all know any really understanding guys…
I guess the thing that’s most troubling about trans dating (and dating in general, I suppose) is that you have to really consider why that person is interested in you. Is it because they like you as a person? Are they into tall women? Are they obsessed with a particular part of your anatomy? Objectification is hardly a new concept to women, but it still stinks to be treated that way. I’ve tried to be painfully upfront with guys about my plans for surgery and I try to screen out the ones that aren’t really into me as a person, but that drains the pool considerably. Still, I’m an insufferable optimist and hopeful that it’ll all work out someday. I’ll meet that one special guy that loves me for who I am (he’s a pilot) and we’ll get married and raise three children (Bonnie, Jack, and Shelby), two dogs and four cats on a small, boutique cheese farm in Vermont or Norway or whatever.
Are you interested in having gender reassigment surgery? (you don’t have to answer this if you don’t want to – I’m not even really sure if this is an appropriate question!)
Yes, I do plan on having reassignment surgery at some point. No, it’s not an appropriate question, but I understand why people want to ask it all the time. I say it’s not appropriate, because I was (and I think a lot of people were) raised to believe that health-related topics were private matters and not eligible for open discussion. Honestly, it isn’t anyone’s business, but that doesn’t seem to stop people from asking. If they do, it makes me think about their motivation for asking that question. Sorry, I don’t mean to get all snippy, but I have strong opinions about this
When I’ll have surgery is another matter. I think a lot of people have some idea about the current, poor state of our health care system, but there is almost no insurance coverage for trans people. My HRT is mostly subsidized through work insurance, but I have to pay out of pocket for electrolysis and reassignment surgery. So, my monthly transition costs are an extra $250 and surgery is around $20,000. Things are changing, however slowly; the affordable health care for trans people and a made the costs for surgery tax deductible.
I don’t have the money for surgery now, but things might get easier in the next three to five years.I’m also not what you would call an «out and proud» trans person. I sometimes write about life as a transsexual person on my and choose to share that information with the special people in my life, but that’s as far as I want to go. People have made great strides in accepting transgendered people, but was still in progress less than a year ago. It’s still too soon and the stakes are still too high. Also, again, it’s not really anyone else’s business. I choose to tell who I want, when I want, and I ask my friends and family to not share my information.
What are the most common misconceptions that you’ve encountered?
I guess it depends on the sort of transgendered person you identify as. I haven’t had many in-depth discussions with friends and family on what’s it like to be transsexual. I don’t bring it up much because I don’t want people to think that it’s the only thing that defines me as a person…it doesn’t. These days, I’m way more concerned with blogging, dating, crafting, art, my cat, trying to have fun, paying my bills, getting to work on time, etc. So, I don’t have a lot of experience with this, but I have had discussions with a couple of friends about sharing my status with people they knew. I’ve asked them not to do it but one of them had an issue with it. She asked me what I was afraid of in not coming out to everyone.
I think people just apply the lesbian and gay coming out model to us…like, once we tell them, we should be out and proud and not ashamed of who were are. I like myself and I’m not ashamed of who I am, but I’d rather not get murdered or treated differently because of that one detail.I think the more common misconception is that we’re all freaks, perverts, just gay, just lesbians, sick, mentally ill, just in it for sex, hormonally imbalanced, attention seeking, drag queens/kings, someone to be pitied, or just pretending to be something we’re not. For the record, I am none of those…ok, maybe occasionally hormonally imbalanced.
What advice would you give to other people struggling to come out of the transgendered closet?
Advice? Eeep! I have a hard enough time taking care of myself/Miss Kitty and I’m certainly no role model, but here goes…
Do some homework:
These days, there are plenty of winning online resources for trans peeps…Andrea James’ is an excellent resource for the MtFs, seems like an excellent FtM guide, and site is an amazing catalog of sane, successful, beautiful trans women. I’ve never read it, but I sent my Mom a copy of True Selves: Understanding Transsexualism-For Families, Friends, Coworkers, and Helping Professionals by Mildred L. Brown & Chloe Ann Rounsley, and she really seemed to like it. Youtube has tons of trans people representin’… is a good group of vloggers, but there are loads more. Read other blogs. Check out your local GLBT resource center, they may offer a support group. In other words, try to figure out who you are and where you want to go next.
Talk it out:
It’s hard to figure this out all by yourself and you’ll feel much, much better after you share this with someone. Talk to your friends or family if you feel comfortable. If not, speak to a therapist or another trans person. Take this time to lean on the people in your life that want to help you and love you for who you are.
Make a plan: If you decide that you identify as transsexual and think permanent transition from one gender to the other is in your future, think about how you’re going to get there. Do you need to make a budget and earn more money? Are you going to change you name? What’s the procedure? How do you change your driver license and records? Do you want to start HRT? When are you going to tell your friends and family? When are you going to tell the people at work? I spent a lot of time planning the details of my transition and I think it helped a lot.
Make it happen:
You need to actually go out there and do it at some point. It’s going to be mega scary and nerve-wracking at first, but I believe in you and I know you can do it! Take it slow ( you can work on hair removal and saving money anytime), follow your plan, and don’t forget to take care of yourself. Try to find a safe, welcoming place where you can be yourself when you need to relax or when it all gets to be too much. Do something with all that stress; go dancing, ride your bike, or learn how to play air guitar! Take advantage of your homegrown support system and cultivate relationships with the people you love. Keep a journal, blog, or vlog so Future You can cringe about how weird you looked or dumb you sounded back in the day. Just kidding…this is an important time in your life and you’ll want to remember it. I guess the most important thing is to just get to it and move on with your life.
Does anybody have any (tactful! respectful!) questions for Anna?
I’m looking for these people:
Is that you? Or someone you know? If it is, I’d be ever so grateful if you’d let me pick your brain!
You can choose to remain anonymous (if you’d like) and we can do it all over email, so you have plenty of time to write up crazy witty responses.Any other interviews you’d like to see?
How frequently do people confuse your for your sister?
That depends. Though we do have somewhat separate lives if, for instance, Diana shows up at the restaurant where I work (most people there know I have a twin) and people don’t know she’s coming, they say ‘Hey Carrie!’ and try to start a conversation until she informs them that she’s not me.
How similar are your personalities?
That’s a hard one because to us, of course, we are two completely different people. But we do notice how similar we are sometimes. If I listen to a voicemail that I left on her phone- it freaks me out how much I sound like her. From inside my head, I sound different, but apparently from the outside we are quite similar.
Sometimes when we’re having a conversation with someone, we’ll laugh or respond in the exact same tone at the exact same time. A lot of times the person we’re talking to doesn’t notice because it sounds like only one of us responded. To each of us, it just sounds like stereo inside our own head. We usually look over at each other and check to see if both of us had actually spoken or laughed.
Over the years, I’ve had to remind myself to insert major details into stories I’m telling to people other than Diana. Maybe it’s because we’ve shared so many experiences or because we’re constantly thinking along the same lines, but we can cover a lot of ground without saying much. I remember sitting in a restaurant with a bunch of people and I heard music we might recognize playing in the background. I caught her attention, looked up, looked back at her with a questioning look, and she nodded. That equated to «Do we know this music and is it from that one soundtrack?»…»Yes it is and we have it at home.»
Have you ever switched to confuse your teachers, parents, friends?
Not very often. We did switch classes twice in middle school. Once for Home Ec – not very exciting. But it was amusing to watch it spread around the classroom as some of the other students figured it out told each other. The other time was for English and I remember going to Diana’s class and the teacher saying «Goodbye Diana!» as I walked out the door at the end of the period. I walked out into the hall, did a u-turn, came back in the room and she said «Hi Carrie!»
This is slightly cruel, but I guess the only thing we still do is if we happen to be together and either of our parents calls one of our phones, the other twin will answer it and see how long it takes for that parent to figure it out. I think Dad noticed something about how we each answer the phone or our initial voice fluctuations, but we can still keep Mom going for a little while sometimes.
How do people react to you when you’re out together?
Blonde twins? At the cost of sounding completely vain: they stare. It’s like the normal rules of courtesy don’t apply and because we’re somehow intriguing- they can just stare!
However, when I see another set of twins I stare as well! It’s fascinating to see the similar movements and mannerisms of another set of people (and pick out the differences). Which I suppose is what everyone stares at Diana and I for as well. Also, when I see another set of twins I always feel compelled to go up and let them know that I, too, am a twin. And compare stories and experiences etc. When a twin or twin sees us, they usually come up and do the same.
Have you ever had any of those ’she gets hurt and I feel it experiences’?
Maybe, though not strongly. A few months ago when Diana was going through a particularly stressful situation in her life, I would get these persistent headaches. I was drinking enough water, getting enough sleep, exercising, no PMS- nothing to explain it other than her stress. So I would call and tease her to stop stressing out so much!
Have you ever wished you weren’t a twin? Or wanted to alter your appearance so we didn’t look so similar?
I do remember going through a phase in high school where I didn’t want us to look the same all the time. Of course it never helped when we’d each get dressed in our separate rooms not seeing each other, and come out into the hall between our rooms wearing the same thing anyway. What to do?
We’ve became masters at sharing and cooperating because we’ve had to. It was and always is nice to have my best friend built right into my life (painfully cliche, but so true). Our teachers attempted to «socialize» us by always placing us in separate home rooms (I suppose they wanted to be able to tell us apart as well). That might’ve helped, to a degree, but we never HAD to make friends because except for those few hours of school, we were always with the one person we shared the most preferences, abilities, and life experiences with anyway.
Are any of you a twin? Do you know any twins? Questions for Carrie?
