It’s taken me a long time to write this piece. I’m still not certain I should turn it in.
Last year the #MeToo movement hit a lot of people hard; it hit me hard, too. I’m sure it hit many women the same way it did me, in a way that didn’t allow for expression. I can’t name the culprit, I can’t describe all the events, and I can’t get it off my chest without giving away private details of my life I don’t want all over the internet.
But it doesn’t mean it didn’t send me careening down good ol’ memory lane, crashing into the street signs and breaking every heart-bone in my already run down body. I know from speaking to other women, they’re in the same sinking boat. Unable to voice their pain, but feeling it every step of the way.
If I think of what happened, I can directly connect my agoraphobia to that period of time in my life. It’s when I wanted to stop going outside, to stop getting out of bed. But I pushed through it and pretended it was just a phase.
I can also correlate dropping out of UMASS Boston with the guilt I felt because I must have done something wrong, right? With the guilt I still felt, even as an adult, even knowing I did nothing wrong, knowing the person who tormented me was full of shit.
I hadn’t given them a thought in years—truthfully, they had no bearing on my life at all. But after the #MeToo Movement hit the ground running I hit a brick wall. I couldn’t seem to stop thinking about it. It colored every thought, every day, and every sweat-filled nightmare.
I was disappointed in myself because I thought my former tormentor had no power over me, and the #MeToo Movement proved me wrong. That person’s power hid inside me like a caged snake, waiting to rear its extremely poisonous head.
For weeks I drank that poison. I couldn’t stop talking about it, even when it hurt people I loved. Couldn’t stop thinking about it, hyper-focusing on events that happened almost thirty years ago. I wrote piece after piece and deleted them, ashamed of what I had to write. But my antidote came from a strange place.
The Brett Kavanaugh hearings painted Dr. Christine Blasey-Ford, a well-respected professor of clinical psychology at Palo Alto University, as a liar, Democratic plant, and attention-seeker. She gave a perfect testimony—she was collected, calm, and believable, unlike the defendant, who emoted in ways a woman is never allowed to without being called “distraught” or “hysterical.” For the record, I would be okay with Judge Kavanaugh’s outbursts, if his alleged victim was allowed the same courtesies in the court of public opinion. I got angrier and angrier as I watched, and finally realized it wasn’t the scene on tv that was causing my anger. And I realized that, regardless of anything else, the person I told didn’t hesitate to believe me.
That was my release. The long-term effects of my #metoo moments still hurt; but I don’t have to worry about whether or not they happened, whether or not they were bad, or whether or not the person who perpetrated them was evil. I have that validation. And with that, I let go of all that anger, and those moments, because they have no control over me.
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S.M. Roffey is a writer, mother, former early educator, comic book lover, and volunteer cosplayer who lives in the Northeast with her genderqueer spouse and 3 LGBTQ kids. By day she is a virtual assistant to #RevPit’s Jeni Chappelle, and at night she writes adult fiction fantasy. She has studied Anthropology and Early Education, and her personal essays have been featured on The Good Men Project, Shethority, Huffington Post and BlogHer. She is currently writing a novel and blogging about books and writing at www.smroffey.com.
