Maybe not only misery loves company

     This semester, I have a professor who, if I were at all attracted to men, I would totally have the stereotypical crush on. As it is, I'm left with a maddening desire to keep him in my pocket and pat his head while having abstract discussions on Deaf culture.

     As seems to be common with most of the professors I end up adoring, The Professor is almost universally disliked amongst my peers. There are a few other students who greatly admire him, while the rest attempt to avoid taking his classes and complain endlessly about his strict rules and no nonsense attitude. Admittedly, his rules are sometimes slightly pedantic (if we elect to do a paper for our Capstone (BA thesis, essentially) class, it has to end on the 10th page, no more or no less). People have often accused him of being too strict and unbending; I think this has more to do with him having a great bullshit meter and knowing when students are trying to get away with things, as I've asked for some very inconvenient accommodations for very valid problems and he's bent over backwards to make things work fairly for me. He's rearranged his entire schedule for our test days so I can have my time and a half, and completely modified my final project and presentation so I would be able to actually share my knowledge rather than having a panic attack in front of the class. I've enrolled in his Capstone class for the next semester and I've decided I want to do interviews for the research, so he and I have spent already maybe 5 hours together to complete and turn in the approval paperwork for the interviews.

     During these ridiculously long meetings, I've learned a lot about The Professor. He's the one I mentioned in my last post who I can nearly always make at least a few moments of eye contact with now that we've spent so much time together. He crosses his legs like a woman (woman cross their legs at the knee, while men typically cross at the ankle, sit with their legs apart, or put one ankle on the opposing knee), and has very delicate finger. He plays with his tongue when he thinks and chews on his lower lip. He has a tendency to think, well not aloud, but think on his hands, and he can always tell when I'm nervous. I would be willing to guess that he falls into the genius levels on the IQ scale, and definitely would not be surprised if he is on the autism spectrum somewhere. He doesn't seem offended that I end up staring at his nose most of the time to make a facsimile of eye contact, and he only seems to own six shirts (tan, purple, burgundy, hunter green, light blue, and navy) which never coordinate with his black slacks and brown shoes. He has very strong preferences for both capitalizing Capstone when we write it and using his preferred sign for it (the student-used sign is based on the fact it strangles us while his is the equivalent of conclusion), but I think it's adorable. He was obsessively worried about me the time I had a full blown panic attack in his class, and extended the break to over 20 minutes so he could make sure I wasn't alone while we waited for someone to come sit with me. He's a Christian and, according to another professor of mine who actually despises The Professor, he's gone to seminary. He also happens to be fluent in British Sign Language and knows the ASL sign for just about every country. His small talk skills are very much totally nonexistent, which leads to a lot of awkward pauses (because God only knows that I can't continue a conversation well), but he goes out of his way to start conversations with me now that he actually likes me. I feel safe in assuming he can continue to be a favorite professor of mine without ending up asking me to be in a threesome as a young teenager (true story), which is always reassuring.

     I'm not sure why I'm bothering to write all this down, other than the fact it's so nice to finally have a truly wonderful professor. He and I get along really well, even if we're solely on a collegial level (I'd love to actually befriend him, but something tells me telling him that I have a man crush on him and want to cuddle him in my pocket just isn't the way to go about that...), and it's nice to be around someone who actually realizes I'm intelligent instead of getting hung up on the fact that, when my PTSD gets bad, I end up looking and acting like I am severely developmentally disabled (which, admittedly, in that moment, I essentially am since all my higher thinking ceases). I've got two of his classes this coming semester and, although I'm dreading the topic of my non-Capstone course, I'm really looking forward to getting to learn all the personal anecdotes he apparently typically tells in that class.

Winding Down

My semester is winding down at long last. I finally made a schedule to attempt to get it all under control. I've turned in my permission form to perform interviews for my Capstone project next semester for a project I'm intensely excited about. I'm slated to graduate magna cum laude. I'm trying not to think too much about next May. I can't imagine graduating without The Fiancée there to watch and cheer me on. She played such a vital role in helping me to stay at university and actually succeed. I owe so much of my success here to her. Graduating also means moving back to my home town... and out of the apartment that she and I shared. I'm contemplating looking for a full time job up here instead.

A select few people are starting to call me by my chosen name. My mother is not one of them; she doesn't like it, though it's based on my middle and last initial. She says she doesn't feel an emotional attachment to it. It seems to matter less to her that my emotional connection to my birth name is solely painful and a reminder of what I was born as. It's bizarre for my peers to ask me what my preferred name is and to use it. They're even mostly making the effort to use my preferred pronouns and apologizing for when they misgender me.

My father and my's relationship has randomly changed. After he found out that I was raped, he showed up on my doorstep two days later. We spent a week together, which was filled with the challenges I've become used to from our tumultuous relationship. He was just the same as he always has been. Since he's been back in Italy, though, he's made such an effort to stay in contact with me. He has, for the most part, even contacted me when he said we would. When I told him I had to return my service dog candidate Abbey, he legitimately sympathized with me. He's told me multiple times how proud he is of my skill at teaching. This is the first time in my 19 and a half years that I've actually felt loved by him. It's a bizarre change and I'm frightened it won't last, but I'm certainly enjoying it while I can.

I've made the decision to rehome my rats. I have my 6 little ones who I adore much more than I thought you could like a rodent. The Fiancée and I got them all together. As much as they were very much my pets, I was only able to have them because she worked so hard to help me with them. Alone, I simply can't do it. I'm broken hearted to lose them, especially after my beloved kittens went with The Fiancée when she left, but it's not fair to them for them to be stuck in their cage so constantly without the human interaction they love. I've found a lovely woman who runs a rescue who often ends up keeping the rats she takes in as pets and she's chuffed to get them. I know it's the right decision, even if it's not the best for me.

I'm in contact with an organization for service dogs. It seems to be going well, so I suppose we'll see what comes from that. I've managed to figure out ways to control the outward and acute signs of my PTSD. I've controlled about half of the stimming, and can at least feel the panic and anxiety attacks coming on. I no longer visibly flinch when people touch me, though I've still asked most people not to. I can actually hold eye contact with my family again, and I'm starting to regain that skill with people I trust, even with a male professor. (As an interesting side note, my ability to establish eye contact with a specific person seems to correlate with how much time I've spent with someone since the rape as opposed to on a whole. One of my male professors, who I'd spent insane amount of hours with and actually went to when The Fiancée left and spent days just sitting in his office, I can't make eye contact with because I haven't seen him much since the rape. Another male professor, who I only met this semester but have spent countless hours with for my interview approval and for getting accommodations, I can make eye contact with maybe 40-50% of the time now.) Now, it seems the PTSD has settled into what it will be for the long term. That constant, underlying deepseated fear and terror. The dark terrifies me. I keep my apartment lights on nearly constantly and can't shut doors. At my family's two story home, I have to have someone walk me upstairs. I still can't have my back to doors and windows, though I can almost control the need to look at someone who passes behind me. My fear for elevators is only getting worse, but now I can use them if it's physically necessary (my legs become numb if it's more than three stories up). I'm proud of my progress, even if it's something I never wanted to have had to make progress in in the first place.

Coward

I am too much of a coward to block him.

Was that okay?

Are we not friends anymore?

I hope you're okay, I saw your lonely post.

I am too much of a coward to lock him out, push him away from my cyber self. Instead, I sit here screaming, instantly locked back in that filthy studio, feeling his caress of my hair, his five fingered hold around my gasping neck, hearing my name moaned over and over as my body betrays me and makes noises with every thrust. Feeling the slime that I am left covered in when there is no toilet paper to clean myself before I drive away in hysteria, forcing myself to sing along to his songs because maybe then I will remember who he was supposed to be and not who he became. Burning in the shame of that interview afterwards, closing my eyes against the forensic flash, staring at teeth marks on my bicep because of course the one time I bruise is from him.

I am too pitiful to make him go away. You are supposed to label yourself a survivor. You are supposed to triumph over the trauma, ignore the PTSD, and piece yourself together again. Instead I am a victim, defined by the violence and trapped within those smudged walls, bare floors, and lines left by his drugs from the night before. I am the weak one, who is confined to their house because there might be another man lurking on any corner, behind every bush, waiting to do it again. Who drowns out the flashbacks with Christmas music but hears him cumming anyway. Who knows how filthy they are. Whose identity as a transgender person has taken a back seat to those touches of my chest, the statement that I will be the closest to gay that he will ever come. Whose stone identity was erased in an instant, who lost their desire for touch because every other pair of hands petting my newly shaved head feels like his. The one who won over The Fiancée with their hugs runs from embraces now because they feel like that last embrace I endured from him before I managed to escape. Who hides in corners to watch the doors and can't let people behind them any more. Who rocks back and forth and back and forth and screams to please not touch them even when they are alone because I am never alone anymore, not really.

I am too much of a coward to block him.

Not "We"

     My first semester at my university I encountered a professor whom I couldn't stand. He proudly announced his ally status for any and all minority communities, bragging about how young he was when he started marching and protesting. He made the comment that he and his wife (our department chair) didn't want to get married until it was legal for everyone but they "needed the legal protections marriage offered." This cemented my dislike of him. I would never have though anything of him being married until he brings queer issues into it; I don't know about other people in same-sex relationships but DAMN would I like some legal protections in my someday marriage. His ally-ness to my queer community meant little to me if his attitude was so poor.

    Thanks to my BPD splitting, the next semester, I ended up really coming to respect and idolize him. I could see his commitment to the work that he'd done and was still doing. I could see the dedication and the empathy he had for minority groups. I overlooked the red flags that had repeatedly eaten at me the semester before. When he told me that he didn't like my choice of pronouns and didn't want to use them, I looked the other way.

     Now, that brings us to the current semester. We're finishing up the 12th week of it, so I've been in my third class of his for a bit now. I will preface this by saying my perception may or may not be skewed by him due to splitting and an inability to decide to stay on meds or not. That aside, I keep seeing more and more problematic behaviours from him. On one occasion, when discussing education of Deaf children, he repeatedly said that you'd never find someone more invested than him in schools for the Deaf. On another, when talking about experiences that Deaf people face, he repeatedly said "we" although he is hearing. When he was talking to Mitten and I about trans* and queer issues, he repeatedly said "we" although is cisgendered and straight. Many of the minority group members I've talked to have found issue with his gratuitous use of "we" and the like. Yet, because we're all so starved for people who accept us and want to be allies, we stay silent and fail to call him out on it.

     My two cents on the whole thing is that I think his heart is in the right place. At the same time, I think his ego has become so overinflated and self-focused that he can't find his own identity outside of being an ally. Perhaps he feels less special, as he is a majority member in every area outside of religion; even then, his atheism is certainly not indicative of a powerless minority (he frequently mocks my beliefs and identity as a Christian). To me, his problematic views make him more energy than he's worth.

     I'm curious as to your experiences and views with allies and ally-related problems, especially readers who are a minority. Any thoughts?

Time Passing

     It has been 1 month, 3 weeks, and 1 day since The Fiancée ended things. On the 12th, it will mark 2 months (time moves so oddly when we measure days and weeks versus months...).

     It has been 1 month and 2 days since I was raped.

     It has been 3 days since I got my potential Service Dog in Training. (Her name is Abundiz; she typically gets called Abbey. Things seem to be going well in terms of her capabilities as a service dog. She's somewhat exceedingly protective of my house and tried to eat The Mitten when he came to visit, but apparently has no desire to eat my rats.)

I feel like my life has changed more in these past 58 days than in my 19 1/2 years before that. I'm not sure really what that means for me, other than this is apparently a season of trials in my life. Frankly, I'm ready for the next season.