Wheels
What I really, really want to you to know…
I remember ten years after I started ballet classes, I wanted to learn ballroom. My partner committed suicide. A month after that, my paternal aunt chose to do the same thing.
I love dancing with every fiber of my being. It was the first identity I chose for me to Be. I remember sitting in my dad’s office as he tried to find the words to explain what they did. I got a text, saying, “I love you. I’m sorry I have to cancel rehearsal this week.” The next day on Facebook I saw that our studio was closed. Indefinitely.
What does that mean?
Infinitely? With finite circumstances? Or on undefinable terms?
I wore yellow to school the next day because that was all I could muster to feel anything but grief. If yellow is happy, maybe I don't have to feel so sad…
At the funeral for my aunt, for whatever reason, my parents said it was okay to stay the night in my cousin’s hotel so the five of us weren’t in the same room. I think they should have known better, because I certainly did not. I did not know the violence of man at that point in my prima ballerina life.
Men are pricks who think with their dicks. And when they are in grief, it might as well be through the lens of violence too.
I forgive the circumstances that brought us together but the second my cous laid lips on me I knew it felt wrong. Immediately, I became dirty, used, abused, manipulated, scared, scarred, and carrying a secret.
The boy said, “Don’t tell. Please don’t tell on me”…
But I could not carry that secret for long without it bleeding through. I didn’t want a private life. I wanted to dance.
I spilled.
I bleed.
So the truth came out, in family therapy, because I was *acting*re-acting* like a “troubled teen.”
The doc, so proud, he pulled the root out of me. My parents, regretful, enraged, but complacent, stating this. just. happens. in families.
I knew that was far from the truth I wanted to embody.
I do not want to live in a family where we are okay with incest and abuse of a child.
He is a rapist, who acts like a rapist. He asked me, “What? Don’t you want to continue?”
I now have to be an activist, who *acts*re-acts* like a survivor.
But surviving is exhausting…
And healing this shit is crucial, not only for my art, but for my life.
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When I was in college I was raped by a friend. Now, he had lost his brother our senior year, to cancer though. So I guess I thought we had the same holes in our hearts. I thought I could trust him and be close. Little had I internalized, men are violent and they will take from you when they see the chance.
Take whatever they think they deserve. Even if that lies in the flesh of a woman.
Carnal. Abuse.
We were at a party and I asked to borrow a sweatshirt because I was getting cold.
In his bedroom, we went to look for comfort. But what happened was the most uncomfortable thing to ever happen to me.
Being raped in the ass is the epitome of sadism.
He is a sadistic little boy. And now all-ways will be. That’s what he chose to Be!
What happens when you are screaming a sacred “No.” but the doors are closed and everyone is laughing?
Next, I remember the tears in the pillow that my head was forced into. When I was able to finally get up he said, “Did I just rape you?” Like he knew but didn’t care that I only wanted a sweatshirt; that wasn’t some code for fucking or love making.
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Years later, I was able to make art about these experiences. I made a piece about loss, about finding glimpses of glitter that remind you of the sparks those lives had before they snuffed them out. I made an, “I love you too” piece. I remember the first work I made about being a “victim” of rape. I was supposed to make photographs that told a truth or a lie. I could decide. The tremendously silly thing is that people genuinely thought the egg on my face was lying.
Why would I lie about this?
Tell me.
I recognize the circumstances that brought me here.
In my young adult years, desperate to be believed, I allowed my spaces to be filled with those kind of boys because it was the comfort that I asked for, apparently.
I dated an abuser who got me halfway across the world in order to manipulate and use me sexually and drug me with substances. He called me white trash and said this is what a girl who looks like me deserves.
The first thing I knew about the boy who raped me was that he thought I was hot.
The boy who psychologically abused me and groomed me to want to be a stay at home artist, thanked me, years later, for helping him write a self-help book for “men” about how to manipulate women in order to get what they want. When this happened, any healing I had done for myself post undergrad, post making the cathartic artwork was reversed. I felt the traumas bubble to the surface and I was in visible, unshakable fear for my safety and well-being for months.
At the time, the guy I was dating, I called “my lover.” The one I confided in. But with my track record it should come as no surprise that when I asked for support through this he became the violent abuser of my present.
The point is, even though I loved them doesn’t mean I deserved the pain they put me through.
Even though I was hurt doesn’t mean I continue to live hurt.
It crushed me to find out the the one I trusted for years after all of the bullshit happened to me in high school, who I trusted talking to about all this stuff, ended up using it against me by literally exclaiming, “I am the villain of your story now!” in a drunken rage.
In his own grief, he simply does not care that his actions are violent and hurtful to the one he said he loved. If he wanted to be written about with softer infliction he would have treated me better.
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These are rapists who will drug you in order to sleep with you and use that pain to make you feel ashamed even though all you did was be pretty and dance anyway, despite the pain you’ve suffered.
I took on familial guilt. There are pedophiles in my family. Accused, serving time, pedo’s, who don’t deserve the gift of breath.
I internalized shame because I am a beautiful body who still loves to receive pleasure and live embodied as I breathe.
I learned through covid times that it is simply unsafe to exist. It is not safe to live in silence about the will of violent men or the world they created for us.
But do I really want to live my life in fear? Fuck. That.
Fuck my fucking rapist in the ass.
Fuck that fucking bartender who’s spiking women’s drinks.
Fuck that fucking narcissistic manifesto disguised as a self-help book.
And fuck the other women who still consider this my fault, because they are jealous of my beauty and ability to dance, despite.
I choose to live embodied. I have done the work to re-cognize the abuser and the circumstances that brought us together.
I have forgiven. Myself first, and then those circumstances.
I send them love & light and all that shit. I accept the soul contract we entered into before coming Earthside. I love. I trust the experience. AND I integrate the lust for betrayal into my psyche so that I may be better next time.
It’s embarrassing to recognize that the people you love are not who you thought they were.
It’s heartbreaking to understand that we live in a world with violent men.
All of this is to say, I want the guilt and the shame and embarrassment out of my body. I do not want to walk around like a doormat that say’s welcome to my trauma. I am not a trash can nor your cum bucket.
I am a beautiful goddess who dances with the changes, who is willing to put in the work to call out the violence eg. hatred of women.
They jealous that they aren’t us!
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Women are inherent beauty. We are the gift. If you look really closely you might be able to say that of man but in general their nature overshadows that as wishful thinking, in my book.
I also want the opportunity to empower that beautiful thought though. All I wanted to was give and receive the beauty that is found in human connection to empower your body to care about being good and beautiful too.
Even though I loved him doesn’t mean I can continue to be a victim to his lack of emotional understanding or empathy.
I am empowered enough to forgive myself and the circumstances that brought us together. I am stronger than my abusers. I am the one in the family who will stop that cycle of systematic abuse because I will call it out every. damn. time.
A rapist is a rapist because he acts like a rapist. NOT because pretty women exist.
A nazi is a nazi because they hate like a fascist. Not because people are innately bad or good.
As a yogi, I know that this trauma forms and lives in the energetic body. We carry these experiences with us. All-ways.
Which is why it is so important to experience, fully, the cycles of grief. And to move through. (Catch me on the mat a few days per week!)
This is why I describe it as growing on, not necessarily only growing up. Because I am learning to move on and through AND UP the chakra system so that the deep feels of my grief do not stay trapped. They have a time and a place to release. I can mend the story I have to tell myself and continue projecting for the sake of being the artist who is healed and not starving. The activist who is heard and can move you.
The dance floor. The disco ball lights. The parties that make me feel flux in embodied flow. Those are the stories that fill my diary now. I crave the dance nights. The rapists had their time but the future is mine. I am my savior in this year of the goddess and I am here to be your guide if any of this lands as truth for you.
I need to tell my story to get it out of my body. It is my lived experience but the weight of the suffering is not something I choose to carry any longer. You can see this in my artwork and in my IRL presence on the damn dance floor.
Now you know, and thus I am a healer of the stories we tell ourselves about why fucked up things happen to women…
I am safe and I am pretty. I am angry and I am healing.
I am an Animal In A Dress and I know the power that I possess starts with the choice to speak and stand firm in my affirmations of these truths.
xx Jordan
No images necessary here because re-memory doesn’t work like that. Art accomplishes what cannot be written.