For part 1 of a satirical trilogy into the wonderfully cozy home of familial warmth I grew up in, read this first

“The Middle Child“

Foreword:

The first introduction into this rabbit hole of my increasingly complex family dynamics was only the tip of the iceberg for the realm inside my head. There is a reason I prefer my solitude now, and it’s not because of my warm embrace by society as a child. I scorn the physical restraint of hugs, save maybe a handful of individuals, not because I was taught how to be comfortable in my own body and interacting healthily with others. 

The main reason I don’t succumb to the pull of substance abuse disorders, mental breakdowns, and the crushing weight of knowledge that my species has single handedly destroyed this beautiful planet beyond recognition, unlike so many of my relatives (and the rest of society), is that I’ve gone out of my way to secure and prioritize my mental health… only through a combination of pure stubbornness, the resources to learn beyond my environment, and the willpower to educate myself on it without feeling a stigma to repress or be ashamed of it. 

Much like the opening scene of Euphoria, when Zendaya’s wonder that is the character of “Rue” is brought to this reality, her mother addresses something along the lines of how “plenty of successful people had [childhood depression].” A montage of Vincent Van Gogh, Sylvia Plath, and Britney Spears having psychotic breaks or committing suicide proceeds to play out. Even Albert Einstein struggled with depression, and as a scientist, it’s scary to study the reality that my increased intellect is also the potential reason for my anxiety. It’s scarier, though, to realize that in the 21st century, I now have a platform to be able to share my stream of consciousness and document my fears, my concerns, and my emphasis on the power of mindset and I’ve somehow been gaslighted by my own family, friends, and part of society to think I should shelter it like a lighter’s flame on a windy night behind your hands. 

I can’t delve into my hopeful, still incredibly early stages of my public health and legal career, arguing over the ethics and stigma attached to certain topics–historically trending based on cultural premonitions, while shadowing the recesses of my own mind, struggling with the very same concepts. I can’t be worried an online presence will criticize my future career paths, when those same career paths will eventually involve advocacy…and my passion for advocacy is rooted in those very personal experiences I wish to explore. I can’t be afraid to have to address the skeletons in my own closet that may one day be dragged out, paraded in front of me, or for some reason used against me to involuntarily commit me to a 5150 hold, or worse…invalidate my opinion in a male-dominated public setting. 

My friend Bill once told me how he thinks my generation’s greatest strength is facilitating open conversation. 

Part of that involves having an honest conversation with myself, first. 

And believe me, I have had several years of (unfortunately) honest conversations with myself where I hold myself under scrutinizingly-heavy pressure and unrealistic expectations under the premise of “I should’ve known better”, so this isn’t about the fact that I need therapy. This is about the fact that I use writing as my preferred form of expression, and I want the people in my life moving forward to understand what I care about, why I am the way that I am, and how I actually feel underneath it all. You don’t write about the things that are easy. 

So why do I need to do it? 

Honestly, because I’m exhausted from not feeling able to. 

Years of verbal, emotional, and at times physical, abuse, all at the hands of my biological relatives. Cycles of substance abuse and behavioral patterns that are transgenerational–fully acknowledged yet never addressed. 

Years of every new person in my life expressing some kind of pity, or sadness when the topic of family comes up or if they innocently ask what I’m doing for the holidays. Until, finally, it’s just easier to say “I don’t have a family” than to explain that mine just doesn’t, and may never, understand me. 

Years of trying everything else. Therapy. Meditation. Yoga. Running. Lifting Weights. Creating a list of things to talk about. Setting boundaries. Working on forgiveness. Somehow, it all gets thrown back in my face (a spiteful “You need therapy!” as if that is actually supposed to be some kind of insult… Hey, news flash, buddy… MOST PEOPLE NEED THERAPY, not to mention this may not exist if any of y’all had ever actually gone to it yourselves instead of taking your mental handicaps out on me in real life.)

Years of it being portrayed as if I’m the unreasonable one because I’m the only one who outwardly has a problem. Everyone else can carefully avoid topics that may set off the avalanche of dismayed self realization, but I’m the only one who hasn’t been able to. I don’t smoke or drink away my problems, forgetting about how I physically attacked my sibling in my early 20’s thanks to a few rounds of watered-down shots. I don’t refuse to apologize and instead just show up absentmindedly a few months later, hoping the other person had forgotten the things I previously said. 

I am simply not willing to pretend like these things didn’t occur, or didn’t exist, because I have had to live with them for that long, without a choice. But, I’m not trying to summit the hypoxic graveyard of Mount Everest by myself. I don’t need to carry this alone. I could, but it’s not necessary in this day and age. I can bring an oxygen tank. I can bring a sherpa. But people need to know that’s where I am in the world. 

______________________________________

For the record, I’m also tired of trying to weed out the newcomers who are ACTUALLY interested in learning about “me”, in whatever sense or capacity is available to them, without wasting my own time, and as of my past decade I tend to live in a new state every 2-3 years because of my career goals and honestly, I really don’t want to have to constantly retell the same exhaustingly intense theories for the rest of my life, but “normal” people can talk about things like family, career goals, values in life, much more casually.

Again, not exactly normal here. (Did you read the first post?)

So, whether it be professionally, athletically, educationally, whatever, I am actively working on making myself more available mentally, because clearly, emotionally I can be fairly checked out.

To be clear, yes I am stating that THEY (newcomers) can waste THEIR time reading about me, so long as I don’t waste my own. 

#JustENTJThings (Go look up MBTI)

Anyway, let’s Recap…

Short summary of my initial post is:

• My grandfather and father are terrifyingly intellectual men in fields of military strategy and all things aerospace engineering (i.e. missile/weaponry development)
• I was “trained” as a small child, and while my childhood was incredibly wonderful in a lot of ways, there was also a lot of navigation of stress in various forms
• It’s possible that ‘training’ was some discontinued CIA-program to eventually sell me off/push me to gather intelligence and subject my body to whatever was necessary in my pursuit of knowledge in how the world works

So without further adieu, let’s continue…

Clue #4: Debutante Themes + International Diplomacy

Did any of you ever watch “She’s The Man” and relate to Viola Hastings’ disgust at her current situation and understand just why she was so frustrated? When Jo March in Greta Gerwig’s 2019 rendition of “Little Women” cried out in desperation of being so lonely, but wanting to be respected even more, was your initial reaction to undervalue her feelings? When Arya walked away from Gendry’s promise of a ladyship and land in season 8 because “that’s not her”, did you cheer? Feel a sense of pride? 

You likely felt compassion, empathy, an understanding of who they were because the backstory of their character arc was available to you. 

So when I refused my mother’s repeated advances to present myself to society via a debutante ball and cotillion, or when I decided I was going to join the football team AND be the top runner for cross country AND play varsity soccer in high school, or when I was one of the only women out of ~15 students out of a class of 22,000 undergraduates to graduate from a top 5 public university in one of the most difficult, male dominated degree fields available, when does my validation come? 

And where does my validation come from? Do I value the opinion of the family members I honestly can no longer respect because of the repeated nature of our adult encounters? Do I value the opinion of the supervisors who just yesterday sent me home because “while my outfit meets all technical criteria of the dress code, your legs are too tantalizing”… underneath your desk… in South Florida… in the middle of the summer? Do I value the opinion of the men who admired all of my virtuous aspirations initially, only for my independence to slowly become a deal breaker due to their own insecurities, causing them to stray? 

Fuck that. My validation comes from myself. 

I’ve always been this “difficult” of a person. I was five years old the first time I ran away and I distinctly remember packing my bag in spite (at my father) and holding my cat comforter up so the edges wouldn’t drag across the dew-laden grass as I crossed the street to my Uncle’s house. But am I really “difficult”? Or do I just question the subjective confines of my world because I know I can? 

And how do you present yourself to society when you don’t enjoy it, or it feels like a facade to do it in any artificial way? 

I had no interest in curtsying, learning how to delicately fold a napkin across my lap, or waiting on a male partner to escort me out into the world, even in adolescence. The cotillion angle, try as my mother might, was never going to happen. 

She should’ve known I wasn’t one to conform to gender norms when I took TWO boys to the third grade spring fling. In my defense, I narrowed down my choice from the entire male class, who had each given me an extra valentine (seriously, I peaked early as fuck) to just the two most popular boys. Chris Parker’s mom even picked me up and then drove to pick up Madison along the way. (Also…thinking of these instances then reassessing my previous, completely “unrelated” sexual preferences these days in quarantine is really that much more amusing). In fact, my entire third grade year parallels “me” as a human, in general. The presidential physical fitness test became my bitch, and the ten measly pull ups I had to do were nothing for my 100-pull-up, 100-v-up nightly bar routine that had to be completed before I could leave to go home from gymnastics…at the end of a 2 hour practice. One day, I got bored in gym class and was literally just allowed to stay in gym the rest of the day and hula hoop to break the Guiness World Record at the time, purely just to prove I could. My best friend fed me chicken nuggets to my outstretched palm during lunch. I even won the talent show later that Spring in an incredibly itchy, fuzzy Limited Too blue sweater and red skirt while belting out “The Star Spangled Banner” after first dedicating it to my three-time war veteran of a Grandpa (front row, in the audience) while my Grandmother, the hometown angel who played the organ and piano at every local parish and theatre club, accompanied me. Seriously, though, why is who I am these days and what I stand for STILL surprising to literally anybody who grew up with me. 

Once it was clear I had no intention in conforming to being a “lady” of society, other tactics of securing my status as being worthy of another person’s admiration took hold. My aunt’s job, working for some privately wealthy multimillionaire based out of D.C., took her all over the globe. Once I turned 18, and could freely travel with her without raising parental concerns, she took me with her to Rome where I spent 10 days exploring the city with an Italian Air Force Chief of Staff’s son, also my age, who was attending school overseas due to his father’s station. Later that summer, I was asked to accompany a 24 year old Australian diplomat’s recently-college-graduated son to a private dinner. The age gap and request wouldn’t have been weird…except for the fact that I both had an (abusive) boyfriend of several years and had never even been to college yet so what the heck could a small-town girl who ran against her best friend for queen of the county fair as a scholarship competition possibly offer a diplomat’s son in one-on-one conversation over a single night? With my dad, it was the men from base–whichever colonel, general, second lieutenant, whatever the fuck rank of marine, navy, or army man it was that day blending together into indistinguishable introductions, exuberance over how lucky they were to finally be introduced to me, the lust and intrigue behind their gaze obvious to anyone with half a brain. 

Those interactions certainly weren’t all bad, though.

I was the only youth at a five-course meal with multiple four star Italian generals. So, even if I was only there as a pretty face that could hold a conversation with the military men being honored, being fed cherries hand picked from the owner of the estate’s private groves, perched atop the roof top balcony overlooking Rome, at least I was there. When I was 21, I even had the opportunity to stay at the home of my dad’s long time friend, a former Marine-turned-oil-industry (conveniently right around the early-to-mid 2000’s…) man in Houston, Texas while working at the top cancer research center in the world for a summer! So, even if the man’s 23 year old athletic, blonde girlfriend “wasn’t comfortable” with him being in his own house when I was present , at least I got free use of the extra BMW, a pool with one of those motors that lets you swim in place, and prime real estate in Houston, Texas for free.

Not everything was a manipulative set up of any kind, and one could argue that life in general is about opportunity, so the more opportunities these equally curious and almost imaginative interactions earn you, the better. At the very least, I have a deeply complicated and interesting life story up until the current age of 27. But when your entire life has been centered on graduating college with virtually NO expectations set for you other than settling down and marrying a man, it is really difficult to not feel a hot flash of anger when they seem to ONLY happen, LARGELY because of your looks (which, again, up until this point, was a thing to keep modestly) and because the idea you might be happy, or fulfilled, on your own, seems absurd. It’s even insulting, most of all, because instead of not wanting to be distracted or undervalued after a string of shitty relationships, I’m apparently not allowed to provide myself time to relax and put myself first, because they’re worried that my “biological clock is ticking.”

For the record, looking at the facts of how my Grandpa didn’t believe I should have the right to vote AND TOLD ME SO, I grew up a farm girl riding my ponies over my acres of tobacco and hay fields, and my childhood consisted of glorifying the military prowess of egotistical men who feel a need to claim things (land, women, animals) for themselves and white colonial history, the emphasis of my place in society as a woman was probably one of the least shocking things I still feel residual pressure from. (Truthfully, I’ve even developed a bit of a kink for men in civil-war-era attire, which could just as likely be from Damon and Stefan Salvatore gracing the screens of my Netflix bingeing as lustful vampires, both secretly enamored with the same girl (a common theme in the entertainment I am drawn to, you’ll find) as it is due to my desire to enact some decades-later control over my own militaristic childhood in a Freudian version of sexual empowerment.)

As each year passes, even into my late 20’s, their tactics have only gotten more obvious. I’ll come home from running, sweat dripping off of each limb, glistening across my sternum, darkening the fabric of my sports bra, to a strange couple standing in my mom’s foyer, their conveniently-similar-in-age son just happened to be accompanying them to check out my mom’s bike. I get pestering, frequent insinuations that I must be a lesbian, since I don’t want to bring anyone home for the holidays (and I bought a Subaru) so strongly that I refuse to even consider the fact that I could even potentially find women attractive just because the minor chance they might be right is too infuriating that I just mentally have never allowed the question. 

But why do I care so much? 

What about their dismay at my happy solitude is so insulting to me? 

The fact in this life is whatever I achieve in life may be undermined by the lack of a male partner’s presence at my side. Sure, times are changing. Things are different now than they used to be. But the thoughts are still there. Whatever degrees I earn, jobs I hold, whatever a career looks like to me, will somehow seem sad, or lonely, if I opt to do it alone, whereas the male equivalent is revered and nobody asks whether you think you’ll regret focusing on it ten years from now (because, biologically, time is on your side so it doesn’t matter quite so much). If I had a dollar for every time one of the patients at my surgical dermatology job asked what was “wrong” with me because I wasn’t married yet…even after asking about my degrees and lifeplan, I may have been able to afford to stay at that job. If you think I’m exaggerating, and that “it’s not THAT bad anymore” “progress is being made”, explain to me why Emma Watson claiming she’s “Self partnered” is an ACTUAL news story. If we’ve ACTUALLY made that much progress with society, and women’s place, PLEASE justify why a single woman trying to find her place in the world and using her past experiences is pitied, constantly questioned, and statistically is at an increased risk for violence against her persona compared to her male counterpart. Has anyone ever asked Leonardo DiCaprio what is wrong with him for cycling through <25 year old girlfriends constantly? Suck my dick. 

From there, I wonder, do I actually think my family’s goal was trafficking me like Ghislaine Maxwell inevitably did to her victims? Or do I just think women’s role in the culturally relevant history to me and my ancestors just resembles female trafficking through use of legally enforced restrictions of whatever “freedoms” (or lack thereof) over my own existence that society wants me to have at that time? 

Is it just that I associate marriage with financial coercion and an abusive, controlling narrative because of my own experience, as well as the many, MANY similarly shared experiences with my friends, whereas that is just some kind of sample bias because of the environments I place myself in that draws similar people together? 

And, with a lengthy, repetitive, and globally cyclic patterns of female submission and inferiority of the sexes, arguably the one universally consistent, sociological trait of humanity, how is the concept of “marriage” any different, even in a Western country, when it is systematically interwoven with the increasingly difficult nature of raising a child, let alone multiple, on a single income, when the occupations commonly held by women are underfunded and underpaid (don’t even get me STARTED on education), and when sexual expression is still stigmatized so strongly that the “respectable” women are only those who reserve it for just their partner? 

Clue #5: If it looks like a duck and acts like a duck…

Speaking generally, the leaps between abuse are more of a mild hop, a casual stroll, a mindful gap. Remember those “slippery slopes” your parents spent hours warning you about? Domestic violence, sexual assault, sexual coercion, physical abuse, one tends to lead into the other and they don’t end up feeling that dissimilar from each other. At some point, it becomes a muted blend of apathy. Look up virtually any chronic reoffender in our criminal justice system–a system which HORRIBLY discards women, let alone children, for the fucking record, which I absolutely will speak separately on. One offense right after the other, yet they’re allowed to just reenter society because “not being a threat to women” is apparently different from “not being a threat to society”. Apparently, we just exclude women (or children) when we think about “society” as a whole.

In fact, in 2008 the Supreme Court ruled the death penalty for rape of a child was cruel and unusual punishment, even though the rape in question involved a man’s 8 year old stepdaughter and tore her perineum (the skin between the vagina and the butthole…also commonly torn during childbirth…the joys of femininity. Further side note… Shout out to Chrissy Tiegen for keeping it real on the internet,though).

Do you know what I think is “cruel and unusual punishment”, though?

Having been sexually assaulted multiple times, I can tell you right now that I’m going to be a dramatically changed person because of it. I have to actively work really, really hard at being a better person every single day because the reality of that, coupled with my PTSD, has provided me a cynically realistic view of the world. I know it will likely impact me the rest of my life, and I’ve learned to adjust my mindset to accommodate at continuing that slow, but gradual improvement, but it’s incredibly difficult in a country that does absolutely nothing to rehabilitate these offenders so they’re less likely to recommit, but also refuses to remove them from the gene pool, while also making it difficult for us to even access proper, affordable, and regular mental health care. It’s a system that has facilitated financial success and power for extorting the broken pieces for your own monetary gain, however easily, quickly, and long you can do it without being held accountable.

For the record, we could very easily look to European countries like Norway perhaps, who have some of the lowest crime rates and lowest rates of re-offenders with their prison system globally, so they must be doing at least something of minute importance we could take note of and try to apply. Marital rape wasn’t even a federal law in the USA until 1993! The year I was born! A man could rape his wife mercilessly, and that was completely cool.

Yet, you mean to tell me I’m not supposed to fucking talk about this? Or that I shouldn’t draw on personal experience to fuel the hell fire that is my career trajectory… or worse, it’ll ruin my chances of finding a suitable man? L M A O. I should just wait in the shadows until I MIGHT be lucky enough to actually be successful before I share it with anyone? I should be content with watching the uneducated cucks (actually, I should stop using that insultingly. Nothing wrong with that if it’s what you’re into) on CSPAN make policies affecting my livelihood and body and NOT use my social media to draw attention to this?

Much like Lady Gaga, I, also, am fueled largely on spite.

My desire to help society is not so much founded in my love of people as it is in my hatred for shitty people. (Emphasis on PEOPLE, and not just MEN, ahem… my hatred is not one-sided.)

In the USA particularly, at some point our values of what it means to be a decently good human being became vastly overshadowed by obsession with material wealth and consumerism, and it grosses me out just enough to keep me an active member of society, intent on trying to minimize my own ecological consequence and appreciate the wonders technology allows me to enjoy with ease, instead of moving to an island as a biologist for the remainder of my days much like the remarkable tale of Eloise Wehrborn de Wagner-Bosquet, the Galapagos baroness (this story also, coincidentally, involves multiple male lovers vying for their Paramore’s affection and was brought to me by the best murder square out there, Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark.) On a related note, I saw a meme today that said “I’m the granddaughter of the witches you couldn’t murder” and I felt a warm fuzzy feeling in my chest, so there’s that.

Because of this stress on outrageous materialism, it also makes sense that the entertainment industry really funneled the Me Too! Movement into what it is today, since objectification of women is most blatantly obvious when women’s bodies are figuratively and literally, replaceable, malleable, and directable. There was also no denying to the public JUST how influential those acts were in directly securing the positions or roles under question, because the financial incentives were publicly available information under each Wikipedia page for whatever film’s title or the IMDB for the actress was readily accessible.

Yet, what has come out of that? One creep remains in jail? The victims have to sign documentation preventing themselves from going public if they want any hopes of the financial pot? (But it’s too much money for our work-to-live country, so no matter how heinous the crimes actually were, the appeal eats away at you, justifiably so.)

The reality of our government’s refusal to acknowledge social justice issues like systematic racism, cycles of poverty, violence towards women, is because those topics will ultimately turn the conversation to criminal justice reform. The individualistic, greedy nature of capitalism will be called into question further and further until it can no longer be ignored that we aren’t actually creating a safe, secure zone for our children to grow up in. Instead, we elect those members to seats in our government, we revere them as well-standing members of the community, we reward them for the triumphant accolades their daughter’s garner as if it was their mind doing the work, or sprinting through that finish line. 

So why do I have so much overwhelming passion-induced anxiety, a NEED to devote myself to acknowledging and addressing this? Why can’t I just let these intense topics fade in the archives, diving into the new headlines like the average American citizen? Particularly when it seems like my life is relatively decent, well-adjusted? I “turned out fine”, I “should stop whining”, “how is this even relevant to you”, “quit being dramatic”. (If you’re thinking that right now, though (aka probably my family), let’s take a collective moment to acknowledge the fact that you’re mentally bitching about me, but still spending the time to read this. Stay in your lane and just hate in silence, for all of our sakes. Kanye West has taught me that no press is bad press (or does that only work for men?) and even if this blog ends up imploding in a 2008-era-Britney-Spears-headshave-mental-breakdown, read the caption… “it’s COMEDY!” (I hope you read that in the voice of Alexandra Cooper from Call Her Daddy). 

At some point in the mental process, you realize you enjoy learning about other’s stories, historically, in my case, all aspects of true crime but recently focused more intensely on the victims of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, because you find solace in their shared understanding of torment. You feel a sense of relief that the world is allowing them a platform to not fade away into oblivion. That living through it MEANT something.

You take pride knowing that the normalcy of developing the skill of quickly shutting your emotions down, unreadable, the ease of flipping that mental switch so you could think solely on logic, at your most unpredictable, was developed as a result of the trauma. That you see more logically, and analytically before than ever, but are almost robotic in that sense, overactive, always scanning. 

And with said aforementioned logic, what may have just been a cut-and-dry case of the traditional, harsh lifestyle of an alcoholic farmer with a knack for domestic violence could just as plausibly have been the grooming stages of a far more expansive network of modern day trafficking given the statistical outcome of intergenerational trauma and substance abuse disorders, you just lacked the awareness at the time to notice the details. You also continue to trust in your gut, because every accusation that ever was called “crazy” by your ex boyfriends were usually pretty spot-on. 

Because just the very idea that You, someone who tends to not necessarily lead with empathy, becomes overwhelmed with this physical need to devote your life to addressing these issues, even though you’re likely setting yourself up for a lifestyle of cyclic relative loneliness, repaying debt, and investing in your education as a desperate hope of bringing a sense of understanding to your own mind, is such an insane concept. That you’ve been bullied into believing dreams of professional degrees, a gap year to enjoy life at your own pace renders you selfish beyond repair and “wasting your life” because the very idea that you could want more of your life than to marry and have children was blasphemous and somehow insulting to them? But, sure, Ricky, I’m a real “Dr. Death” just because I aspire for a doctoral degree and a lifetime of happiness with my chosen family that actually “gets” me. Fucking sue me for wanting to do more than vote idly by the rest of my life even if it means that I’m poor and cry every so often if I’m helping others. I still struggle with the insinuation of acknowledging abuse at any level, particularly because the distant ringing of “Go ahead! Call CPS! See how much better you like the foster system!” I heard my father repeat all too well lingers at the connotation. But, at some point in therapy, you just have to get over the hurdle of what your brain is refusing to allow your mouth to say and blurt it out. 

In public health, the most important factor of any initiative is stakeholders–the people who care so passionately about these issues because it personally affects them enough to want to make a difference. It draws into question my own passion. Why do I care so much about it? Why shouldn’t I just be content with a nice little, modest suburban home and ride the coattails of my privilege to stability, throwing money at a GoFundMe as needed and feeling good about myself? Honestly, I don’t mind those people at all, as long as they’re using their awareness to create conversation in their own households. But why would I not be happy with that? The answer is simply that my own experiences of sexual violence, physical and emotional abuse render it necessary for me to reevaluate the sincerity of these feelings. I’ll be the first to admit it sounds ludicrous, but much like that list of similarities between Lincoln and Kennedy that floats around the internet every few years, there are undeniable overlaps and I can’t deny the desperate, almost illogical emotional needs working as motivators throughout my career, insurmisable in any other sense other than “I REALLY wanted to [do that].” 

Psychology and the State of the World for Women…

Uncovering the extensive network of trafficking (underage) women (children) that was/is Jeffrey Epstein’s world requires knowledge of just how these actions affect the “survivors” who live the rest of their lives in fear. 

My reality is that imagining the type of fear, shame, and residual trauma those women must feel causes me to revisit my own distant, lingeringly painful memories tucked away under lock and key . Even though I had “long forgotten” some of these issues, keeping them placated in the background by an overwhelming amount of business, I still filled that busy time by studying the body (perhaps making that choice subconsciously?) and subsequently coming to understand how these things that encompass my timeline have literally changed my own physiological and hormonal chemistry, for better or worse. Each new paper on PTSD treatment, the physiological effects of chronic stress, seminars on interdepartmental learning offered clarity. That clarity, though, doesn’t, and won’t stop me from changing from running on my favorite rural, countryside trails to well-populated, publicly-surveilled paths for safety and comfort, even if I hate the pavement, need to carry my phone, and longer drive. Nor does it keep me out of the gym in the off chance that somewhere down the line, I’ll need to fend off an attacker, and want to be physically capable of holding my own if so. So, whenever news of something as insane, outrageous, and despicable as human trafficking comes up, the conversation inevitably turns to mental health, forging a “new normal”, and actually vindicating it means acknowledging those people didn’t have a choice at some point and they can be a “victim” and simultaneously want acknowledgment, crave communities of mutual understanding, and facilitate growth without that defining who they are or making them helpless. 

“Justice” after these events, if anyone is actually held accountable, also has many interpretations, but ultimately involves subjectively deciding on an “unequal but relatively fair” sentencing in repentance for some previous ideology, action, or thought. Part of establishing a “just” punishment involves understanding the mentality, the thought process behind the actions. The reasons people traffic women and young girls, though, is the same mentality that applies to the rich’s necessity to acquire any other tangible good. In the game of life, women, along with everything else in the USA, have a price, and can thus be owned.

Only, in the USA, we’ve outlawed prostitution, we’ve injected Christian virtues into every vein on our body in such withdrawal-laden intensity that we overdosed our government and local culture so nudity, the female body, and sexuality are still taboo in that, we can at least vote (between two shitty white men who both want to or have historically participated in making legislative dictations to our bodies, using their views on what rights we “should be allowed” to have as political strategies) but WOMEN ON ENTERTAINMENT PODCASTS ARE CRITICIZED FOR TALKING ABOUT SEX. The “is there no privacy!” argument gets thrown around even though these women are literally talking to their friends from the comfort of their own homes and putting it online, but MEN who talk about it freely and have been doing so for AGES, literally since men first got together and decided they would unionize, (there is a REASON Game of Thrones depicted the wildlings, an interpretation of feral humans, as metal as nature in a nomadic world as savage creatures, humanities stripped comparatively even to mythological renaissance-style times, and it wasn’t because the women were savage without reason), MEN who clearly fuck anything with legs and a vagina (and I honestly think, especially judging by a quick scan (read: several HOURS of research into) options of sex toys available to them, the legs are questionably required), those MEN get revered as gods. Their sexual charisma, chiseled body, unattainable attitude is a PERK to literally every single career they could hold.

The Kardashians get murdered on social media, even when they talk about fertility concerns, learning how to navigate raising biracial children as a parent, the criminal justice system, but y’all still support the NFL who takes a blatantly dismissive outlook on the players who beat their women multiple times. Y’all WORSHIP the turf that man walks on because his ability to catch a ball in a COMPLETELY MADE UP SPORT THAT NO OTHER COUNTRY PLAYS (and therefore isn’t even justifiable for anything outside of purely entertainment value) is more important than the fact that he ran a dog-fighting ring, or nearly beat a woman to death. Y’all glorify cage fighting and potentially beating another man to death on internationally broadcast television as a “manly” sport and justify the money as being worth the risk of permanent brain damage, if not death, or chronically aggressive interactions with families that include children. Y’all continue funding a rapper, sending him to the top of the musical hits charts, who has openly admitted to raping a 13 year old girl, JUST LIKE THE ACCUSED THIS ENTIRE BLOG HAS THUS FAR TOUCHED ON, but Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion talking about their pussies being wet during sex (AS THEY SHOULD BE) gets y’all all hyped and bothered. Ciara taught me a looooong time ago not to get worried about all that, though. So I won’t sweat it.

Destigmatizing females using social media as a platform to talk freely about their experiences as a female, the good, the bad, and the ugly, is literally what the goal of social media is supposed to be. It’s SUPPOSED to be about creating a community for people to be some version of themselves. So why do we shun it when that version is an authentically free woman? 

Creating these conversations, has secondary implications, though. The real “trickle down economics” is that destigmatizing female sexuality also means addressing violence towards women–law enforcement may actually begin to thoroughly investigate when a legally represented sexworker goes missing. 

Destigmatizing feminine conversation in general, usually coaligns with increased access to mental health resources–women LIKE talking about our problems (usually), it’s even more fun when they’re paid to listen patiently! (Just kidding about the listening patiently part, therapy is so much more than that and my therapist has worked me into some corners. Claire, if you’re reading this, 1. I am so sorry I haven’t updated you in a while, 2. Please don’t write a case study about me, I’m obviously writing it about myself and 3. You are a gift to this earth). 

Destigmatizing female conversation might also improve lives for men–you can actually understand us better, talk about your own feelings, learn about what unique and terrifyingly beautiful creatures we are at every level of our beings, and, because it usually tends to be the most important thing to you that “does at least 30% of male thinking” (according to this guy I met in graduate school), your sex lives would probably VASTLY improve because you wouldn’t be scared to ask or try new things in the bedroom, you wouldn’t be worried things could “feel a little gay” when literally it is just you and your girlfriend in the room, you would learn that if you invested even half the emotional capacity into learning our own bodies as an adult with a new perspective and learned experiences as you did to yourself when you were a kid and your dick got hard for the first time, you might ACTUALLY get us (read: females) to willingly revere your mediocre cock with as much enthusiasm as we do our orgasmic sculptures of silicone tucked inside the nightstand’s drawer. 

Of the five safest countries in the world for women, almost all have legal prostitution, for the record. Keeping prostitution illegal in the USA as a direct result of the stigma surrounding female sexuality, also keeps barriers like “professionalism” on social media and every other aspect of your life controllable by your job–holding your healthcare, financial security, home at the mercy of your supervisor. How many men do you think have formal complaints logged into their HR files over being shirtless on social media? Or in bathing wear?  (I’m looking at you, #MedBikini)

It’s the same concept behind criminalizing marijuana, but making it illegal only made it illegal for poor people.  It keeps the majority of money (and power) lined in the pockets of the rich, (white) men who control the brothels in Las Vegas, it makes women who only care about money (which is, again, COMPLETELY FINE IN A CAPITALIST ECONOMY) resort to valuing themselves at only $7 a month for an OnlyFans or $1000 a scene to be immortalized on pornhub (IF you get paid at all and don’t just have your revengeporn thrown up there!), when they should be getting PAID to allow others in their mystical sexual presence. But, because it is illegal, and there is no discord, no discussion around what our bodies are actually worth, all stigmatizing sexuality does (in a historically heteronormative society), for women, is keep them subservient to men because they can’t use all of their skills and talents to their advantage, or every communication is word-of-mouth instead of women creating businesses, hiring legal security, ensuring partners are testing for sexually transmitted diseases and using safe methods. 

Side note, in case you were curious, if I didn’t have so many hang ups because of my “daddy issues”, you better bet your ass that I would 100% let my thousands of dollars of student loans from my grad and next program be paid for by some lonely 40+ year old dude if I could legally do it and wasn’t constantly worried about getting murdered by the shady nature of it. Or even if some nerdy, rich guy somehow found me and was like “hey can you be my girlfriend for $150,000 a year, I’m lonely and want to travel the world” you can BET my passport would be the first mother fucking thing stamped. I will GLADLY be your muse if you can fund me a few years of the freedom to think and learn more about the world from a perspective I can’t currently attain purely from a financial standpoint. The happiness that comes from a business-like decision out of logic to meet financial and physical needs with someone willing to openly communicate and add a significant level of ease to your life is absolutely something I should not feel “GUILTY” for. How is that any worse than the absolutely shitty men (read: normal, average white guys well advanced in their careers and seen by society as “successful”) getting to use my body sexually, including the ones who were honestly complete shit in bed (I like to rescue animals of all kinds, apparently) who I took under my wing like a young Anakin Skywalker, only to cheat and blatantly, unacceptably disrespect me years later after significant emotional investment on my end?

My career would never just up and leave me and I would 100% fund it and my economic stability in this manner if it wasn’t one more stupid fucking obstacle to being “respected” that women have to deal with. 

Back to the point.

Female trafficking is a necessity to these people, a craving for power and validation over others, commonly to inflate the egoes of the rich. Much like the foreshadowed warnings of “The Most Dangerous Game”, the nature of humanity is to acquire power over another. Once you get bored with owning things, you want to up the stakes. The ability to view actual human beings as a “commodity”, their feelings disregarded because you think you pay them well enough to not have any. And since our economy and culture centers around money, it may be enough to keep them significantly quiet. The ability to separate reality (and even legality) from practicality, so you don’t feel guilty over the choices you make. Those sociopathic-like tendencies are typically reserved for both the world’s most powerful leaders and lethal criminals. They can flip the switch on empathy, if it’s not permanently stuck in the “off” position (sound familiar).

And who better to quantify that, than someone who has had no choice but to be increasingly aware that level of horror in the world exists.

Yet, even if you spend your entire career under a public vow to dismantle it, or at the very least actually illuminating what a problem it is and how strongly it ties into the position of women within our society, how can you possibly still be “good” when you also lack the emotional capacity to care about public sentiment when sharing it as a stream of consciousness. And there’s definitely no way you can be morally good by feeling a need to speak out, to publicly acknowledge how you interact with the world after being shaped by your own somewhat similar experiences, to even potentially profit off of it down the line? Selfish. 

Pete Davidson walked in his post-Ariana-break-up interviews so I could run on a blog.

It’s these types of questions in my analysis that make the complexities of the human mind, the memories these stories jog for me, and the importance of widely available, high quality mental health resources that much more intriguing.

For instance, I’ve heavily questioned my sexuality as a scientist, because with my educational pursuit of my undergraduate and graduate degrees, and the subsequent increase in knowledge on what “science” actually is, one comes to find that “science” is just inherently questioning the nature of reality. In medicine, you learn the biological response as to why something feels good. The chemical release, the uptake by receptors, the action potentials propagating through your skin. And yet, you exist, grew up, flourished in a world that has socially convinced you that acting on these propagations will ostracize you–even if they’re literally not hurting anyone, it’s your own body, etc. You grew up engrained with ideology that “marriage is only legally acceptable between a man and a woman”, “you should only have a single partner at a time” “marriage is controlling, manipulative, and should be for life even when you absolutely hate each other” and were somehow not supposed to rebel against it, even though the whole world was at your fingertips in every other aspect. Not to mention the interpretation of a book intended to instill and redress moral values, the stories of love, learning how to express yourself, coming of age, also condemning you to hell for biological temptations that you couldn’t stop and that, ultimately, were NORMAL.

But this was America! Women, especially white, hot, blonde women, were able to really BE somebody! It’s selfish for me to even be angry about, or question, any aspect of my previous lives because the opportunities they’ve given me proves the world is at my fingertips! Barbie had every different role possible. My Kirsten American Girl doll mimicked my Amish neighbor’s lifestyle. My cousins won “model” searches down at the local mall. My life was the set up in every movie that graced mainscreen Hollywood growing up. I even looked like Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen in my 90’s photos. That’s the harsh part though–all of my heroes were just fake characters. They weren’t based on any women in actuality. Other than sports athletes, I had no knowledge of role models that were representative of who “I” was at the time. Until “Hidden Figures” came out in 2016, I didn’t think anyone even cared about the hardships of women in STEM. Prior to that, I was only learning about men whose LIFE work I was studying that could now be boiled down to a semester-long, 3-hour course twice a week. It’s a tough thing to realize that the world you live in was not created for you. It was created for who you are physically, but you push the boundaries just a little too much because of the thoughts inside your head that question the purpose behind these technological advances and societal values when they don’t seem to actually improve our lives enough to allow us to slow down and enjoy the natural pace of humanity. Those kinds of thoughts don’t just create a minor ripple, even if that’s how you start out, you explode from seemingly nothingness like the Beirut explosion. 

(( Side note: donate to the Lebanon Red Cross here > ))

Mindy Kaling once had her character on The Mindy Project state, “tattling is when a young girl does it, when a hot woman does it, it’s called whistle blowing”. Yet, I don’t consider this “Whistle blowing”, in any way. Having the audacity to question my background is seen as the same “disgraceful” or a “tainted image” on my family, as if I came in blazing hot, making concrete, direct connections between the two theories. I would just like to blissfully point right back that if my family didn’t want me to write about them or go through this, mentally, then maybe they could’ve given me a little more love and support over the past decade (or even like, during the timeline for any of these events to take place so the memories wouldn’t be cloaked in mystery).

But, apparently, unconditional love is not guaranteed just by biological relation.

Funny how that works out, isn’t it.

(Thankfully, that makes it just as freely available from a “chosen” family forged from those you meet in life. For every shitty person in the world, there are just as many good ones willing to give love freely and without expectation because they never were on the receiving end of such an arrangement. They might be a little harder to find, but they’re there.) 

At some point in your research, as mentioned at the beginning of this post, you studied the trends of scientific discovery and the lives of those you were following behind–how those who came later were often depressed, unhappy with the state of their lives, the ensuing struggle with the enticing curiosity of knowledge that could topple societies. The obsession with each other’s work, the indulgence in exchange of passionate thoughts. Art and science interwoven so deeply that for you to truly achieve self actualization, you know you will have to acknowledge the passion behind it. 

And in recognizing that conundrum, you noted the actual experiments weren’t as intriguing to you as a topic of focus as the method of communication in which one pursuit built upon another. The method in which one scientific achievement spread–the blossom of communities, the growth of ideas, the ability to grow from words, and abstract concepts.

Would these scientists have been so depressed if they hadn’t had to wallow in their misery alone? 

Would they look at society, all of the “progress” stemming from their inventions, and be proud of how that contribution was mutilated (built upon)?

What about the scientists who created the atomic and hydrogen bombs? How do they feel about the state of the world these days? How much did they know, or actually understand, about the consequences of their actions? 

What’s the purpose of avidly working towards a theoretical future when you have the ability to make a tangible influence on another’s life locally, today? How did you choose what to prioritize? And how did you know doing that was “right”?

You finally had the time to slow down and watch as pieces of the puzzle revealed that the pursuit of higher degrees in medicine, law, or biological science wasn’t necessarily your end goal, though they were a means to an end. For the record, they were also logical, as you had no current plans or even prospects of marrying, no “need” for biological children of your own, and they would conveniently increase your lifelong earning potential as well as how rewarding it is to annihilate mansplainers, but nobody wanted to hear about that because their dreams of grandchildren were slowly disintegrating much like when Bing Bong faded into oblivion in Pixar’s take on explaining the importance of acknowledging your emotions, formally known as “Inside Out”.

Your end goal was the pursuit of having your voice acknowledged, heard, and appreciated just a little bit more.

And to do that, you had to start to talk.