It took me a little while to get it through my thick skull that I needed to leave ASAP but it's through now.

I leave on Sunday. I don't come back until the end of June.

I'm tentatively excited. My next post will greet you from Central America.

Yellowstone Pics.

Finally. Pictures from Yellowstone.

I married this guy. Did you know that cigar smoke makes great bug repellent? It’s better than OFF.

Yah. It’s me, hiding behind the mongo smile and even mongo-er nose.

Coyote Creek. It was murder trying to wash in it, the rate it was flowing, and the temperature!

My honeybun husband, on his way to a morning poo. Doesn’t he look like a puppy dog? He’s great cuddling material, I just want to nuzzle up onto his chest and purr when I see this picture.

Our first home. Cozy, huh?

And warm. It took us forever to get out of bed that day. We didn’t start out until about 2 in the afternoon, then got caught in a hailstorm. We were cranky when we got back to the bunkhouse--and HUNGRY! It was the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone, and it was pretty darn steep on the way back. Altogether we went about 8 miles straight up with 50 pounds on our backs, mosquitoes eating at us, etc, etc.

Guatemala

I need a break, it's true. I've been planning a vacation to Guatemala for several years. It's finally time to head out. I need some time to "get away." Brunswick is getting on my nerves. It is small suburbia, with all the middle-class woes suburbia comes with. I guess that's a pretentious dislike. Less pretentious is the fact that I'm going crazy, I end the day by snuggling with Robert and crying. That's not good.

I haven't left for Guatemala yet because Robert is determined to stay in one place and grow deep roots in community. That's a good thing, but someone with my travel-lust, I just need to get out of the US every now and then or at least hop my way to the nearest adventure. Robert and I talked a long time last night and we decided it would be good for me to go alone, to get out of the house and do what I want. I'm only going for a month, and I'll hole up in Xela, with a few side-trips to Tikal. I want to do some heavy writing and learning of Spanish. I also want to work at an orphanage in Xela--do some true good with this blood-money I have. I want to learn. Immerse myself not solely in the knowlege of books, but also in the wisdom of living.

I need, for my own well-being, to back away from my pain about the church, and come back to it, ready to work towards love with new tools and rejuvenation. I don't think Guatemala will give me all these things, but I think it'll help. I've also started back up in counseling and medication.

I leave mid-May and I'm going to try to be several weeks ahead in school (I've ended up taking/working on 29 credits this term, which was stupid) before I buy the tickets. I'll come back around the end of June.

Also, I'm enabling comments. I had them disabled before because my blogs had been subpoenaed during discovery and anyone who commented in the blog was subject to being subpoenaed as well. Now it's no longer a problem.

Naive

When I first went to my lawyer, Kelly Clark, we sat in a large room with windows. I shimmied past describing what had happened to me, and he said I had plenty of proof for him to take the case.

And then he said he expected me to go to counseling and that if I didn't, he'd hand me a big check a few years down the road and I'd be the same girl, except rich. I'd have the same problems and it would be just as bad.

When I got the money he sat me down in a much smaller room and instructed me on how to spend it. He said that one of his first cases won several hundred thousand dollars and in the space of 14 months he was back to Kelly, asking for money. Both Kelly and the client went away from that with bad feelings.

Money doesn't change much in my heart, just in the physical trappings. I can afford counseling now, I can afford rent and food. I have the means to stay home and cry and shake and fall to pieces (whereas before, I was doing that at work). It IS better.

I just don't understand the church. Robert and I were snuggling last night and I asked him, "Am I just so stupid for my naivete?"

He said no. No, you just live as if the world were the way it ought to be.

"Do you think they love me?"
"You're probably not on their Christmas list."
"I sued them."
"Yeah."
"I can't believe I sued them."
"I know."

I wish I were smarter at things like this. I'm so fucking autistic and truthful, at the wrong times. But maybe there is some goodness in someone like me coming along and telling it, not just the way it is in my heart, where the damage is, but how it ought to be.

It is naive. But it's not necessarily a bad thing.

Tough Days.

The pain of betrayal never quite fades. In my type of situation something always rips the wound open.

I wonder how "people in power" decide to turn from me. Do they think about it before they do it, or do they purse their lips and flippantly toss me to the garbage?

They aren't cowards, at least I don't think so. Maybe they're just people that love an idea more than they love people. In many cases their own ideas of powerlessness makes them powerless.

Actually I haven't a clue. It all makes me very sad and very tired.

People are sheep. Fucking sheep. They bleet and cower, haven't the sense to be afraid of the things they ought to be frightened of. Their own idiocies make them mutton. How I despise what they do! How I love them!

How I wish I could be saved from my own feelings. I could purge myself and make myself stone, pull a Jeffers. It's rock and Hawk, not a soft mop. But there I am, whispering to the floor where quiet feet patter. I'm soft like butter, rushing to mop up messes. It makes me very, very tired. Damn this situation.

I feel defeated, sick at heart. I do. Why are people so awful? So apathetic, bleary eyed? Oh. Just fuck them. I want to turn from it all.

This is why love is the ultimate killer. It is love, not hate, that has the power to rip a heart out.

If some dude with horns and fireballs erupting from his eyeballs hurt me, I'd laugh and fight back. But how do you begin to fight someone you love? HOW?!?!

Somebody please tell me. I'm open to suggestions.

Open Letter to the East Salem SDA Church

With names of the victims and perpetrator x'ed out in respect and deference.

To: Pastors at East Salem SDA Church,

My suggestion is that you not allow sadistic child-rapists free rein in your church, and to kindly, efficiently, and as Christians, deal with those who come to clergy and leaders with worries and experience with having been raped in the church. I certainly hope you will take my suggestion into consideration. Perhaps you'll consider it before you call Richard Whittemore and forward this email? It's nice to know you find safety and comfort in the combination of Jesus Christ and a really, really expensive lawyer who promises to "aggressively investigate and try in court" cases with confirmed victims like *********** and perpetrators like *************. You guys need a lesson in compassion. I am thoroughly disgusted by your actions thus far. And to say you are doing it in forgiveness! You seem to have a much easier time forgiving the perpetrators for hurting people, than the victims who bear the sin of hurting. I'm so sorry I couldn't be perfect for you and forget that I was sodomized in your holy sanctuary.

Please respond, Or is it legally a bad idea? By the way, Hi Mr. Whittemore.

And Parks, I believe your words to my uncle were "I'm sorry if I hurt her." Let me clear that if up for you right now. You hurt me. Lots. Looks like somebody else is complaining to you now! Maybe they'll take your advice to talk in front of the board meeting?

- Michelle Stevenson-Durham

Note: Clearly the SDA church's lawyers need a new hobby-looking at a 25-year old woman's whimsical stream of thought blog looking for ways to sue said woman is all they can think to do in their work-a-day.

Ideas: Golf, maybe? A Caribbean cruise? How about some opera?

The Blindness of Love.

Well. It is another day. It's beautiful outside, it makes my heart ache.

I subscribe to the belief that humans are not physiologically capable of taking in as much beauty and love as is given us. It seems to me less likely to die of pain than to die of love. We don't know how to direct that yearning in our gaping hearts. We will make a shamble of our lives with that very gift that will kill us eventually. I know I have.

I've been working on a story about that, humans feeling so much that we die.

Two of my classes this term are about drugs and alcohol, the prevention of and the problems of. It strikes me that love is alot like a drug. It changes our every perspective, the way we see everything.

It would be interesting to try and write a parable about love as a physical matter, that we could imbibe upon wish.

On cultural, familial Adventism.

I could never leave the church completely. That's obvious. While I'll never go back, they'll always have a piece of me. I'm sure they're celebrating when I say that, though they needn't. It's only been a source of pain for me, much the same way it is painful how I love those who raped me. Love is rarely, if ever, comfortable. And some ties just bind, they don't love.

Every night I sit down with my laptop and literally go to every Adventist site I can think of that might have changed their hearts in regards to child rape (and rape in general!). None of them. None of them. It's always the same. Each night I grieve anew. Each night Robert pulls me away, swearing, saying "fuck that, you're hurting yourself, just like you do when you use a razor blade except it's in your head."

Last night we argued over it. "You don't understand!" I screamed. "You've never been raped, you've never had a family like I did!" And last night he got drunk, some very interesting interaction/continued argument followed, and he ended up frolicking naked in the kitchen while eating huge hunks of pork, trying to make me smile.

There are new families, even new cultures. It's a process to look forward, but little by little I'm putting my head in the right direction.

So my husband is writing a book. All in a plastic notebook. While I work hard on procrastinating on the latest school paper he pesters me with ideas on his book.

The premise is sort of like "Planet of the Apes" except with male and female roles reversed. In the final battle he has the hero (Dick Manly) screaming out like in Braveheart: "They can take our lives....but they can never take....OUR PENISES!!!"

He is threatening to become famous enough to have an interview with Oprah. He promises to tell everyone I desperately wanted to come, but had to stay home to bake a pie and have babies.

I LOVE my husband. Unfortunately, I now must plan ways to sufficiently emasculate him so that he knows his place. (Hey, it's HIS dream world, not mine.)

Mediation.

In all the ruckus and finger-pointing of the lawsuit there were some funny moments. Going through my old emails I found a series of emails from a gentle, good friend that we wrote to each other while I was in mediation for a settlement. Unfortunately on that fine, sunny day, the Adventist church and its insurer had their heads up their respective asses.

I remember a few days before mediation, in a tizzy at the museum, scribbling unsent notes to the church about how much I loved them, how I'd be happy to drop the lawsuit if they'd just apologize, pay for my counseling, and, yeah, at that point pay my lawyer. I wanted an apology! God, I still want one.

I didn't get one. A measly "I'm sorry." They will never give it. They're only sorry they got sued, they're not sorry I got raped. And they certainly don't take the responsibility that is theirs.

So while the lawyers were talking, I wrote letters to a good, kind editor who reads bad poetry from the latest 24-year old whippersnapper who takes it in her mind she'll be published or else! And then befriends that same whippersnapper when she half-way accuses him of witholding key pieces of survivor literature from the Catholic public. I'd take my hat off to this gentleman, if I were wearing one.

Date: Tuesday, September 16, 2008 7:29 am
Subject:
To: michelle.stevenson1@pcc.edu

> Ah, now, prayers on you. And what I mean by prayers had nothing
> to do
> with religion and everything to do with the honey and salt of human
> beans. Brian

Brian,



My stomach is churning. I'm sitting in the middle of a lawfirm, twiddling my thumbs, listening to lawyers talk.



Argh. This is hard. Five more hours. Settle or no, I get out of here in five more hours. And 19 minutes.

-Michelle


Do not grind your teeth. Think about honey, sparrows, swallows, toothpaste, lilies, and why crawdads have one clipper bigger than the other. Steroids?

Small Beauties.

I woke up this morning to the daily news on www.msn.com. Specifically this article http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30046195 about mass shootings, crisis, the downturn of the economy, and American response to said crises. The name of the article is: Are Americans becoming numb to tragedy?

Of course we are! The more tragedy one endures, the more likelihood we will "get used to it" as if it were the norm. Sadly, tragedy is the norm.

But I take issue with such pessimism. No, you don't have to look far to find evil. Before the terrorism crisis and recession and Iraq war there were the silent battles, perhaps all the more insiduous for the way good people turned from these situations, ignoring cries of help. (This is not to poo-poo the very real, very undeniable crises facing our nation and our world. I always hated the argument "But evil is always around" as if its very normalcy creates a morality--a "but she's doing it" toddler-esque argument to make evil seem benign. Anything that puts to question the inherent value and preciousness of human beings is serious. Anything that causes somebody to be hurt, stumble, limp, that's serious.)

So all of this...information...creates a mountain of dump, and I just want to scream out and say, hello! People! Turn around! Behind the dump is a candyland. Go indulge yourselves.

Today I indulged myself. The softness of Iyla, a little 4-month old girl as she suckled at her formula, snug in grandma's arms. It brought me to tears! Such beauty!
Birds singing outside my apartment. The swoosh and bite of wind against my feet as I walked onto the balcony to watch children play on the grass hill outside. The hilarious, pretentious world of literary criticism and intellectually preening for my professor, so that he thinks I'm passing intelligent.

This is as much our lives as the dump. To deny one is to be lost.