Practicing with Pickles

 I didn't start telling my story until the #metoo movement started.

One Thursday in 2016, I created a fake twitter profile so I could say what happened in 140 characters or less. I then proceeded to have a day long panic attack, told one friend virtually, another in person, and most importantly, admitted the details to my husband at long last.

Even then I couldn't say the name.

Trump and his years in office were rough. After my mom died and I realized I needed to realign the solar system I was in to center myself and my own family, I found myself needing therapy, so I went. The work started when I started talking to my therapist about my tendency to get into "pickles" as a teenager.

A pickle is when you send your friends home with your truck and stay at a guy's brother's house with him, then have to figure out how to get home from the next town over on a Sunday morning without your parents figuring it out. Said guy has no responsibility to help you, but your friends answer the phone in the morning and come get you.

A pickle is when you figure out you have a UTI and need to go to the doctor, but also can't admit you are sexually active to your mother, so you go to the doctor and try to take care of it without insurance and prying parental eyes. It fails, and they won't see you, but luckily that time, your mother didn't ask too many questions, or the most accurate one. Your are both relieved and a bit sad, but you are ready with a lie, just in case. 

Or the pickle that comes when you "confess" and "repent" of what happened that led to the UTI. Because you can't decide if one led to the other, and the Lagoon guy who was involved blurred all the lines.

A pickle is when you have yeast infections your junior year of high but you can't tell anyone anything about your body so you just steal whatever you can find from the bathroom cabinet and suffer in silence, unable to talk to anyone who might tell you that it's the acne medication that you take regularly that's doing it.

A pickle is when you rush home in the morning from your almost-husband's place so that when your mom calls in the reasonable hours of 8:30-11am,  you are right where you should be, or at least it looks that way.

And the biggest pickle. Which wasn't really a pickle, but became one because I couldn't deal with it and I didn't think I needed help with it. So I managed the pickle by controlling specific situations without analysis or consideration of their fucked-upedness then left in the dark immediately. It's not something I will spell out. Because even though it's my story, I still feel unqualified to tell it here or anywhere for anyone to see. If you know this pickle, it's because I've told you. And if you know and I or certain other sources haven't told you, that's not on me, and I cannot vouch for what you think it was.

In summary: pickles are the positions you (I!) get yourself into over and over that are normal, age-appropriate behaviors. Since you were conditioned that anything other than Staying Out of Any and All Trouble TM as well as Dating the Perfect Guy TM (who you can never ever meet, because you are you) is necessary for your survival and continued membership in your family, you encounter pickles regularly that you have to get yourself out of, all without revealing too much, admitting that you need help, or letting anyone in your family know.

In November 2020, I said the name. And it really did result in all I had long feared. Kind of. But I realized that the loss I had thought it would be was inaccurate, and that I could handle those consequences, however painful and long term. My solar system was finally correctly aligned, and those who I orbit with already knew or believed me without question.

Nothing happens in a vacuum. It took me almost 30 years to start this path. I thought I could keep it in, and believe me, I tried. Shoving it down in my late 30s. I still remember the day it almost came out; the sun blazing through my kitchen windows, my throwing the words over my shoulder without making eye contact that "stuff happened to me." Thinking to myself on my run later that nigh about how close it came to coming out and thinking I could keep it down in the depths forever.

I equally believed last summer I could work on not telling. What I didn't realize is that all that truth telling in therapy, all that hard work to try to accept my own reality and not downplay it would result in the inability to not say "yes" if the name was said. When your defenses are gone and you finally give a shit about yourself, you don't save someone else. You save yourself.

So now I practice when I think I'm called to tell. And with each telling to a trusted person who can hold space for me, it gets easier. And for each telling for those who can't hold space, and will excuse other's behavior or just not understand, I encounter the reality that not everyone will understand, and I try to have compassion. 

Tell your story. If you don't think you can, find a way.