On Stubbornness and Survival

I'm relationship centered creature, hopelessly bookish and feminist, so I was kind of bound to fall in love with Jane Austen's writing eventually. I think it would have been better if I had chosen Pride and Prejudice rather than Tom Sawyer in the Fifth grade, but nerdiness aside,



“There is a stubbornness about me that never can bear to be frightened at the will of others. My courage always rises at every attempt to intimidate me.”

― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice


That is how I see stubornness, and perhaps I'm biased because I'm rather bull-headed. Like many other traits I possess, I don't assume ill of them, regardless of their connotation.


For me, Stubbornness is survival.

Yo Jane, I like your words. Sorry it took me so long to figure it out.

Stubbornness is resilience.


Stubbornness, however inconvenient in day to day life, is the quality that allowed me to push past insurmountable circumstance and allows me to continue on when that ugly circumstance rears its head.


It's no secret that I can communicate, and that I often do but I rarely communicate that there are things I try distinctly to hide. That may come as a surprise to some who have grown to know me for my brusque declarations about mental health, history and taboos in the communities in which I reside. Others know there's an endless depth of thought that I'm covering for some days. The reality is, I have a carefully crafted a public persona as anyone else, I just also take care to answer questions that sate those that would look deeper. I don't really want anyone to know how deeply I struggle with the effects of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, largely because I haven't shed light on most of those effects. So much of the fallout from my sexual abuse is yet to be conquered, at least by my rational mind.


The endless tide of fear and irritability (one of my most significant symptoms) could be suffocating, but I press on. More than a few people have attributed this resilience to "good" qualities, assigning moral value to my persistence in the face of unpleasant statistics. Still, at the risk of being overly self-deprecating (though I really am not, the following statement is one of the most level headed I can make) I will mention that I'm not particularly resilient because of my goodness. It's more like being a dandelion than a rose. I'm not particularly delicate nor soft in how I cope with my PTSD, and really, no one is such.


Assigning positive moral value to the will to survive is kind of strange thing that makes a trauma survivor look back and assign dichotomous moral value to so many of their own actions, and ultimately, I think it's more harmful than helpful. The most important and emotionally intimate relationships I have are with people who can look me in the eye and say, "Well, that's shitty." It's not a lack of empathy, but a certain awareness of the complexity of my relationship with myself that allows them to do this.


CW: strong language

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The most fear triggering and frustrating element of my PTSD of late is the massive and paralyzing paranoia that arises when people see too much good in me. Some of the most abusive behavior I've been subjected to in my lifetime directly followed being put on a pedestal. And, accurate or not, those who can relate to my thinking are those to whom I entrust my full, real self and sincere feelings. Safety, for me, is revealing that very deep and fundamental confused and fucked-up person with full acceptance, without the need for external validation and assurance that,'NO! You're not messed up. You're not fucked up! Anyone who's been through what you've been through would be like that,' or, 'Nooooo... you're not weird or abnormal! Don't say those things about yourself.'


I would venture to say that I'd much rather hang out with someone who thinks I should pull up my bootstraps and get over it than someone who wants to coddle my mental illness, my weirdness, or deny the darkness in me, regardless of how and why it got there and how they reconcile and justify that darkness or what placed it. When people ask me what I think it means for my life that I was brutally gang raped as a hate crime because of my Dad's color (thank you, repressed memory, for revealing the detail of the specific slurs those boys used against me!) and threatened so as not to tell OR that I survived domestic violence and emotional abuse, further rape and terror, I usually tell them something that sounds like it's finished, it's wrapped up neatly with a tight little bow. It's not worth explaining to someone that their asking the question is reductive, because their motivation for asking that question has never been about me or my emotions.


I've never met a single survivor of rape who doesn't know on some level that any telling of their story will be subject to the projections of others' feelings about sexuality, abuse and morality. We are forced to be mirrors for other people's complicated feelings, and it is unequivocally wrong to be forced to do it, but we press on.


For those who wonder why I think I was raped (or why God allowed me to be raped, or what I can learn from it, or how it changed me, or tried to bear their testimony of how God loves me or tell me God didn't want it or tell me they know that God has a plan for my life or ask me who I would be if it hadn't happened, or any of the other hundreds of variations of this question and/or explanation I've stammered to answer because it is the most unanswerable and one-sided conversation in the history of unanswerable questions and conversations), I think shitty people did shitty things to me and that how I take that from this point forward in my life 1) has never been your business and 2) changes every moment and often is without reason and just a horrible torture I had to endure without reason. So stop talking to me about it.


This concept and the way its discussed with and around me further explains why I prefer the company of people who don't moralize my survival. No one who's moralized my survival has ever been comfortable with the grave reality of suicide and how it is a very real and very valid thing that shouldn't be immediately decried and invalidated because it only further isolates those that consider it. Their good feelings about the goodness of the world in spite of impossibly evil acts is contingent on me believing that it is better to live than to die. I don't always believe that, and I shouldn't be weighted down with the burden of protecting those feelings by hiding suicidal ideations when they do come, as they do when times are darkest.


This isn't to say I'm not doing well, but to illustrate the importance of neutrality on the subject of my illness, my recovery, and my present state. I very much prefer to spend my time with people who are neutral, calm, thoughtful, who listen and strive to understand, while still noting that they really cannot ever fully understand.


This concept is also the center of my Christianity. I feel that Jesus Christ died for my sins, but more importantly, understands me more intimately than anyone in the world. He is the only reason I have survived and thrived as I have -- and while I frequently blow open people's preconceptions about what mormonism is or can be -- I am really using it as a vehicle rather than a means to an end, and I think anyone who ascribes to mormon doctrine should remember not to miss the forest for the trees (I could write quite a lot more on that, but that's a different post). My faith is not up for debate, nor is it as shakeable as most think it is. I often find myself smiling with the surety with which other young mormons carry themselves - primarily because the veneer is both sheer and transparent. Will you be so sure when you've endured what I have? And will you need to fight anyone who even makes the suggestion of disbelief? I think not. Our collective faith is only as valid as the amount of room we make for every level and expression within the span of the collection.


So, stubbornness.


You have probably seen in the past few paragraphs the value of my stubbornness. Stubborrnness is valuable when you need to know who you are, what you believe in and why. And not just in a passing fancy or theoretically, but when you are faced with the scummiest, darkest and deepest places of suffering in humanity. I didn't just deal with that scum from abusers, I deal with that scum from any and everyone who projects or denies or perpetuates. I deal with the dark side of most everyone, more than most could comprehend. And that, uniquely, has prepared me for impartiality and gentleness in the next venture I'll take in life (but more on that in another blog).


Consider this take for some time. Consider your projections. Ask yourself if you're one of those people whom I prefer to spend my time with, and why that is. I often say I am blessed in friends. I think my life has nicely compensated for the degree of dark places I see in people with many bright and open friends who greatly enrich my life.


Thank you for your love. Thank you for reading.


Love and Admiration,

Sarita