Monday, September 21, 2020

Tell Me Who's Crazy

 

This morning my publisher called me and immediately his tone sunk my heart. “I got a package in the mail today from….” It was a man who had ordered a copy of Contortionist Tongue just eight days ago, when we matched on what was supposed to be a slightly safer dating app. I debated posting this story until I realized that being a survivor of domestic violence and sexual assault means society will forever brand you as paranoid instead of worshiping the insight you offer, both tangible and intangible.

On an unsuspecting Sunday morning I matched with this local Arab Muslim man whose profile seemed quite intriguing. He was educated, active, clever, witty, detail oriented, and had appealing enough profile pictures. (Yes, we women notice those too!) To my surprise, he was quick to initiate and respond, and within minutes a conversation started. At first glance, that would have been seen as a good sign—engaging, active, and interested. After friendly hellos, he asked where he could buy a copy of my book and that even if we didn’t end up working out as a relationship he was grateful to have connected with a Muslim author who provided him with new reading material. I thought that was incredible—mature, positive, and enlightened, so the conversation ensued.

We agreed to do a socially distant meet up to just feel the waters and found a middle ground tea shop and hung out in the parking lot, talking, laughing, and dare I say, connecting. After almost two hours, we said our goodbyes and found ourselves chatting again via text that evening. No red flags were waving so when that same night he asked if we could schedule a date, I didn’t see a reason to say no. We agreed for a beach jog the following weekend and continued texting.

In all honesty, practically everything seemed safe (minus one thing that wasn’t quite yet worrisome), so the next day when he said he just couldn’t wait till Saturday’s jog and wanted to do a dinner sooner, I agreed. We decided on a socially distant picnic and set it for just before sunset. I can’t explain it, but all day the excitement for the date was vivid up until one hour before. Suddenly, my intuition awoke.

When we arrived, I assumed this sensation was merely nervousness about trying to take the leap into trusting a man this seriously by going on a formal date. I realized every guy I ever dated or had a relationship with was someone I knew beforehand whether through community events or community spaces. So by the time those guys and I reached date one, there was enough rapport for me to not feel so heavily nervous. I thought this time, it’s a guy from an app so maybe my soul was a little shaky.

However, as the night progressed, and he kept opening up, my gut was screaming louder and louder. The thing is, society trains us survivors to believe we’ve become so paranoid because of our trauma that we gaslight our own selves. It’s like an emotional imposter syndrome we’re told to never silence.

The night lasted six hours and we both shared our non-negotiables and deal breakers, laughed, took a walk, and then said our goodbyes, but something still kept eating at me and I felt like a horrible person, wondering at this point if I’m the problem. I spoke with my mom and even as I was trying to explain the tug of war inside me, it didn’t make sense. I concluded I deserve to give myself time to process whatever was swirling within me to just find my emotional balance. When I came to text him that after the lengthy date, I found he had already texted me loads of messages expressing his elation in the belief of us, how incredible the night was, and that he was no longer going to talk to other women and just focus on us. If that wasn’t enough, he asked that I come over to his house the following night. That sent my gut over the edge.

I thanked him for the evening and expressed that the night left me feeling a little weighed down and overwhelmed so if he wouldn’t mind, I would like to take the next few days until our beach date to myself and process what we’ve shared. It sounded rational to me, to my mom, to my friends that checked in on me, but apparently not to him.

He continued to text me until 2:00 a.m. pushing the idea of me not processing without him and that’s when things started to click. An abuser’s greatest fear is their victim finding any moment of solitude because it is like a drunk person sobering up. The space and silence enables a victim to find some clarity and find the courage to leave. It’s why my ex-husband never let me spend time alone and why my parents kept trying so hard to give me opportunities of solitude.

“Just tell me what I can do to convince you to come over tomorrow?” he asked before I said I was busy and would follow up once I’ve been given the time to make sense of my internal chaos. The next day I drove to Los Angeles on purpose, ensuring I was nowhere near South Orange County so that 1) I wouldn’t be lying when I texted him that I’m too far and busy and 2) he couldn’t find me.

He was not satisfied and his texts turned into essays of further sugar coated, GIF infused, smile sprinkled pushy messages. And this is the key. Looking at those texts, anyone would say, “Aww, but he’s being so sweet and friendly and cute and funny, just wanting to see you and help you,” but an experienced survivor knows otherwise. His words continued about what HIS soul and intuition were saying, that we shouldn’t press the brakes and that he will not speak to any other woman on the app, and that I shouldn’t be dealing with this emotional processing on my own. I stopped replying and took a walk through Santa Monica.

I woke up the next morning to a smile filled greeting from him, asking if we were still on for our beach date. My palm slapped my forehead with a loud smack and aloud I muttered an Arabic phrase of frustration. How dense could he be? By Friday morning, I had replayed every single minute of our picnic date and I concluded that my uneasiness stemmed from my subconscious registering all the red flags before I consciously did and suddenly everything made sense.

Survivors can read between the lines vividly. We are not paranoid or dramatic or psychotic or crazy or overreacting. We are the ones you should be listening to because we polished the pathways to our intuitions, which I swear to you, are ALWAYS correct. I survived psychological manipulation, financial abuse, verbal attacks, sexual assault, and stalking. My intuition has a Ph.D. in threat recognition.

I replied, trying to be courteous in my rejection, but he wouldn’t have it. Instead he was further insisting that I at least meet him in person to offer him a face to face explanation after our jog. It was incredible, the level of insanity and entitlement possessed by this narcissist who was seriously starting to sound like my ex-husband’s protégé. After a few hours of silence, assuming he finally grasped the concept, I received an “Oh how I’ve missed you” text followed by a request to talk via phone if I wouldn’t offer him a face to face meeting.

I ended it with a block—on my phone, on the dating app (where I also reported him), on Facebook, and on LinkedIn where I received a notification that he was searching for me there. So when my publisher called about this mysterious package, scribbled with large red letters that read FOR DANIA ONLY, my heart dropped. What the hell could it be and why?!?!

Believe it or not, he sent back my book, hoping it would reach me, with a typed disturbing letter. Each of my poems was vandalized with his critiques, analyses, and opinions—some passive aggressive, some pathetic. The letter was a whole other level of crazy and I thought about how many “crazy” women I know vs. “crazy” men and the score is still zero to thirty-one. The fact that men find it so easy to label a woman they hurt or destroy or manipulate crazy but refuse to acknowledge their abusive nature, narcissism, incel-like tendencies, and more, is further a reflection of male entitlement and privilege that we’ve grown so damn tired of!

It hurt most to see (photos of) my book so disfigured by someone who genuinely believes he’s a good man offering some bright intellectual enhancement to my words, my story, my poetry. When Eric, my publisher, told me he wanted to publish my book in 2019, I was floored. It is like pulling teeth to have our voices and stories heard, and here I was, being heard by a man who believed in my story. And then there it was, a copy of my baby, in his palms, ugly lines and words in Arabic, English, and Chinese (the three languages that narcissist speaks) overlapping my vulnerable words that took three years to birth.

Whenever I share these stories about men, I get a flurry of responses from angry men and ridiculously naive women who seem so confused about where I find these men. I can’t believe I still have to break the news to humanity, but this is the patriarchy manifesting. Even “good men” possess some of these problematic qualities and if they are not actively working on combating them and the system, there will be no change.

The real good men are ones who hear these stories and actually listen 1) without interrupting and 2) admit that at one point in their life they were part of the problem but are constantly growing. The men who get angry and defensive, well, that is pretty much a reflection of the truth and I will not apologize for being a speaker of truth. And to answer the question of where I find these men (as if that’s the case), the reality is they find me.

Women who are courageous, outspoken, survivors, will always be targets of insecure individuals—male or female. Our mere existence is a threat to their toxic behaviors. We rise up and they want to extinguish our flames, but they are called to that flame like a moth first. But before you exert that whole “you attract what you seek” bull shit, let me tell you, women like myself seek nothing but the dignity and justice we deserve. If that includes holding up a mirror to the ugly faces of abusers, rapists, predators, and any other toxic person, so be it. I will gladly take on this role for the more than 30 women who have private messaged me over the years telling me they could never be as outspoken about what they went through but are grateful someone else is.

It took me four nights before I was able to sleep again. All day I’ve been at home worrying about whether or not this would be the last I heard from this guy and it was a resurfacing of the PTSD I lived following my divorce. Then I hear the echoes of “not all men” and “have faith in men” and I laugh. Tonight, I am only holding faith in the block button and the locks on my windows and doors. I hold faith in my publisher and his support. And I hold faith in God and His plan, however it is set to unfold.