From Darkness to...something else

Well, I fought with a stranger, and I met myself;
I opened my mouth and I heard myself.
It can get pretty lonely when you show yourself;
yes, I could have made it easier on myself.
-Dixie Chicks, "The Long Way Around"

I got angry the other day during our Friday lecture. Really angry. White hot, felt like I would burst, wanted to leave the room angry. Then I got upset and frustrated. Then angry again--I'm still angry when I think about it.

The class in question is ALWAYS a mess. Always. No one ever knows what's going on--not the students, not the preceptors, not even the administration, it seems. Our questions are usually met with confused looks on the faces of those we ask. We go into almost everything blindly. But I really thought it would be different this time.

But of course, I was met with the same problems we always have. A perpetual loss of function of IT equipment. The inexplicable speaker noise giving way to the ambient noise of a local radio station. A swift and steady loss of focus from my huge class, and the frustration of a staff trying to talk over the ambient noise and dysfunctional IT equipment. Trying to facilitate earnest and deep conversation about the subject in a lecture hall, in a group of 150 people. Too little intimacy. Too little seriousness. Wrong words at bad times. And one very angry me.

I have no question as to why it infuriated me. It made me mad because I wanted it to be so much more than it was, maybe even more than it could be. I wanted all of these medical students to care about this issue as much as I care about it. I wanted to get past how we can't believe all these shitty statistics. I wanted people to understand the hurts of the people giving the testimonies on the videos because I want people to understand my hurt.

When it comes to child sexual abuse, understanding it not the easiest goal to achieve, but it is the most important. It's more than some "light a candle, let it go" bullshit. I can't sit around like all of those people who say things like "I refuse to become a statistic." I was made a statistic. I am a statistic. I had no choice. I want to prevent other children from becoming statistics, and I want my classmates to understand that the best thing they can ever do for a child in this world is to prevent the propagation of child sexual abuse. But this lesson was marred and broken, just like that. No problem.

During the video, they kept interviewing the "survivors" of child abuse. But I don't want to be called a survivor. It wasn't something I fought for. I don't think many--maybe not any--children in that situation fight. Because they can't. Because they're scared. Because they are victims. Then, they talked so much about speaking up for children, and I couldn't help ask myself, "How can I speak up for these other kids if I can't speak up for myself. How can I, at the age of 22, not speak up for myself, and still expect an abused child to speak up for him or her self. If I still refuse to tell my parents, my family about it, then how do I proceed, feeling fake and ashamed for not being able to open my mouth?"

There lies the double-edged sword--feeling so ashamed to talk about it when you are young. Feeling so ashamed for not talking about it when you are older.

And the worst: hearing other people talk about it in the locker room, to hear future doctors question the point of all of this. Putting on my clothes, I heard them talking, "I don't know why we had to be there two hours for something that they could have told us in ten minutes. You can get training on the website, I wonder why we didn't do that." Etcetera.

So, now, here I am, angry again. Angry because this was so poorly executed when it could have been so functional, so meaningful, so damned motherfucking important in a smaller, more put-together setting. Angry because the cause seemed lost on a part of my generation of doctors. Angry at myself for not being able to talk, not being able to tell, and for worrying that I may always be a victim, that it's not possible to be a survivor.