If Not Ever After, Then Ever Again (a follow up to “Someone Else”)

“And this one?”

I ask my mother again, this time pointing to a photo lower in the heavy black iron display stand with me and Anthony in it as babies, even younger than I was in the other. Me and Mom were probably still living at his parents’, my aunt and uncle’s house, before we got our own and before they divorced. We are on the wooden floor in the den, with soft white and pink fleece blankets put down for us. He is laying on his back looking up at the camera like a beer-bellied man at a television or a drunk man at his wife. He is fat, and peach, 1/3 for his 1/2 Polish blood, a 1/3 for the pink blanket, 1/3 for the room lighting, and maybe an extra third for health and comfort. I am beside him, his legs toward the camera, my legs away. I’m on my stomach, also fat, but not as much as he is, looking at him, or something just beyond him, and brown like I was made of cinnamon, a healthy helping in the dough that was once my mother’s bun in the oven. We are a baby yin yang. All the visible toys are next to me on the right, and you can see my right leg laying on his left side, not yet straightened for walking, but plump and curved and brown like a freshly baked pretzel, bratwurst links newly cased and resting beside one another, or a disappearing mountain road becoming less visible the farther it goes on……The first time I ever lay with a man? Would I ever lie like this with a man again? Perfectly safe, soft, warm and comfortable.

“Yeeeeeaaaah,” says the baby-talk voice.

Someone Else

“Do I still look like that?”

I ask, pointing to an old picture of me and my mom, she in an over-sized white sweater and over-sized glasses with an under-sized ponytail, and bangs to balance it all out. Classic 90s. Classic early 90s. She, holding me in her arms, propping me up on her hip while standing and smiling at the camera, as if to happily say, look at what I’ve got, as if to say by example, Smile Sweetie. 

And me. Looking vacantly into the flashing light, in an over-sized pink and blue my-size sweatsuit, with over-sized cheeks and over-sized lips, and matching pink and blue barrettes and pink lips. Blank. As if I’d seen a ghost? As if I were a ghost? As if even though I am covered in cuteness, I am not imbibed with it. As if I am really somewhere else. From somewhere else? Going somewhere else? As if I knew what was coming.

“Yeeeeaaaah,” my mother says in her baby talk voice, the same smile spread across her face like the one in the photo, her eyes admiring it like how they did the recently put together, a-little-to-the-lefted T.V. stand, all without a man’s help. “Especially when you’re sleepin’, I can see that wittle baby face.” She turns to me. “You don’t think you look like that anymore?”

“I don’t know. It’s good at least someone thinks so.”

Welcome to the Real World: Sexual Violence in (and out of) College

The real world. The “real” world. Other than that wacky and totally unreal television show that has plagued our lives since the early 90s, it commonly refers not to an actual place, state of being or  shared objective consciousness, but rather to those harsh subjective realities we are introduced to only after having had on for a while our social blinders, our rose colored glasses, and then violently having them removed. (And yes, I do mean to say not that we are blind to society, but that society blinds us, like fish who never come to know what water is.)

For many of us, this abrupt removal often takes place after college, when one enters the so-called real world, outside of the comforts, protections and fall-back plans that, if we were lucky, college and our parents or caregivers still supposedly provided us. I have often been told when I was in college that I was not in the real world, and I often contested this knowledge that everyone but me seemed to have believing to this day that college is the real world, at least one part of it. I made an adult decision to be there. I worked hard to get in and stay in, academically and financially. I built a life, in school, at work, studying abroad and getting involved in extracurriculars, all while maintaining a social life and accepting the challenges and responsibilities of my actions. If I was not in the real world, then where was I? And where was anyone else? What purpose did mentally separating college from the rest of the world really serve for so many people?

And then it hit me. If college isn’t the real world, then what happens in college didn’t really happen, or if it did, like a child’s mistake, it wasn’t all that important. College then, more than anything, is a perpetual Vegas full of anonymous people in questionable circumstances, as opposed to merely a professional preparatory institution. Excepting perhaps more prestigious academic establishments where, the more prestige they have, the more real they become in the public mindset, for the most part in college: if you fail a test, there’s always another; if you lose a friend, there are thousands more in close range to choose from; if you want to go anywhere but a nightclub in pajamas, no one’s judgin’ ya. Because you are an illusion. A mirage. Your existence is temporarily suspended. You. Are. Not. Real. At least not until you leave. And neither is anything or anyone else.

But if you aren’t“real,“and if college isn’t the “real” world, then rape on college campuses isn’t real either.

But if you aren’t“real,“and if college isn’t the “real” world, then rape on college campuses isn’t real either. Then I was not raped in college. Then my college rapists do not exist, or at least not in a raping capacity. For this reason, campus rape, as it is commonly called, is not in fact campus rape at all. Rather, rape on college campuses is hazing, sexually experimenting, partying, fooling/messing/playing around,  having fun, sewing wild oats, something you weren’t proud of, a good time, getting it out of your system, absolutely nothing-if not reported, and most commonly, going to college. After all, fear of being raped, especially but not exclusively for college women, is so accepted at so many colleges and universities in the U.S. that it is likely many of you who have been to college or visited a campus have had some sort of information about rape prevention thrown at you, as if prevention were actually possible.

It is RAPE. Rape is out of your control. Hence, you cannot prevent it. Yet who hasn’t had floor meetings, campus tours or student organization events where, when directing their comments explicitly toward the ladies of the group, a resident adviser, guide or honorary authoritative guest, discusses the use and practicality of outdoor campus emergency intercoms and passes out pamphlets with detailed information about how to get safely home at night (which should never be by yourself, even though escorts we know are just as capable of raping us, and statistically much more likely than those unknown to us to do so, as are those mysterious fly-by-night rapists we grow up being taught will be the culprits; those curiously from a mysterious land known as the “real world”, under which, as contradictory as the concept may appear, study abroad still seems to qualify). Rape, then, still isn’t rape; rape is everything you didn’t do and should have done to protect yourself. You read the pamphlet, didn’t you?

And nowadays, what college doesn’t have clubs or organizations that deal specifically with the prevention of campus rape? Not to discourage people from joining these clubs, as I’m sure their intentions are honorable, but how can you actively recognize and try to successfully handle the complex realities of rape faced by so many people while promoting the same rape culture you are supposedly against, believing and participating in the possibility of prevention. I do not believe in the possibility of murder prevention. That if only I had called a campus escort and not gone to my car alone at night, I would still be alive. I would still be alive if I (and probably that escort) hadn’t been murdered. Let it be known however that I have no issues with those who spread rape awareness, discuss rape culture and try to help victims and those who support them. Awareness is not prevention, but it is extremely helpful insight, and what is in sight stays in mind ;). What was once unreal, becomes real. Or does it?

Because it seems that even though we may, rape never leaves college.

Because it seems that even though we may, rape never leaves college. Not college the physical space nor, and more to this point, college the metaphysical lack of responsibility. After all, at 18 or 80, no one at university is ever a college adult, but rather a college kid. A college boy, or girl. No more than a child. So if rape is only something committed by adults, those liable parties who are members of the real world, then children cannot carry the weight of responsibility for it. Moreover, the crime of rape itself, in the public eye, never leaves the accusation stage. Even if in a court of law a trial and sentencing for a rape take place, in the court of public opinion, unless it happens to you, it is a gossip crime, never getting past the he said-she said, they said-we said, no matter how much evidence there is to the contrary or how convincing it may be; and if it never gets past this stage, it can’t exist. Or if its existence is a possibility, its actual occurrence is not; like nuclear weapons exist but the utter and complete desolation of the planet has yet to happen.

Graduation day evidently is still a long way off yet. Rape still is just as much of a student as I was, learning and growing and evolving over time. Unlike me, however, it’s always changing its major, it’s always your classmate, this year or the next; never the same twice, but always unreal.

In light of the mistreatment of the rape allegations at the University of Virginia and at Columbia University, let alone at hundreds of other college campuses in the U.S., it begs the question, why is rape so grossly misunderstood and mishandled at institutions that claim to better educate and serve us? My answer would not be that these and other schools want to maintain their reputations, but rather to ignore them. Erase them. Make them unreal.

Between classes, before I graduate, I write one of my rapist’s names on the bathroom stall wall. Next to it I write rapist. It’ll be wiped clean by someone. About a year later all these people at different schools around the world start carrying their mattresses around campus. God bless each and every one.

#carrythatweight

 

Rape Victim (a follow up to “Rapist”):

The Rape Diaries: 

Rape Victim

noun

1. One who has been affected by rape, its aftermath and/or rape culture in any and all of their physical, psychological and/or social manifestations; not limited to those who have been raped or those who rape. (a term often utilized in circular reasoning regarding rape).

Example: She is a rape victim because she never went anywhere or did anything without another person by her side, since everyone told her that by simply existing and having a vagina she could become a rape victim.

No known antonyms

Winning

Winning. Charlie Sheen does it. Micheal Phelps does it. Apparently this is what I’m also supposed to do because I shouldn’t, I can’t, let my rapist win. Let rape win. Let rape culture win. Ohhhhh no. If I don’t try to win, I am giving up. Throwin’ in the towel. Walkin’ outta the locker room with my head held low. A “loser,” if you will.

Winning. As if I could only just want it bad enough or not. As if I wanted it at all. As if rape were predicated on what I wanted.

Winning. As if rape were a competition.  As if I could win or lose and plan a trip to Disneyworld. As if it were black or white.

If we play this game, of winning or losing, I would like to let everyone out there who seems to know sooo much about how to “beat” rape know that I would much rather lose. Yes. That’s right. I said it. Because it is not in the nature of rape to lose, but rather to give, find, gain. Contrary to what appears to be popular opinion, you don’t lose any part of who you are when you are raped. Not your heart, not your mind, not your body. Rather, you gain something(s) that you never, ever wanted. Nightmares, daymares, low self esteem, panic attacks, bruises and scars, threats, shame, fear, of everyone, every day, and of every move you make, or don’t make. You gain the knowledge that you experienced one of the worst crimes known to humanity and that it is very likely most people you talk to about it will either not believe you or will understand that crime, even if they don’t realize it and even if it is in a small way, to be your fault. You yourself may even be one of these people, and maybe your whole life. You don’t lose peace of mind or trust in the goodness of the world, you gain a piece of mind and a distrust that you can never get rid of, no matter how hard you try. And you try so hard. Over and over and over again. It is a weight, that may over time become easier to manage, but never detaches itself. Oh yes, I’d much rather lose. I would lose in a heartbeat.

But my “advocates”, life coaches, counselors, family, friends, acquaintances, some random person in the grocery store line would much rather have me try to win. Is that winning? Is all that what I won? UNfortunately, in rape, nobody loses, not rape victims their memories, nor rapists theirs. Everybody wins. Everybody wins a game at least half of that population never wanted to play.

Winning?

Surviving. That’s what I think people mean. But survival isn’t winning. Like dodging a car that swerves onto the sidewalk. Cuts and bruises healing themselves. Making the rent every month. Breathing. These are not acts of bravery, strength or courage. I am not fighting anything or anyone off as those who haven’t been raped are not. I do the same things I did before. I am the same person, who grows and changes with age or maturity, and if and when it becomes necessary, as people tend to do. I have these terrible secrets, but you would not know me from Eve if you passed me by on the street. You would not look at me and say, “Now there’s a winner.” After all I have experienced, I have yet to win, or to find some kind of silver linings playbook. I am just living, in this new, yet familiar place. Learning what I may find to learn. Hoping that it serves some good purpose.

Rapist:

Merriam Webster Online + Examples:

b :  despoil

2:  to commit rape on

— rap·er noun

— rap·ist noun

Examples of Rape:

1. He is accused of raping the girl.
2. She was raped by a fellow student.

…definitely a woman…

Cambridge Dictionaries Online (American English):

noun [C]  /ˈreɪ·pɪst/ US

› a man who rapes someone

…definitely not a woman…

Cambridge Dictionaries Online (British English):

noun [C] UK   /ˈreɪ.pɪst/ US

› a person who forces someone to have sex with them:

The police have caught the rapist.

…and then the law appeared…

Collins Dictionaries Online (British English):

noun

1. a person who commits rape

Collins Dictionaries Online (American English) :

noun

1. a person who has committed rape

…I thought I already knew there was a time difference between these two geographic locations…

Oxford English Dictionary Online: 

“Please sign in to search the dictionary”

The Rape Diaries:

Rapist:

1. (n.) a person prejudiced in any way against those who have been or are being raped, by any means, physical or psychological; not necessarily always one who rapes or has raped. One who ascribes to rape culture and victim blaming.
2. (adj.) describes the persons, actions, or objects that express prejudice against the raped.

Understood in a way similar to that of terms such as sexist, racist, classist. Thoughts?

Rape: When Definitions Help….Kind Of

 

As is evident by other posts and information in this blog, I am very concerned with how rape is defined. But this concern only began to develop itself after a few years. And a few more years. Years of of not fully realizing that I had been raped or wanting to think about it when I had. I will have you keep in mind that this blog is only about a week old, if that, and its existence is partly due to the fact that I am still hesitant to talk about what happened to me or how I feel about it now.

The blessing and curse of an academic or objective understanding of rape is that it allows you to distance yourself from this phenomenon. Thus while the definition of rape is never well suited enough to you or everything that a rape experience involves, when you don’t want to get out of bed in the morning, or the afternoon, or the night, or the next day, or the next day, putting mental and emotional space between you and rape is, though not calming, not utterly depressing.

Definitions help, kind of. Long standing, well known, commonly accepted definitions, at first, help you make sense of what happened to you. They help you understand why it may be normal for you to feel a certain way, to act a certain way. They give you a place to put your fear and blame, for a while. They give you books to read, people to talk to, signs to hold up, and occasionally and disgustingly, even a certain amount of credibility. They can even give you power beyond that initial recognition of what happened, if you choose to wear them for that long, by allowing you to say things like “I was not raped.” “Even if this time it was rape, that time it wasn’t.” “Or it wasn’t with them.” They give you a number count, psychological compartmentalization and thus the potential for sentimental lock down that can be, and again at first, and even for a long time, very useful. Somewhat comforting. Some kind of defense, however weak or temporary, that gives you time to develop your own defense systems and personal beliefs about what happened and what the best way is to deal with it.

However, it is important to recognize that definitions, imposed by rape culture or by those who seek to dismantle it, do not define you. They do not define anything without any person’s say so. They are merely meanings in the wind, to be taken out of the air at random or on purpose, like butterflies by the hand or planes by the building. But until we get to that point of meaning, wisdom, emotional security, definitions at least provide us with some stability, some framework, some base, that is necessary for daily sanity, everyday functioning, be it or be it not flawed. And besides, the base is not as important as that it can change, at any time, for any reason.

As a self proclaimed feminist, it does bother me that so many feminists do not seem to recognize this even in themselves, or admit to it; that when something as dramatic as rape occurs, like something dying, we latch on to the first thing that seems to  provide life, whether we are correct or not in our assumption. This means that while I am reeling from rape, how I define it or what I do about it is not necessarily the first thing I am concerned with. Rather, I worry about staying alive, keeping afloat, trying not to misplace my mind, among my other belongings, in a world that makes sense to me that no longer makes sense. Definitions are those pieces of driftwood, and I am not ashamed to have used them. Nor should be anyone.

In any event, while every rape experience is different and experienced differently by different people, or even by the same person,  something I have noticed about these types of experiences in my own life is that, while the law and public opinion may give them specific quantifiers, they all have at least one common thread. A feeling. Like keys lost, children wandered off or stopped making noise, sunglasses you can’t find though they are stuck to your head, your phone charger when you are already a few miles out, the garage door-did you? A feeling. Somethin just ain’t quite right. But unlike all of these it is a feeling that won’t go away. I write down the definition of rape with my pencil, then go back over it with my eraser.

And the pear is for….?

I think I should explain myself. When choosing a theme for the look of the blog I liked the one chosen best for various reasons, aesthetic and otherwise. I liked the colors, for instance. It seemed to have everything I wanted and not have a ridiculous theme name like the oh so pessimistic “Skeptical”, which actually looked nice when it wasn’t sending the wrong message. But the primary reason I chose “Chunk” was due to the little chunk of pear right beneath the blog title that, incidentally, I had to replace since the original image was only meant to give an example of what the home page could look like. It seemed cute and feminine in a way that wasn’t over the top. Like a nice dress worn by a late twenty-something.  Then why the hell use it as the representative image for a blog that discusses issues of rape??? Good question.  I asked it myself. Rape isn’t cute. Or necessarily feminine. I do not shop for it at T.J. Maxx. Or anywhere else for that matter. But the little chunk of pear at the top of the screen was nevertheless remarkably capable of communicating what I thought about rape. The pear sits there, a little iceberg of fruit, below which we cannot and will not see. Like rape, it seems to be so instantly identifiable, automatically associated with certain thoughts and ideas and mentally organized in predetermined categories, when in reality it may not be at all what or how it appears to be. This is even true when we forget the image of the pear and concentrate on the word “pear,” which, being a word, is considered to have much more concrete meaning than an image. Upon initially looking at the word, no other meaning is extracted from it but that of the sweet, well-known, and in my case beloved food that commonly graces nutritional pyramids and kitchen counter-top bowls. In other words, no one will mistake “pear” for  “rape” misspelled. It was this rigidity in the definitions of both terms, and the images and acts so often associated with them, that made using the Chunk theme so useful and appealing, since I could use one to unexpectedly represent the other. Meanings could then be mixed and mangled and create new gray, or perhaps better said, green area where nothing was ever exactly as it seemed. I hope that happens, I hope and prae.

A Rape By Any Other Name

When thinking up a name for this blog over the years, the one I wound up using is the only one I’ve ever considered. Nothing else really seemed to quite fit. Monologues. Taken. Dialogues. Eeeh, scrunch up face, see-saw hand. Chronicles. Those are for Narnia. And then of course due to the nature of the subject matter, how not to joke about something you want no one else to joke about must be considered, even though the humor for you is merely a defense mechanism.

Lo and behold Diaries appears, and it all seems to fit, every thing in its proper place. Until, that is, you realize, !Oh No! This is NOT A DIARY! Or diaries for that matter. That would be tooooo personal. Tooooo day  to day in the sense of record keeping, which I have not (officially) done since grade school. I did want to reflect on the everyday effects of rape in the life of a normal person, but not just to write them down. Rather I wanted to express feelings and opinions that I would not or could not always express with people who have not experienced rape first hand, or people to whom I don’t want to reveal my relationship with rape. I wanted purposely to question, to probe, to not only be concerned with myself, but also with how rape seems to be understood in general. This is not traditionally in the nature of a diary, a log, and I hope and pray that my posts are not collectively understood as such, as they will be sure to disappoint. Instead, I hope that what will become a tendency to change the format of what I write will encourage awareness of the complexity of the rape experience, and make the blog a little more interesting.

But Diaries? What about Reflections? Communicates the purpose of the entries better. Alliteration, as campaign slogans and capitalism has taught us, can be a miraculous thing. And then of course there’s that whole, someone else has already cleverly thought of using the same name you did, and they thought it up a good three years ago. Of course. Just when you thought it was safe, a quick Google search to assure you of your originality proves you astoundingly wrong, after the fact, when it is too late to change anything. FYI, while I am sure that blog is probably of equal excellence, no relation. We are but two Smiths in the same phone book.

But my borderline obsession with picking the perfect name for this project stemmed from the all too important realization that rape as a name for the numerous forms of sexual assault and undesired sexual attention that exist is not perfect enough. Rather, it is ridiculously under-complicated. As celebrity babies have made known to us, whatever we choose to name something is extremely important, as it not only defines what that thing is, but also what it is not. So if, according to the national definition provided by the FBI, rape IS:

“Penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person, without the consent of the victim”

then rape IS NOT everything that does not explicitly fall under this category. It is safe to say that popular opinion would also categorize rape in a similar fashion, which shows the great extent to which rape is legitimated primarily in legal terms and characterized as a primarily physical experience, even though the physicality of rape is but a small part of everything rape actually involves, if in fact anything physical is involved at all. Undesirable sexual experiences committed or provoked by another person may be, in the opinion of this blogger, physical or psychological in nature, or a combination of the two. And rape, at least as it is defined above, may speak to only just a few of them, excluding experiences  such as molestation, sexual assault, sexual harassment, sexual threats of any kind and all those currently existing, countless things yet to be properly expressed, well known and understood that make up a never ending list.

Yet, for the time being, and much to the dismay of myself and I’m sure many of you, rape is still rape. As much as it includes and excludes, it gives power to and takes power from those who don’t ascribe to it. You cannot prosecute your i’m-already-in-just-let-me-finishist, and you don’t need counseling for your i-thought-you-wanted-me-toist. You are lying about those you-didn’t-say-no-ists, and making a big deal out of this don’t-light-a-fire-you-can’t-put- outist. It is perfectly fine to go on that second date at you-must-be-gayist’s house and you are silly to actually avoid you-feel-naked-with-all-your-clothes-onist when he or she walks down the hallway. Shakespeare once wrote that, “a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” But rape has no other name. Even though no two rape experiences or understandings of those experiences are alike, even if experienced by the same person. Rape is or it isn’t.

So if this one raped me, then that one couldn’t have, right? It was different. Wasn’t it?

 

The Rape Diaries

Partly because I could not, cannot, say the word myself without crying. Partly because, at first I didn’t want it to be real. I still don’t want it to be real. Partly because if I said it out loud, if anyone knew, if anyone I knew knew, my whole experience, all of my experiences, would be quantified into one tiny little word, with what many, including myself, have always understood as having only one tiny little meaning. I cannot give all of what has happened to me any more or less credit, more or less weight, than it has had and continues to have in my life. It is what it is. I just hope that what it is, what I will talk about in these posts, is not ignored, underestimated or, if not misunderstood, made too small by “understanding.”

When I first started thinking about writing anything with this title, which was a few years ago, about a year after what I’d consider the first time, the first time my life as it relates to rape really changed, I had thought about making it a collection of short stories, and later even a blog, not because I thought it would be of any real use to me, but rather because I had hoped it would be useful to other people who had gone through similar experiences. I had found, after being in college for a while, doing my own research both inside and outside of the classroom, that anything that I would hear, see, or read that claimed to be in the context of rape and sexual assault was not fulfilling my personal needs to better understand it. Maybe this was because I hadn’t done enough research, maybe it was because I just never would fully understand what happened to me, maybe my grief and post-traumatic stress wouldn’t let me understand or really relate to it since, after all, understanding is admitting, and I was not sure and still am not sure of exactly what I would be admitting to. Yet this period that I would only much later come to know as part of my grieving process was very useful to me, because it showed me how limited the scope of understanding about rape really is, particularly as it concerns the everyday thoughts and experiences of those who have in some way directly participated in it. [I will not here specify using the terms rapist, raped, or rape victim as all of these and others, including the term rape itself, come heavily charged with very particular meanings, even though they encompass more than they exclude.] It was at this juncture when what you are reading today was truly born. When I’d see theories and frameworks and theses, novels, t-shirts, and t.v. shows, take classes, hear jokes and other opinions, even go to counseling, and still never see myself. Or enough of me anyways. And if I couldn’t, I guessed that there were probably other women, other people who know what rape is by no desire of their own, who couldn’t either. Or maybe they just didn’t have the space or the tools to try.

For a long time I did nothing. I lived my life trying to deny or forget, or at least be content with what happiness I could find. But I realized recently that in all that time, a span of five years encompassing multiple experiences I would never wish on my worst enemy, I could never manage after rape to get to a place of real peace with myself and what happened. Everything I did, said, felt, wrote, led back to it somehow, unintentionally, like your lover’s name during mindless conversations. Probably because I hadn’t dealt with it in the way that I still needed to deal with it, by writing. In an interview with Oprah, J.K. Rowling once said that like many writers, “I know who I am because of what I’ve written.” Over the years, with notebooks, and journals and computer files filled to the brim, I have found this to also be true in my case. I can see where I have been and where I am now in scribble or type, and know exactly who I was and what I wanted and why, my hopes and dreams, my fears and my strategies, whether successful or not, of overcoming them. Why, in my desperation to find some reason for why I cried myself to sleep, had panic attacks when nothing was wrong, couldn’t trust a pair of eyes that looked at me with praise or admiration, had I stayed away so long? Why had I stayed away so long from home?

I think if anything, my fear of talking about myself and rape came from the same place many of you come from of not wanting to be judged and not wanting to lose the protection of anonymity, if it can really be called protection. Rape is a difficult enough set of extremely personal, complex and subjective ongoing experiences to have to deal with without other people taking it upon themselves to critique it or you, especially if they have not been through it themselves. However, I began to see that that same vulnerability is what made sharing what I have been through actually make so much sense. We become less vulnerable when it isn’t just us. And we know it isn’t just us if we talk about it. As dangerous as that may seem, as controversial as it can get, at least it can no longer stay hidden, as we so often have wanted to. Or had to. At the very least, we are not alone.

See you next post.