Let's Take a Guilt Trip

CW: Mentions of sexual violence

I joined this writing forum on Valentine's Day last year called r/LBB, also known as r/littleblackblook. The community guidelines are as follow:

• Tell your truth and only your truth.

• Never mention details such as your name, where you live, or any identifying information that other members of the community could use to find you.

• Discussion should be limited to supportive statements and words of encouragement.

This was what I understood as an undercover forum for women who had been victims of sexual abuse. The forum isn’t gendered. But the implied gender and pronouns are most commonly female. There was a cynical pride that I took in knowing that the name was “little black book.” It’s a sadistic term men use referring to the list of women they had “conquered.” We used it to conquer our traumas. In the process, we created a network of empowered people who could share their truths and take back their lives.

Although the idea was to prohibit anyone from revealing their identity, like any true millennial I became overly comfortable posting on LBB and I think someone figured out who I was.

A woman (or man) who knew I was vulnerable then used my story to make themself a profit. They stole the words of a fragile woman and published them for personal gain. What century is this, and are they my overbearing husband/male guardian? Truthfully, I’m not mad at all. I just want you to hear me out, but first I have to get a few things off my chest.

Dear LBB community,

Why am I sharing this with you all? Well, who else wants to read about the context and consequences of sexual violence? Also, I hope you didn’t feel too “meta” when I reminded you all of the above guidelines, but the last time I shared this much information, one of you made $20k. I’m kind of looking for you, too, because I have something I really want to tell you...

Kirbie’s eyes became glossy. She scrunched up her nose trying to relieve her “screentime headache.” Her fingers floated over the keyboard…. she couldn’t form another thought. It felt like the audience’s attention would run away if she didn’t get to the point; the paragraph-after-paragraph style made her feel basic and useless. Was this even worth anything? It’s not like she was some sort of celebrity.

Eyes rolling back into her head, she sulked in the polyester office chair that always bunched up her sweatpants. She caught sight of her “2021 vision board” before disappearing into the colorful patterns inside her eyelids. “Three breaths to a changed state,” the board read.

Reluctantly, she sat up and reached for the ceiling with a rapid breath in, feeling the ease on her neck and lower back.

“One, two, three, four, five,” she whimpered.

A strong exhale dropped her chin to her chest and her shoulders reminded her she was dehydrated (and also a master yogi for doing this).

“Six, seven, eight, nine, ten.”

Her next deep inhale lifted the weight off her shoulders.

“One, two, three.”

With no hesitation, like the crashing of a wave on the beach, she forced an exhale to expel her loud thoughts.

“Four, five, six.”

One last inhale lifted her up and she could picture a sunset over the clouds and feel the mist from the sky as she soared high above herself.

“One, two.”

She glanced quickly toward the window to make sure it was her humidifier and not actually the euphoria of a dissociative black-out that led to skydiving. Realizing that she was holding her breath, she pushed her final inhale.

“Three, four.”

She felt relieved.

Her fingers still felt antsy and caffeinated, but her mind was quiet. She lifted her fingers to the keyboard and let them fly:

I only have 2,000 words here so I’m going to cut to the chase and at the end, you tell me if I’m crazy or if this really happened. This is a puzzle I have to solve and only you guys can help me. I’m no Sherlock Holmes but when a little black book shows up in your mailbox with a check for $20k in it and nothing else written— let’s just say that’s an inside joke that I’m going to need a few more people to relate to. Plus, I’m not that smart. I think you all know where this is going.

TW— Sexual Violence (my lovelies I love you all but can we please remember to put these everywhere we share <3).

On Valentine’s Day last year I stumbled accross this forum, searching for support, and thinking about the tortured, beautiful, new neighbor across the street. He looked like John Snow and Drogo had a baby. I told you that I thought he was Prince Charming and how he once protected me when a homeless man was getting too vocal and too close to me on the bus ride home (no one had ever done that and I felt so safe).

I went to his house on Feb. 13th by his romantic request so we could skip the drama of Valentine’s Day and just have a night with takeout. Instead he decided to drug me and rape me. I guess I wasn’t moving fast enough for him, but I woke up the next morning mortified and I came straight here.

Here’s where I think you all really heard me out and helped me. We shared deep stories in those comments. I told you that the rose bushes at the entrance to my mailbox made me feel like I had a castle of thorns protecting me from a vicious evil-doer across the street. I told you that I thought it was my fault because I was going to have sex with him anyways before he drugged me, and you all told me I wasn’t alone. I don’t know If I told you all too much but I didn’t mean to make you feel guilty.

Three days ago, on Feb. 14th—one year post-incident—one of you left a little black book in my mailbox with a check for $20k. Real discrete, by the way. I get it: a little black book, a check written out to my name from a company that hosts writing competitions on the internet and a serious sob story about my baggage. Listen; one in three of us have to endure something like this. You took my story, but really you just took a version of what so many of us experienced at some point in our lives. You wrote it eloquently, seeded my words into a journey for all of us to take. You planted it into a story, watered it, nurtured it and then blossomed a heart wrenching tale of hope for who knows how many other survivors. I hope you inspired them. I hope it made you as happy, if confused, as the $20k made me.

Okay, whoever you are, this last part is just for you. I flipped to the last page of the notebook, maybe you thought I’d use it for years before ever doing that— but girl you put $20k in the first few pages and I just thought it would only be a good measure to check the rest of the pages. For everyone else still reading this: it said “I’m sorry for what I’ve caused. I hope this pays for all the therapy.”

Now, I know what you’re thinking, but my abuser definitely didn’t leave me $20k. Also, the handwriting was indisputably feminine. Plus, there’s no way he would have slipped it into my mailbox and not kept it for himself. If this is some cosmic coincidence where he needed to use a little black book to deliver guilt money to me, why did it come from an organization who had my valentine tragedy as their “survivor of the month” winner in the themed category? The mystery remains that I don’t know who sent it, but I know they were feeling guilty and I know they were from here.

I need to tell you that what he did was not your fault. Whether you’re the mom who raised him, the friend who suggested he move to my neighborhood, the drug dealer who gave him the roofie, or the sister who bullied him growing up. What he did was his own choice. This is something I learned this past year, actually. I went through seven or eight therapists; each of them telling me in a different way that I wasn’t broken for what happened to me. Just like you, I blamed myself. Something deep down said, “You control your destiny, queen. Everything happens to you for a reason and you alone will deliver yourself to a successful and unburdened life.” (Spoiler alert) That doesn’t include the things bad people do to you.

The truth is, a lot of us are at the mercy of whatever circumstance we were born into. There are plenty of places in the world where being born means you don’t get anything in life. You’d have to form an escape plan, learn new languages, and fight tooth-and-nail to even breathe healthy air. All of this to say: there was no moment in all my healing where I thought, “this is someone else’s fault.” There were 100 moments where I thought about everyone on r/LBB. I knew, because you all told me, that we all blame ourselves for what happened, in one way or another. We blame ourselves for living our lives and for wearing the wrong shoes. We blame ourselves for not screaming louder, fighting harder, running faster or reducing ourselves to warriors for the sake of what should have been a well-deserved moment of quiet respect.

No one deserves to take those moments away from us. There’s no logic when you lose time and control in that way. There’s no way to escape the things that go through our minds when that happens. As time goes on, those moments are like the monsters under our bed that threatened to grab our legs when we were children. They live now in our memories as pits of tar that burn holes in our identity, confidence, and self-worth. It wasn’t our fault, but it is our fight.

It’s now up to us to confront our own minds about the way we think about these things and claim them back. Restore those moments and rewrite them the way that gives us the most power.

I need you to know that you are enough to do all of these things and I have proof of that from this forum. Each of you in this community is enough. You’re all here to hear each other out and support each other. You are the treasure worth a million (or $20k, if you will).

So, here’s the mystery I need you all to solve, now that you’re all in on the inside joke of the LBB in my mailbox. What can we do with $20k to help the most people in the world that are like us. Where can I put this to empower us— The billions of us. We are not alone, and I’m not looking for the one woman who reminded me of that, I‘m looking for the people who don’t know that yet. Let's find them.

LMK in the comments.