Update to the Update

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On Monday,14 October my husband went with me to the Police Station and I talked to the officer on duty. After briefly telling her my story and her reading what I had written, she spoke with another officer (this one male) and it was decided that there was nothing they could do. Since he did not physically touch or threaten me, he did not break any laws. The best advice she could give me was to get a restraining order and if he violates that, then it would be considered a crime. For now, their hands are tied.

Back in the mid-aughts, I had to go through this process of securing a restraining order because an ex-boyfriend would not stop calling me and was leaving threatening messages. I turned off my cell phone, but he just called my landline, which was my business number, so I couldn’t turn it off. It was rather a pain to get the order and when I did, the Maricopa County (he was in Arizona, I in California) Sheriff’s Office did not handle it very well. When they went to serve him, he wasn’t home and they proceeded to leave a note that said something to the effect of – We were here to serve you a restraining order, but since you were not home, we will be back tomorrow to try again. The order was never served because he avoided it, and there is no law that says to have to answer the door and if it is not handed to you directly, it doesn’t go into effect, it doesn’t count. Let’s just say that after a while the cost of continuing to try to get him served was too much and I had to give up. Luckily, though, he never attempted to contact me again. Thank goodness for small favors! Anyway, I don’t think that I’d have the same problem with this situation. It’s really a matter of whether I want to pursue it or not. I am already not walking by or anywhere near his condo, and the only place that he might see me is if he is driving in or out of the neighborhood, and I just happen to be where he is at that exact moment. I also have a slight fear that because his wife is on the HOA board, that I could be kicked out of the complex. I don’t think this is possible, but honestly I don’t know. For now, I am going to not do anything and see how it plays out.

Have any of you found yourself in a similar situation? If any of you have found yourself in a similar situation, I’d love to hear what you did about it.

JUST WHEN I LEAST EXPECT IT

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It has been quite a long time since I last posted. My life has gone in different directions, so much has happened and through it all, my sexual assault was never far from my mind. I have done an incredible amount of work around it and finally felt like I had gotten to place of inner peace. And then BAM!

On Saturday evening, 5 October 2024 I was taking my usual after dinner stroll around our complex. I alternate which way I walk around: one day I got counterclockwise and the next, clockwise. It was time to go clockwise, and I did hesitate going this way because I did not wish to see a certain man that I had talked to a few days earlier about nothing in particular, just neighborly chit-chat At that time I did not get any sense that he was anything other than the husband of someone I know by sight and to wave to when passing on the street in the morning. Anyway, I did NOT listen to my intuition and went clockwise. I passed by their townhouse and, luckily he was not outside so I thought I had dodged seeing him again. I continued on my way and as I was on the other side of the pond, I noticed that he was suddenly there. I was a little surprised and bummed but, again, no negative vibes to speak of. He walked up to me and told me that he had seen me walk by his house (I know this is because he was watching for me as will become clear in a moment.) and wanted to talk to/see me. He then said that he had been thinking about me ever since we had talked a several days earlier. I thought this was kind of strange and didn’t quite know what to say to that. He then told me that he found me to be so beautiful. (Weird, but whatever.) I said thank you and tried to change the subject. I’m not typically walking around thinking that people have ulterior motives. And he then flat out says this to me: “So, are you into being promiscuous?” I immediately said, “NO, never, I have never been like that. NO.” I was shocked to say the least and really wanted to not be there anymore while at the same time trying to defuse a situation that was quickly going in a direction I could never have anticipated. If he had just stopped then when I so clearly said NO, it would still have been creepy and inappropriate, but unfortunately, that’s not how he handled it. I guess I kind of froze, while still attempting to change the tone of the encounter. He didn’t stop. He kept talking, saying thinking like, “I can’t stop thinking about you,” “I love looking at you,” “…if you ever change your mind…” I got more and more uncomfortable and kept attempting to walk away. He kind of wasn’t allowing that to happen. I said that I needed to leave, that I had to get my steps in. He kept following me and asking me to come over to his house just so he could look at me. At this point I was super freaked out. As I finally was able to distance myself from him and continue down the sidewalk, he mentioned that he wasn’t a murderer or a rapist. I then told him that I was finding all of this so disconcerting and that I was sexually assault in 2011. That seemed to shut him up. I suppose he went home but I have no idea, nor do I care.

The real problem with this is that just as during my attack, I pretty much shut down and though I am able to more or less function and do what needs to be done, after I am out of immediate danger, I start to realize what actually happened. I understand that he is a predator and he did follow me. He was waiting for me to walk by so that he could proposition me. For the life of me, I cannot understand why he thought I would ever say yes to something like that. I guarantee you that I did not flirt with or in any other way give him any kind of sign or idea that I wanted anything from him, and certainly not sex. How could talking to a man about ordinary things could ever be construed as an invitation for more than just a simple conversation? This makes me want to hide in my house and not come out.

However, very luckily for me, I have amazing girlfriends and an amazing spiritual community who were more than willing to help me when I reached out. I am happy to say that all the conversations I had on Saturday night and Sunday morning and then at church all who contributed to keeping me from spiraling down into a place I have no intention of ever going to again made all the difference. I then did tapping (EFT) with another church friend and as we worked through the trauma and sadness and the anger, I was able to come through it without losing myself. I slept well that night and woke up on Monday feeling pretty good. I feel clear of the event. For me, this is HUGE. As I said before, I have had so much therapy and know so many techniques and other things that help me, and not least of all ASKING for the help I needed. Because of this, I am good. I will most definitely not be walking by that townhouse again, which is an easy enough thing to do. What I hate the most about this whole situation is that I live in a country where this is pretty much the norm. That it can happen at all is just gross. I don’t think I will ever understand why men think it is okay to do and say things like this. I hate that I have to be vigilant all the time, but I do, as all women do.

This is not the end of the story, so stay tuned.

THIS IS ME

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For the last 8 months, since 7 August 2017 when I heard the words, ‘You have cancer,’ I have been dealing with a journey I never, and I mean NEVER, thought I would take.  As many of you know, it has been an incredibly difficult time.  There is light at the end of the tunnel though.  I am currently undergoing radiation as an additional preventative measure to (hopefully) keep any reoccurrence at bay.  I’ve done 5 weeks and have 2 more to go.  Yea!

None of this has been fun and it is my deepest wish that no one reading this will ever suffer through anything remotely similar.  Bottom line is, it sucks!  Cancer sucks!  There’s no other way of putting it.  And silly though it might be to a lot of people, losing my hair was HUGE for me.  As much as my hair has driven me crazy over a lifetime, not having it was worse.  My last round of chemotherapy was 12 December 2017, so, in theory, my hair has been growing back since then.  Let’s just say that all the other hair on my body has returned (one ‘benefit’ of losing it all is no shaving) and the hair on my head is taking its sweet time returning.  I am definitely growing a rug up there.  It’s thick and super soft. My oncologist, who happens to be half black, says it is coming in straight!  That’s what I am hoping for.

A couple weeks ago my therapist gave me an assignment…to stop covering my head.  She actually has been trying to get me to lose the hats and bandanas for even longer than that, but I just couldn’t do it.  Then last week after leaving the bandana I was wearing with her so that I would have nothing to put on my head when I stopped at the drugstore and grocery store on my way home, I thought, this isn’t so bad.  Nobody laughed at my hair, of lack thereof, at least not as far as I could tell.  Then the following morning the 21-Day Meditation series I was doing with Deepak Chopra and Oprah Winfrey resonated with me in a way that nothing else had.  It was titled “Taking Back Your Power!”

It suddenly occurred to me that I had lost my power and I realized that Beth (my therapist) was right.  I could come out of the closet (so to speak) and show other women that it is possible to survive and to still be beautiful (honestly, I am still working on this) even without hair.  That day when I went to my radiation appointment, I got nothing but compliments and praise for going au natural.  And the day after that, I was crossing a street in Ventura and a woman opened her window and yelled out, “I love your hair!”  Okay, so maybe it wasn’t so bad after all to be close to bald.  I really am not bald anymore, I just have super short hair.

So this is me now:

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And while it looks like my hair is totally white, that’s just around my face.  It actually starting growing in dark.  My friend Lisa Michelle mentioned that it’s interesting that my baby-black hair has come back.  I was born with a head full of black hair:

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This is me at 3 months.  When I was a little older it started growing in blonde.  I never lost the original hair, it just grew in blonde.  This is what it looked like before I was completely blonde:

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Now I’m ever hopeful that at some point the dark hair will stop and it will begin growing in blonde just like when I was a baby!

Will I keep my hair short?  Probably not because even though I almost always wear my hair up, I like having enough length that I can put it on top of my head and forget about it.  So although this is me now, it’s not what I consider the ‘real’ me.  It is much easier to take care of…oh, yeah, I don’t have to do a single thing.  It’s even too short to comb.  I am also counting on the warmer weather to speed up the growth process.

 

 

ULTIMATELY CHANGING BAD FOR GOOD

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Yesterday was the sixth anniversary of my sexual assault.

And while I still feel the need to acknowledge it, I can say in all honesty that 24 September 2011 is no longer the worst day of my life.  Unfortunately that title now goes to 7 August 2017.  That is the day I was diagnosed with breast cancer.  Neither of these events are things it ever occurred to me that I would have to deal with in my life.  Ever! And yet both have found their way into my experience.  The really weird thing is there are so many similarities between the two: neither were expected; I was/am fighting for my life; my body was/is in total shock; I had to/I have to now learn a new way to be, figure out a new ‘normal.’  Also, my startle response, which has never gone completely away, is back with a vengeance.  All I can think is, how did I not learn these lessons after my attack and why do I have to go through it all again, albeit from a completely different event?

What I really would like to do now, though, is change my mindset around my current situation.  To me, this means thinking about it in completely different terms.  For example, I am refraining from calling the chemotherapy that is running through my body as poison.  Instead, I think of it as the sweet elixir of life that is shrinking my tumor away to nothing.  Instead of lamenting that I cannot walk as far or play tennis for as long, I am doing my best to enjoy being able to rest during this time.  I know when it is all over, my strength and stamina will return.  I’ve always been more of a go-go-go-all-the-time kind of person, so this is simply as opportunity to relax and slow down.  Instead of wondering what I did wrong or what I may have done to deserve this, I am learning to accept that I did nothing wrong nor did I do anything to deserve this, it just happens and, unfortunately, it happens to millions of people.  All the care that I’ve taken up to this point most likely has saved me from far worse diseases, and will play a huge role in my beating and defeating the cancer I do have.

I am very fortunate.  I have a loving, supportive husband. I have great doctors and nurses and all kinds of support from family and friends.  I have people sending prayers and positive, healing energy to me from all around the world (thanks Facebook!)  So as much as I hate what I am going through, as hard as it has been on my body and will most likely continue to be, I am actually very, very lucky.

IT IS A BIG DEAL TO ME

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I understand that in the larger scheme of things losing one’s hair is a very small thing.  But guess what?  Being told by well-meaning people that I ‘just need to get over it,’ that ‘it will grow back,’ that I should ‘just embrace my bald head;’ none of these are helpful to me right now.  It is disrespectful and even hurtful.  That may have been your experience, but, as of right now, it isn’t mine.  I am sad, and I cannot even cry about it, as I am still in shock and my tears are still stuck in my body.  I think the hardest thing  is now I actually look sick.  While I still had my hair, I may have been sick, but I still looked relatively normal.  Now, not so much.

So tomorrow morning I am going back to the salon to get my head shaved.

HAIR TODAY, GONE TOMORROW???

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I have consistently bitched and moaned about my hair for as long as I remember.  Unbelievably, I was actually born with straight, smooth hair.   After puberty, my hair came in as bush head.  This is not normal.  The texture of my hair completely changed, suddenly having a rough cuticle, thus beginning the love-hate (mostly hate) relationship I’ve had ever since.

When I was 12 and 13 years old, I would wash my hair and put it in a ponytail at the base of my neck, and then proceed to put rubber bands all the way down the hair in an effort to make it straight.  Then I’d put bobby pins all along my hair-line for the same reason.  This sort of worked, but both the booby pins and the rubber bands would leave marks, and my hair never completely dried because it was so thick.  I also tried the orange juice can rollers.  Not at all comfortable to sleep on.  And by the time I was 14 years old, I had joined the swim team and was diving every day, so after that my hair was pretty much a chlorine mess all the time.

Fast-forward to 2001 when I moved to West Hollywood and had my hair flat-ironed for the first time.  Wow!  What a huge difference that made.  After my hairdresser finished and I felt how smooth my hair was and how shiny, neither of which I had since puberty, I really wondered if she had given me a hair transplant without me realizing.  Seriously, my hair felt so good.  It was then that I finally truly understood what having hair with a rough cuticle meant.  It would be several more years before I got my own flatiron and could make my hair magically smooth without paying gobs of money for someone else to do it.

All through the early 2000’s I kept my hair relatively short–I’d get it cut to right above my shoulders, let grow for a year and then cut it again to the same above my shoulders length.  Somewhere around 2010, I decided to just let it grow.  I mean, why not?  I had nothing better to do, and it really is easier to have it longer since all I do is put it on top of my head because it bugs me.  And while it has not been quite as long in the last couple of years, it is still longer than it is shorter.  Basically, I am super lazy when it comes to my hair.  Now, though, the prospect of losing it all is really doing a number on me.  If I chose to shave my head, that would be one thing; I did not choose this, it is simply coming out because of the chemotherapy.

Last Thursday, I got my hair cut.  My intention was that it be cut to chin length.  When I got to the salon and my hairdresser took out my pony tail holder, it still wasn’t apparent how bad things really were.  So his assistant attempted to wash it.  I told her that I always put conditioner on my hair first, before shampoo, because it helps detangle it.  And I use if after, as well.  She did not listen, although I am not sure it really would have made a difference at this point.  When I got back in Patrick’s chair, I thought he was gong to cry.  My hair had literally turned into dreadlocks, and there was nothing to do but cut it all off.  Luckily, that did not mean shaving my head, it just meant I was not going to be walking out of there with the hair cut I thought I’d be getting.  I did not take into account just how far along in the losing-all-my-hair-process I really was.  He did a really nice job (see picture below) with the only mistake he made being he used hair spray on it.  After a while it felt like helmet hair and I had to wash it out.

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Big mistake on my part.  Again, once water hit my hair, even though it was considerably shorter, I suddenly had dreadlocks.  This time I simply could not cut off the 3 big gobs of hair.  Instead, I painstakingly sprayed each one with leave in conditioner and slowly, but ever so slowly, used a comb to untangle the mess.  It took about half an hour and this is what I combed out:

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Half a sink full of my hair.  If I did not have as much hair as I do, I for sure would already be bald.  Unbelievably, today, Sunday, I still have hair, and while it doesn’t look great, it also does not look like I’m about to be bald as a cue ball.

Look, I understand it’s just hair and that it will grow back.  This is still extremely difficult, even as my hair drives me crazy, though.  I’ve been shopping for a wig.  Even found a couple that aren’t horrible, but they look like wigs.

As I have my second round of chemo on Tuesday, I don’t expect that I’ll have what’s left of my hair much longer, which means I am going to have to make a decision sooner rather than later about my hair situation.  What I really want is for it not to fall out at all.  Clearly, though, that ship has sailed.

 

NEVER A DULL MOMENT IN MY LIFE

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Is this a good thing?  Well, at times it can be very exciting.  At others, not so much.  It seems I barely get through one thing and another rears its not-so-pretty head.  I do believe that everything happens for a reason, and that whatever it is, it moves us along our path.  Take my sexual assault–I knew right from the moment it happened that it would teach me many things, that it was, in fact, necessary to get me to the next phase of my life.  And as difficult as it was, I was okay with it.  Truth be told, though I am 98% healed from that whole ordeal, I still have certain triggers that set me off and either make me cry or really piss me off.  I am beginning to realize this may be a life-long thing, that I will never be 100% over it.  This, too, is okay.

For what is happening now in my life, however, I am definitely not seeing the big picture yet.  I know I am still in shock, and it still does not seem real.  Two weeks ago I was diagnosed with breast cancer.  This is something I never, ever, ever thought would happen in my life.  I have no family history of any type of cancer.  I am super active and have been my entire life; I mostly eat very cleanly, though I definitely have a serious sugar addiction, which I fight sometimes more successfully than others.  Still, overall, as my wonderful husband put it the other day, “You look too beautiful and too healthy to be sick.”

Currently I am being biopsied and ultrasounded and MRId and PET scanned and poked and prodded to make sure I am, in fact, as healthy as I look.  The type of breast cancer I have is very rare; I am triple positive, which as I understand it means that estrogen, progesterone and a hormone called Her2 are over-expressing and have caused a tumor to form.  As of right now, I begin chemo on Tuesday.

I have told very few people of my diagnosis, until this very moment, that is.  I am still getting used to it and talking about it makes it more real, which I don’t want it to be.  My reason for sharing this with all of you is I am asking for your prayers.  I do know that prayer is powerful and I need all the help I can get.  Thank you in advance.

So begins another journey I do not wish to be on.

OUT, BUT THANKFULLY, NOT ON THE STREET

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The day I’ve been dreading since DCD was sentenced to prison on 25 June 2012 has arrived.  I knew it would eventually get here, and have known since 21 June that the date he would be released was today,  11 August 2017.

While I was on vacation in Zion in July, I received a call from a probation officer with further details of DCD’s release.  Although he is getting out, he is not being released to the ‘street’ as the officer told me.  He is being sent to the state mental hospital in Atascadero, a city in San Luis Obispo County, half-way between SanFrancisco and Los Angeles.  The facility is for men only and has approximately 1184 beds.  The largest group of patients, 48%, are considered Mentally Disordered Offenders (Penal Code 2962/2971.)  According to the hospitals web site, “Parolees who committed one of a specified list of crimes and who were treated for a severe mental disorder connected to their original crime can be committed to a state hospital as a condition of parole for a period not to exceed the length of their parole term.  If the person still requires treatment at the end of their parole term, they can be civilly committed under P.C. 2972 if it is determined that they are a substantial danger to themselves or others. These commitments last for one year and may be renewed annually by the court.”

I am hopeful that he will receive the help he needs.  I also know that he has to want to be helped, and I am afraid that is not the case.  All the help he had prior to my attack did nothing to stop his escalating behavior.  I am just very fortunate that my guardian angel came along and saved me before he was able to follow through with his intention to rape me.

I was also told that once he is out of the hospital, if he is released into the county that I am living in at that time, I have the option of having him removed to another county.  I guess that gives me a small degree of comfort.  As I’ve said before, though, I do not believe he will come after me.  That has never been, nor is it now, my fear.  At the same time, however remote the chance, I do not wish to run into him on the street.  Ever.

As I said at the end of my last post, I do pray for him and truly hope that no one else ever has to experience what I did on  September 24, 2011.

 

 

NOT GOOD NEWS

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I received a letter in the mail today from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.  Inside in big, fat, black letters it said —-

NOTICE OF RELEASE – CONFIDENTIAL

This notice is provided at your request.  The inmate is scheduled for release.

The inmate will be:

Released to parole under CDCR supervision.

The inmate is required to register pursuant to:

Penal Code Section 290 – Sex

 

It also has other information about his name, prison number, scheduled release date and which county he will be released into.  What the letter does not tell me is how long his parole lasts.  Let’s just say I am happy I am not longer in the same county.  And it is not so much that I am afraid of him or that I think he’ll come after me.  No, it’s more I simply do not like the idea of him being anywhere near me.  Do I think he has been rehabilitated?  That would be a resounding NO.  Given the violence of my attack, his lack of remorse at the sentencing and the fact that he will have spent almost 62 months in prison, I seriously doubt he will be anything but angry.

I do pray for him and truly hope that no one else ever has to experience what I did on  September 24, 2011.

 

CHANGE IS HARD

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I knew there were lots of changes on the way.  That is, after all, why I chose change for my word this year.  What has become extremely clear to me in the last month and a half since we left Coronado, is change is flipping hard.  I mean really difficult.  It’s not like I haven’t had lots of changes in life before now.  I have, and some of them were excruciatingly hard to come to terms with.  This is different though.  We actually chose to move to Ventura.  We came 5 or 6 times, starting last December, and we thought we liked it here.  It seemed like a nice community, the beach is right there and, most importantly, it is affordable.  By affordable, I mean that for a coastal town in Southern California, the housing prices are not so bad.  It’s all relative, of course.  It is still stinking expensive if compared to other parts of the country.

We arrived to our furnished rental house on 12 May.  We had been sort of ‘homeless’ since 30 March when the movers came and took all our belongings to my brother-in-law’s house for storage.  We stayed next door at our neighbor’s back guest house for 3 nights, went to Ventura for one day/night to meet with the homeowners of the house we are renting for 5 months and also buy a king mattress to be delivered on 12 May, then to Las Vegas for 4 nights (3 in a hotel, 1 at my sister’s,) back to San Diego for 2 nights at my cousin’s in Rancho Bernardo and finally ended at the Crown Inn on Coronado for the last 3 nights of our having-no-place-to-call-our-own time.  It wasn’t really that bad, but once we finally got to ‘our’ new house, we were so happy we would be staying put for a while. It’s the moving around every few days that got to me/us.

What has also become clear to me since getting to Ventura is we accidentally rented a Hobbit house!  I am not kidding.  The house itself is about 900 square feet, which is only about 100 square feet smaller than the house on Coronado.  The problem is the layout of the rooms.  Again, not horrible, it just takes time to get used to it.  (For me, apparently, a lot of time.)  No, what makes it a Hobbit house is that everything is so small.  For instance, we do have a washer and dryer in the basement.  For those of you who do not live in California, basements are not common.  This house is on a hill, which allows for a basement.  Of sorts.

That pretty blue door is the door to the basement.  It’s also where we keep our bicycles, and you can be sure, lifting the bikes up and over the wall is a total pain.  One of the first days here I almost gave myself a concussion because I did not duck enough to get through the doorway.  The height of the ceiling once in the door is about six feet!  And the crossbeam even has a padded wrap and the homeowner was kind enough to write BAM! on it, just as a reminder.  While I am able to stand up straight on either side of that beam, my husband being 6’4″ cannot.  Needless to say, it is my job to do the laundry.

Everything is just on a much smaller scale in the house.  The bathtub is teeny, not that I fit in most tubs anyway at 5’10”.  Even the door jambs are quite small, and I seem to regularly bang my shoulders when I walk through.  We sometimes wonder how we missed these things when we originally looked at the house back in February.  I think at that point we were just happy to have found a short-term rental house.

And now we are not really liking Ventura.  It is hard to figure out why.  It is so different from Coronado, and we (especially me, having been there for 15 years) are really spoiled from living there.  I could walk everywhere on the island; here, not so much.  Sure, I can go for walks, but I want to be able to walk to the grocery store, and here it just isn’t a possibility.  It is so much busier, too.  Island life truly was more relaxed and laid-back.  It could be that it will just take time to get used to my new surroundings.  Or I may never feel comfortable here.  Only time will tell.