Love Letters to a Healing Heart

138: Slut

September 17, 2018April 16, 2020 Wanders

Lie be believ’d only for an Hour, it has done its Work, and there is no farther occasion for it. Falsehood flies, and the Truth comes limping after it; so that when Men come to be undeceiv’d, it is too late; the Jest is over, and the Tale has had its Effect…

Jonathon Swift

This post will irritate some of you. It may even be an emotional trigger for you. That isn’t my intentions. This post isn’t for the men and women that have been betrayed. I’ve experienced consequences, wrath, and vengeance. I can appreciate C and K’s actions for what they are. I can appreciate I brought much of what I experienced directly from C and K onto myself…it pales in comparison to the emotional and mental hurt I suffered onto them. C did the most loving thing for herself, me, and Us. I’m proud of her.

On a trip to find a great hamburger in Slippery Rock, Pennsylvania I missed my turn and ended up cutting through a McDonald’s parking lot. As I rounded the corner I noticed a beautiful white Cadillac tucked into the corner behind some bushes. Painted onto the windows and car was the word “slut”. On the rear window, someone had drawn a giant penis ejaculating onto the word “slut.”

Nine months of anger immediately erupted.

I drove around the restaurant looking for anyone trying to hide or crying or looking pissed. I didn’t see anyone. If I had the supplies with me, I would have helped Her clean this up. I don’t care about the story. I don’t care about the reasons. This isn’t a slut or a whore or a bitch, this is a human being trying to figure out how to be human.

People have no fucking idea…and for those of my “friends” or readers that think she might deserve this? Unfollow and unfriend me now. Deal with your shit. No one deserves this type of public humiliation or to be the focus of rumors.

No one.

Ever.

After spending dinner thinking about this, I walked back up with some rags I dug out of the car and went to help clean it all off.

The car was gone.

A couple of things.

Slut: A loaded word 

Anyone that sees Her car driving around town painted with the word “slut” is going to assign specific meanings and intentions to the word based on their own experiences and not to their experiences with this specific woman.

Calling a woman a “slut” has specific, social, and personal meaning to families, friends, associates, and strangers. It was done to elicit a response from others towards Her. It was done to isolate Her. She either keeps it a secret and hides or she asks for help to remove it from her car.

It doesn’t have to be true to take this woman’s Power and identity. That is exactly the point of using labels to describe individuals and not behaviors: it is an attempt at triangulating the community against Her. It is splitting. The tale being told is to interacting with Her is to interact with a slut. Sluts are untrustworthy, dirty, maintain low standards, and worthless, right?

“She acted sluttily” and “She’s a slut” say two different things. You can change how you act but you cannot change who you are, right? Perhaps, “she acted sluttily” would have used too much paint.

The individual that painted this car wants to take Power. This includes taking Her ability to change, make amends, or learn. Once a slut, always a slut. Once a cheater, always a cheater. That is the point in seeking to publically humiliate Her: it is an attempt to diminish Her humanity and cut her off from options.

Many people seeing this car will assume the worse, not about the vandal, but about this women. It doesn’t even have to be true. Labeling someone a slut – or a narcissist, predator, or whore – isn’t rape, but the emotional intentions are the same. It’s about taking Power from Her.

After all, She was asking for it by being a slut right? Regardless of the the story all that will matter to many people she encounters will be the label. The truth succumbs to truthiness.

Can men be sluts?

I assumed this was childish action was directed at a woman. A friend, that happens to be gay, insightfully asked me how I knew it was a woman.

Um, bias?

My high school peers referred to the cheerleaders as the Get Laid Brigade and the flag corp as the Whore Corp. In the locker room, the boys talked about specific girls as “sluts” or “whores”. Some of the coaches too.

When I was in the Marine Corp male sluts were celebrated in the barracks.

Not once did I participate with either toxic ritual.

One coin. Two sides.

I shared the picture of the car hidden beside the bushes and my anger on Twitter and immediately was unfollowed by nine people. I posted it on Facebook and told anyone that thinks this woman “deserves” it to unfriend me. Three people did.

I’m assuming because they think I’m defending cheating, cheaters, or something? I’m not but nuance won’t matter to those still looking for vengeance and aren’t dealing with their own shit.

I don’t care about the number of followers I have because I’m not writing for the audience but to document my experience and learn from others that want to share their stories. But it is an interesting reaction from others.

However, a few people on Facebook thanked me for posting this. One is deeply involved in managing battered women and family shelters all over the country. The other is someone that has been approached directly by members of the Splitter’s Flying Monkey Squad trying to further isolate me.

Meanwhile, a woman I admire on Twitter claimed she wanted to do this to her husband’s affair partner – and more. As I told her, the difference is, she hasn’t. She made sure I knew she hadn’t done this, “Yet.”

I think she was playing for a specific audience and we had an interesting exchange on the topic.

Vengence

There are several ways this woman (man?) ended up with this painted on her car.

1. Her sorority sisters are trying to break her through a hazing ritual.
2. She “stole” someone’s heart – and cock – and his “ex” wants to punish Her. You cannot steal what isn’t yours.
3. An emotionally ill person is trying to manipulate perceptions and trying to isolate Her. By forcing Her to drive around with this on Her car he changes the focus away from his behavior creating an impression of Her. The paint was cheaper than his getting counseling and meds.
4. He’s stuck in the Friend Zone and he decided to lash out. This will show Her he really cares, right?
5. She cheated on a Partner and he couldn’t control his rage and sought to punish and humiliate Her publically. This method has less paperwork than an honor killing.
6. She slept with someone else’s Partner and that Partner’s Partner couldn’t control her rage and sought to punish and humiliate Her publically. It was easier than branding “slut” onto Her forehead and honor killing the cheating Partner. Less paperwork too.
7. A disgruntled ex, seeing his Partner moving on, couldn’t control his rage and sought to punish and humiliate her publically. As such, he feels justified to humiliate her instead of dealing with his own loss and pain. This is how he is trying to reclaim his power. It is more socially acceptable than simply raping her.

I’m sure there are other possible reasons.

The point is, no one has any idea what happened but Her, and whoever took this emotionally lazy, cruel, and vengeful act. “Vengence is a lazy form of grieving,” wrote Tara Brach.

What the Public sees is a woman driving a car painted with giant dicks and the word “slut” through a busy downtown area. The audience will make up stories. To paraphrase Anais Nin, “people will never see Her as she is, but as they are.”

And this is the truth about rumors and public humiliation: it doesn’t have to be true, it just needs to be said with authority and repeatedly to destroy people and lives. As Jonathon Swift writes, “Lie be believ’d only for an Hour, it has done its Work.”

And here’s the thing

I think this is why it pissed me off.

I’ve been the focus of interlopers, bullies, narcissists, and splitters. They have felt entitled to spread gossip and rumors everywhere through my community. It was more work than simply spray painting my car but the result is the same. These people only care about the Power they can take or the Power they can project.

They tried to take my Power and voice from me. They took Power from C.

When I saw this I projected my story onto hers. I have empathy for whatever actions I imagine she took to end up here. I have empathy for the humiliation of being labeled regardless of the story. I’m angry for Her. I’m angry for me.

And when I refused to surrender my Power to them by speaking out, defending myself and my life with C, and confronting their behaviors publically they escalated painting me with new labels. They tried to humiliate me into submission and silence by spreading misleading half-truths, outright lies, and rumormongering to others through social media, mob tactics, threats of violence, and general cowardly acts.

They are the worse kind of social parasites. It is easier than dealing with their own shit.

Some mean well, like Norm, but the others are working out their own damage and projecting their mental illnesses, loneliness, and jealousies onto me. I’m an easy target for their dis-ease. They project their shames onto my behaviors. As my counselor reminded me, for them to insert themselves into Our story for nine months, and contribute nothing but more pain to the situation, is a sign of their own dysfunctions, not mine.

These people know nothing about C, the intricacies of our relationship, my history with K, or why I chose to take the actions I took. They project their stories onto me.

This is what I know from experience. Telling people I’m a predator without any context or facts was done to elicit a response from others towards me. It was intended to manipulate the situation. There will always be a core group of people that will be unswayed by the reality of who I am. They will take as gospel everything said about me by C or K while they were both  fighting through anger, trauma, and vengeance. And minimal sleep.

The accusation has been made, not by C, but by their own imaginations. Here too the truth of my betrayal succumbs to the truthiness of human nature. I cannot prove a negative: I’ve never stalked her, I’m never hacked her phone, I never stole her email, I never stole her mail, I never tried to force contact, I don’t have “pussy” stashed all over the country, and I’m not soulless.

C never said these things about me of course, she never had too. This is the story Interlopers made up about the stories they heard from someone trying to make sense of someone else’s story.

What could go wrong with that kind of thinking?

It isn’t enough I fucked up, and C and I are finished, there needs to be punishment based on their own arbitrary morality and undealt with issues. They need to take my Power to choose my life and C’s Power to choose her life so they can convince themselves they matter.

Fuck them.

I am an adulterer

And here is where I am: I am an adulterer. I cheated on C. I cheated on K. I’m working my shit out through counseling, writing, and some hard, painful, and difficult consequences. But I am doing it. More than many people do in my situation.

I’m certainly not expecting C to make it better or fix my pain. I asked her fifty questions about her pain when this started trying to understand what it was she needed and wanted. She ignored them but Splitters and Flying Monkeys inserted their narrative based on what they think and not on what they know.

I don’t care about the consequences or punishment. I care about C, her hurt, loss, and anger. I care about the lessons and experiences. I care about how this moves me from adulterer to able. I care how this creates new opportunities and stories moving forward. I cannot undo what is done.

No one can take my Power except what I surrender to them. At the end of the day, it will be my story I write and not the story they dictate. At the end of my life, who will cry when I die? The ones that stood by me as I rewrote my story and learn to love again and again.

I hope the Slut of Slippery Rock is able to write her own story too.

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