v-day

last night was the performance of the "new" vagina monologues. eve ensler published a collection of works dealing with domestic violence. i helped to set up the show for my service learning project. i performed my piece. and then spent the show outside, watching the food and money tables, trying to listen through the crack in the door.
i got really drunk. i had a lot of wine while i was outside. i didn't intend on doing it, but throughout the show setup i felt silently criticized by others, and was also really frustrated that i hadn't planned it better with the director, who was simply amazing, but spacey. i felt like i didn't do my job, that i could have done it better.
that stress showed in my piece. my voice started to waiver and crack. so i drank. i drank half a bottle's worth of red and white, on an empty stomach. and when one girl started to read her piece, i cried. and was still crying when the show ended and so everyone saw.
i am so glad i was an integral part of V-week, and learned all these things about domestic violence. i am glad that i visited the local battered women's shelter here. i am glad that there are people on this campus who are passionate enough about these issues to have them integrated into our school life. i am glad that our curriculum was changed to reflect that - we now have a standardized patient encounter where we will have to counsel a girl on abortion. i am glad that the "moral majority" is the minority here, or that they are too busy to enforce their beliefs on the rest of us.
i am not glad, however, for the prevalence of politics pervading student life. how one or two people make the power grabs. how second years groom first years as replacements and then come election time do not give anyone else a chance to run for positions, give ideas, make their voices heard. politics are so stupid. the petty stories i have heard...its like, seriously? we are not in jr high. we are in fucking medical school. and i'll bet this shit goes on in hospitals and clinics also. you will never escape other people's shitty behavior. all you can do is control your own. at the show last night, i didn't - my voice turned to steel, my face, a scowl. i was and am really ashamed of that. so i drank. and i cried.
as i was driving to school this morning, thinking about the show, i also realized, for the first time -- in 26 years, this was the first time i had realized this -- that my home was filled with domestic violence. domestic violence is not defined by physical blows. but by control, by fear, by emotional damage. and then all my flaws made sense -- my self-destructive tendencies, my obsessive search for safe places, within dorm rooms with the door shut tight, within people i could trust who would never abandon me. because at no real time had i truly a home --
and it was not my fault.

and i suddenly no longer felt so ashamed to cry.