[RE-POST and a true story -- from a number of years ago]
A noise at the window. I look over to see the curtain shuddering from the wind. It is raw outside. On my next trip to the bathroom I must remember to shut the window.
It is 3am. I am planted before some old black and white movie on TV that must have slipped on after Law & Order while I was crying. Much of the paperwork that was overflowing my mail bin is in my lap or all over the coffee table.
I reach for a Kleenex on the night stand. I need to fight these blues. What is wrong with me? I just had a lovely dinner with my friend Anna six or so hours ago.
It is Thanksgiving holiday weekend. I miss my family. I am emotionally and physically exhausted.
Still, I am resolved to exercise before getting into bed in prep for a self-defense course starting up in a few weeks.
Maybe exercising will lift my mood.
I got inspired this week by my friend Nanci’s Model Mugging graduation four days ago. It was awesome. My quiet and reserved friend, Nanci, knocked my socks off. Well, not my socks off, but literally someone else’s! In only ten days 15 women of varying ages and sizes learned how to knock out a would-be attacker. Those guys waddling around in their padded space suits looked funny until they took turns barreling at the women like freight trains. Then WHAM, WHAM WHAM! The guy was laid out on the mat, the woman standing over him with fists raised, chest high, stomping out the word “NO!” on the floor beside him.
I fill out a check for the Con Edison bill in my lap and wonder if I’ll really have the nerve to take the course.
Suddenly, the little blackboard next to the kitchen window clatters to the floor. “Oh Jane,” I sigh, not needing to look up. My cat periodically sends such items crashing in her explorations of the wilderness of my tiny studio. I can’t help but appreciate her demure, backward glances of innocence and casual interest, as if she were never the originator of such mischief. I slide in the check and am licking the envelope when my eyes fasten on Jane on the other side of the room. I hold my breath but my heart is pounding. Jane’s sleek, black body is taut. Her interest in the window is not casual.
The curtain moves and there is a violent shoving noise. “A storm,” my mind supplies, but the pounding in my ears suggests otherwise. Then, an OH-MY-GOD beige, sneakered leg comes through the small rectangle of window opening. I am on my feet screaming. I ram the coffee table with my shins, sending papers and coffee cup sailing.
An unknown being is half-in, half-out of my home, my haven. I am impressed by the siren filling the apartment, originating somewhere between my stomach and my throat, but am unwilling to engage with the stranger. I prefer to search my mind for some benign and legitimate reason for someone to be entering my apartment through this, as incredible as it seems, non-fire escape window at this hour.
This cannot be real. It is some bizarre extension of the Model Muggingpsychodramas. After eight years in New York, why would it happen this week? This is what happens to other people, and not even the people one knows, but the people they know of.
I continue to scream and he is in. Evil-eyed with jaw clenched, bearing some kind of knife —— a box cutter. That stubby razor with a handle. He tells me to shut up, but he is obviously as certain no one will react to my screams as I am they will.
I can’t imagine there's not ONE friggin’ neighbor in this whole Goddamn building to hear me this holiday weekend? He indicates no hesitation from such a possibility.
Within seconds I surrender hope of being rescued by outside help.
But a miracle happens. I watch myself turn into my own rescuer. I raise my fists, harden my eyes back into his, and command him to leave. There is urine trickling down my leg but my mind is filled with images from the graduation. Then I was an awed but fierce cheerleader. Now it is my turn.
‘‘I WANT YOU TO LEAVE NOW!” I keep repeating at the top of my voice.
And he keeps repeating back, “SHUT UP!” He is Hispanic, about 5’2” with a narrow moustache and a yellowish cast to his skin. He is slight but wiry —— and the label “cat burglar” slips through my mind. His eyes are slitted —— no flicker of life. 30, maybe?
“Why did I let him get all the way in?” I mourn.
I had been paralyzed. There were some seconds there in which I might have had enough time to run to that window and push him back into the night and downward two stories’ worth of air to the sidewalk below. But that might have killed him. I could not fathom let alone perform such an action.
But now does he intend to kill me?
I remember Nanci’s comment during our last phone conversation before her graduation. “They tell us not to focus on what’s gone before or what might happen. Just stay in the NOW.”
He comes toward me. I tighten my fists and picture the blond-haired coach, Sarah, with her full voice and invincible stance. Somehow we’ve gotten deep into the room and I drop onto the couch on my side and kick toward his groin, just missing it as he jumps back. I continue to kick into the air, glaring into his eyes. The lower half of a woman’s body is comparable in strength to a man’s they’d said. KICK, KICK, KICK! I hear the chanting of Sunday’s audience. I kick outward and upward, powerfully and mechanically, mimicking the women, conveying that I will have the discipline and heart to keep kicking forever.
Suddenly from this kicking my plaid flannel nightshirt flaps back onto my stomach revealing my (OH-MY-GOD) pubic area. Our eyes meet in acknowledgment over this ironic side effect of my own measure of defense. For a millisecond his eyes flash with malevolent victory. I waver for less than a heartbeat, then GROWL. I resume the kicking even more fiercely, despite the exposure, and bare my teeth. I am an animal facing down a predator. Sunday’s role modeling has given me such permission.
It is his turn for decisions. He is back at the window next to the kitchen area and I slip into watchfulness and relief —— but I must not lose my leverage. “My pocketbook,” I direct, rising and returning to my clenched-fist stance. “TAKE THE MONEY AND LEAVE.”
He goes into my bag on the table and removes the bills from my wallet. There aren’t many. Then on to the bureau drawers.
‘‘I WANT YOU TO LEAVE NOW!” I command.
He tells me to sit down or he’ll “keel” me.
I gulp but continue to hover, keeping my eyes on the knife. He keeps the knife in his tight-gloved left hand and with his right rummages through my clothes, looking for some hidden cache that doesn’t exist. His words about killing me horrify, but he delivers them in a weasely, preoccupied voice. He flicks his non—knife hand at me periodically like I am a pesky mosquito. But I wonder how he really perceives me. I suspect he wants me to perceive him as perceiving me as a little nothing. But I am fresh from the Model Mugging indoctrination. I will dedicate myself to the active, not reactive. I picture again the blond—haired coach with the spine of iron.
“PLEASE LEAVE. I HAVE NOTHING!”
He gives me no argument about the "nothing". He says a word I can’t understand with his thick accent. He repeats it several times. Finally I get it.
“JEWELRY?”
He removes a gold chain from an open tray on my bureau. I watch it streaming out of his gloved hand. Rage rises in my throat. I have so little serious jewelry, but what I have is precious to me.
“I HAVE NOTHING,” I insist, willing him to deny the reality of the blue box in the back center of my bureau. What I can’t seem to say is that I don’t have very much or very expensive jewelry, but the bare-boned dialogue of crisis prevents this.
I don’t like that chain in his fist. I don’t want him going through my jewelry.
“I WANT YOU OUT OF THIS APARTMENT NOW!”
Suddenly my right fist shoots out and grazes his neck. It is a pulled punch —— provocative at best. I am shocked by my impulse, as shocked as he clearly is, but I square my jaw and glare at him as menacingly as I can. We are poised again, awaiting his decision. I am over half a foot taller than he but he must have massive body strength to have climbed through that window.
The slitted eyes widen and suddenly I am looking into a face ten years younger. Less demonic. He looks toward the door and my heart screams, “YES, YES!” He scrambles down the short hallway and I can taste the safety. As he fumbles with the two locks ineffectively I am crazed. I encourage in a now dissonantly calming voice, “Slide it to the left! Just slide it to the left!”
I hear it finally slide. He is out. He turns to the left not right. I don't bother to correct him.
I slam the door and lock it.
The 9-1-1 woman has trouble transcribing my address and I shout it at her.
I call my friend, Edna, and we talk until two policemen arrive. They are not as comforting as I’d like, but neither are they callous. I tell them about the Model Mugging class I witnessed. How I am so grateful to it and that it maybe saved my life or saved me from getting raped. One of the men admits to having heard of it. The other is very detached and impatient for just the facts. He picks up a spiral notebook from the now paper—strewn carpet and I shiver at having another uninvited hand touching my property. He begins writing on the top blank sheet of the opened notebook and I notice it is rippled. From droplets of my urine I surmise, but I cannot bring myself to tell him that. A strange combination of shame and vengeance.
They leave and I seek out my cat. I find her at the bottom of my closet. Then I call a couple other friends until the sun rises. They listen and comfort. I want to take a hot bath, my “feel better” ritual, but I am oppressed by the superstition that every thug in New York will now find his evil way through that window, now closed and locked, and I cannot take my eyes off of it.
For two days my cat sits in the dark on the floor of my closet where I periodically visit her. When she does venture out, it is to shadow me so closely that I keep stepping on her, whereupon she shrieks and then I shriek back in surprise. We are quite an hysterical, hypervigilant pair.
While at a pay phone on Madison Avenue going to work one day I catch the movement of a tall blond man whirling around to cross the street in another direction. I scream. He looks over inquiringly. I mutter, “Sorry” and shrug. I will continue to grossly over-react every time I am startled for the next several weeks.
I work like a demon for money for window gates, sleep not being a safe idea, anyway. They are installed within the week. I speak to detectives, peruse hundreds of mug shots at a police station on the West Side and suspect every short Hispanic man I pass on the street of being the perpetrator. I treat every subway ride with seated passengers across from me as an informal “line up.” My body's and mental engines are perpetually racing. I know it will take the passage of serious time to settle down after such trauma.
I find particular comfort in my talks with Nanci and Diane, my two Model Mugging graduate friends, along with Laine, the director of the New York school whom I called to express my gratitude. I had met her at the graduation. She spends over an hour on the phone with me, a manicky stranger, validating my reality and acknowledging my power. She tells me that I am great advertising for her course. She gets what the cops couldn’t savvy. Witnessing the Model Mugging psychodrama undoubtedly saved me from a far more dire fate. How synchronistic, these two events so close together. I have no doubt if the burglary/robbery had occurred a week earlier I would have been looking to the burglar for cues as to appropriate behavior. I would have behaved as an entirely different person -- reactive and dependent. How differently the burglar might have behaved in that case.
I marvel at my unique position of testing out and testifying to the strength of attitude alone in defending oneself. Model Mugging, even before any formal physical training in it, inspired me to fend off the “victim mentality” —- the premature surrendering to which we women have been conditioned.
There is one recurring ambush of paranoia, however, that has refused to diminish. For one instant a curtain moved and I thought it was the wind. For the rest of my life when a curtain moves, must my body gird itself for a burglar, window gates and eventual Model Mugging training notwithstanding?
-----------------
The last time I read this stunning post, several people had read and rated before me. I am proud and honored to be #1 this time. For the morons who complain about "snips," eat your collective hearts out.
you ONLY wish you could write half as effectively, elegantly, and eloquently as my Friend!
-R-
you ONLY wish you could write half as effectively, elegantly, and eloquently as my Friend!
-R-
I am one of those "morons" who has asked you to "snip less write more yourself" because I think you really can write well and reading your writing is a pleasure I don't like to deny myself.
I understand Mark's point though and I know that he is referring to those who only sneer at your snips without appreciating your writing. I'm not here first today, but I am here; as usual; as always.
R
.
I understand Mark's point though and I know that he is referring to those who only sneer at your snips without appreciating your writing. I'm not here first today, but I am here; as usual; as always.
R
.
I don't remember reading this so I am glad to do it now. Amazing writing and I am so glad you made him go away! Powerful.
I vividly remember this powerful piece of writing. It's just as good on the second reading. I am wondering if you completed the defense course and if your emotional vigilance has subsided. R
My heart was pounding throughout, riveting Libby, so sorry you went through this.
Like Zanelle, I don't recall reading this either but no matter; it's as powerful as personal writing that raises up social issues can get.
r.
r.
"There are eight million stories in the Naked City. This has been one of them." - ending citation to The Naked City TV show in the 60's.
Brilliantly told. R.
Brilliantly told. R.
Great post. I've had more than my share of encounters with violence and armed criminals... been robbed at gunpoint twice and been stabbed in the chest in a one sided knife fight. After the first robbery I asked the cop who responded to the 911 call if they ever get out on the other side of looking up the wrong end of a gun barrel and he shook his head, "Nope, it's the same scary shit every time."
Another cop in Houston advised me to get a twelve gauge shotgun for self defense. "It's the best weapon around because you almost never have to use it. When you lock and load every criminal in the world recognizes that sound and the either come out with their hands up or runs like hell. If you do have to pull the trigger, it's hard to miss and your chances of accidentally shooting someone else are much less than firing a handgun."
R&R, Be safe. ;-)
Another cop in Houston advised me to get a twelve gauge shotgun for self defense. "It's the best weapon around because you almost never have to use it. When you lock and load every criminal in the world recognizes that sound and the either come out with their hands up or runs like hell. If you do have to pull the trigger, it's hard to miss and your chances of accidentally shooting someone else are much less than firing a handgun."
R&R, Be safe. ;-)
I'm glad I got a chance to read this.
Excellent piece of writing my friend!
I'm so sorry you experienced this but kudos for kicking some ass.
~R~
Excellent piece of writing my friend!
I'm so sorry you experienced this but kudos for kicking some ass.
~R~
(Libby!)
I'm glad you took control of a crazy bad situation. Nothing good was going to come from that little shit. You saved your own life! You're a tough cookie and this is so well written. It's a NYC crime drama.
I'm glad you took control of a crazy bad situation. Nothing good was going to come from that little shit. You saved your own life! You're a tough cookie and this is so well written. It's a NYC crime drama.
Mark's using your great post as an excuse to snipe at people casts a small pall over the scene. As one who doesn't appreciate your impassioned political pieces, I did really like this (impassioned) personal piece.
Well played - I'm glad for the outcome.
It is excellent and compelling. I don't remember reading it before. And I too, wish you would write more of these essays. You have a wonderful talent for the telling.
Harrowing and well told account libby. I was reading it with clenched teeth. If you'll pardon the frivolity, I guess that's spoiled Dial M For Murder forever.
And just as there's been a general decrying of incivility in the comments, someone takes this as a sign to double down.
And just as there's been a general decrying of incivility in the comments, someone takes this as a sign to double down.
Yo' myriad, I said "snip" not "snipe." Time to "dust up" those reading glasses!
Nope, Sky, with all due respect, I must protest Your reading of my words. You ain't no moron.
Heck, I've known You longer than my 2nd favorite kitten, and if anyone ought to know, it's me - You da*n sure ain't no moron.
In fact, You're as far from a moron, as the sun is to Pluto or Neptune.
Yo, Libby, don't You be forgettin' about my punctuation lessons (please), Yo.
Heck, I've known You longer than my 2nd favorite kitten, and if anyone ought to know, it's me - You da*n sure ain't no moron.
In fact, You're as far from a moron, as the sun is to Pluto or Neptune.
Yo, Libby, don't You be forgettin' about my punctuation lessons (please), Yo.
Mark, thanks so much for validating this account of mine. The first draft was written years ago into my journal to help me recover from the trauma. When terror happens time seems to slow down and one's senses and mind go into overdrive noticing so much and trying to cope with extraordinary unfamiliar dark stimuli. I rewrote it years after and entered it into a writing magazine competition and got an honorable mention which was a big lift but I felt it needed more tightening. Writing at Open Salon inspired me still years later (did the mention of pay phone jar anyone?) to do a third draft and post. I have already gotten such generous feedback with two earlier postings I wasn't sure if there would still be new readers willing to read it but I am so grateful there are as well as former readers and friends who remember it like you and were willing to go through the harrowing account yet again and validate me! I am grateful. :-)
sky, I appreciate what you are saying and your continuing and frequent support and always interesting and at times challenging communications with me!!!
zanelle, thanks so much for reading and commenting! I was fortunate that it ended as benignly as it did and that I had been exposed to the self-defense graduation demonstrations that included my friend. Again I had only witnessed them at that point but believed in them but not exactly yet trusted for myself since I hadn't experience the psychodrama and physical experience. I was acting my heart out that I was ready and able to fight physically and ferociously and effectively and was truly terrified that knife-wielding threatener would call my bluff.
Gerald, thanks for your supportive return! Yes, I took the class and it was awesome and also a huge challenge emotionally and physically but one of the experiences I am most proud of and most grateful for. Boot camp for self-defense and a deprogramming experience for all the media indoctrination and horror movies that communicate that females have no options but to prematurely surrender to physical abuse and intimidation from psycho men. The psychodramatic opportunity to kick at an attacker who is mattressed with protective gear with all one's might makes one experience the power one actually has. Also, raised as "nice" girls we are not of course encouraged to ever visualize going after a man's groin or eyes and nose or stomping on a foot or falling down to use the power and leverage of kicking one's legs or even letting our outrage and anger come out verbally and facially to protect ourselves. Since we never rehearse and dwell on such unpleasant scenarios as home invasions or personal attacks the ambush is all the more in the favor of the premeditated attackers!
I learned a lot about myself and other people after my trauma. My body was so hypervigilant and that stayed for some time and yes it subsided but I won't deny even a "moving curtain" especially when I am alone at home can trigger a momentary shiver and memory of that experience after so many years.
I learned that I had been unprotected in terms of apartment security assuming that since my apartment was on the street side of the building and exposed to witnesses I was safe. My interloper had amazing arm strength agility to get through the window he did.
I learned that people can get very angry at a victim of such an experience because it brings the likelihood closer to them and they don't want to acknowledge it. When I was in the lobby of my building and a neighbor asked me how I was doing, another older male neighbor I did not know began screaming at me. My friend and I were stunned at the cruelty and irrationality of it, but it was certainly jarring and enlightening. Also window gates can be expensive and people shared with me some home alternatives, some seemed very ineffective but they had invested faith in them.
I learned that living in an apartment building with other people does not guarantee that if you are in crisis you will be heard and even if you might be heard your screams may not be heeded!!!! I expected the man to back off with all my screaming and he didn't retreat or seem impacted by that in the least. Yes, it was a holiday weekend and people go away, but the building was not empty and my screaming was full out loud and siren-like.
An interesting story, however, some time later I did come through for a fellow tenant. And trust me, for all the years in NYC I do not live in a harrowing daily environment and usually feel serene and safe though I try to be vigilant. I have had my wallet and/or pocketbook stolen twice and it was being overtired and not vigilant enough in a restaurant, once with a friend and once alone. Also was with a friend once in a coffee shop and a good looking young couple -- yuppies if that word is still in use -- came in, sat at the next table, and soon began to have a highly personal argument. My friend and I were embarrassed at the intimate details pouring out of their mouths and soon the girl stomped off and the guy ran after her. My friend's pocketbook was soon found missing and we realized they were grifters who had staged the fight to cause us to willfully try to look like we were not eavesdropping and used that politeness and distraction to rob us. Lili Tomlin once said, "New York is always knowing where your pocketbook is."
Anyway, going back to me helping a neighbor, this neighbor, young, pretty blonde woman who waitressed in the neighborhood, was walking into our entryway in the early evening and a man with a gun pushed her into the lobby as she unlocked the door and demanded her money. She got to let out one blood curdling scream until the gun appeared and she stopped but I dove for my phone and called 9-1-1 immediately. She gave the man a hard time and even kept a wad of cash in her back pocket secretly from him (I think I would have offered it immediately). After calling the police I opened my door to listen, too afraid at first for my own safety to rush down. I yelled down if she was all right and safe and she yelled back he was gone. I ran down to the lobby and began to help her calm down. The cops arrived almost immediately and they took her in their car to drive around and try to find the man. THEY FOUND HIM FARTHER DOWN THE AVENUE AND APPREHENDED HIM THANKS TO HER IDENTIFICATION!!! Turns out he had KILLED a woman he had robbed on 86th street earlier in the day. If the cops hadn't gotten there when they did he would have escaped!!! The fact that the cops had been so close by and that I had immediately dove for the phone and the young woman was feisty and determined to nail the bastard gave this scenario an unusually quick and positive ending!
I also remember an acquaintance whom I shared my drama with on the phone, who was a lawyer, left me dumbfounded when she launched into some new age crap about i must have willed the universe to present this experience to me through my own attitude. I was so shocked and angry at such a lack of empathy I hung up on her in a middle of one of her insulting and condescending sentences. Talk about blaming the victim!
One last thing, the fact that our model mugging boot camp class was made up of a group of women, less than 20 of us, who were all ages (a big range), sizes, personalities, physical abilities, etc., and we all went through 10 days of multiple psychodramas and group discussions on self-empowerment and emerged on the other side with such confidence and gratitude for the experience. A precious gift we were given -- a sense memory of actually rehearsing fighting for our lives physically and emotionally!!!
Thanks for listening to all of this!
best, libby
sky, I appreciate what you are saying and your continuing and frequent support and always interesting and at times challenging communications with me!!!
zanelle, thanks so much for reading and commenting! I was fortunate that it ended as benignly as it did and that I had been exposed to the self-defense graduation demonstrations that included my friend. Again I had only witnessed them at that point but believed in them but not exactly yet trusted for myself since I hadn't experience the psychodrama and physical experience. I was acting my heart out that I was ready and able to fight physically and ferociously and effectively and was truly terrified that knife-wielding threatener would call my bluff.
Gerald, thanks for your supportive return! Yes, I took the class and it was awesome and also a huge challenge emotionally and physically but one of the experiences I am most proud of and most grateful for. Boot camp for self-defense and a deprogramming experience for all the media indoctrination and horror movies that communicate that females have no options but to prematurely surrender to physical abuse and intimidation from psycho men. The psychodramatic opportunity to kick at an attacker who is mattressed with protective gear with all one's might makes one experience the power one actually has. Also, raised as "nice" girls we are not of course encouraged to ever visualize going after a man's groin or eyes and nose or stomping on a foot or falling down to use the power and leverage of kicking one's legs or even letting our outrage and anger come out verbally and facially to protect ourselves. Since we never rehearse and dwell on such unpleasant scenarios as home invasions or personal attacks the ambush is all the more in the favor of the premeditated attackers!
I learned a lot about myself and other people after my trauma. My body was so hypervigilant and that stayed for some time and yes it subsided but I won't deny even a "moving curtain" especially when I am alone at home can trigger a momentary shiver and memory of that experience after so many years.
I learned that I had been unprotected in terms of apartment security assuming that since my apartment was on the street side of the building and exposed to witnesses I was safe. My interloper had amazing arm strength agility to get through the window he did.
I learned that people can get very angry at a victim of such an experience because it brings the likelihood closer to them and they don't want to acknowledge it. When I was in the lobby of my building and a neighbor asked me how I was doing, another older male neighbor I did not know began screaming at me. My friend and I were stunned at the cruelty and irrationality of it, but it was certainly jarring and enlightening. Also window gates can be expensive and people shared with me some home alternatives, some seemed very ineffective but they had invested faith in them.
I learned that living in an apartment building with other people does not guarantee that if you are in crisis you will be heard and even if you might be heard your screams may not be heeded!!!! I expected the man to back off with all my screaming and he didn't retreat or seem impacted by that in the least. Yes, it was a holiday weekend and people go away, but the building was not empty and my screaming was full out loud and siren-like.
An interesting story, however, some time later I did come through for a fellow tenant. And trust me, for all the years in NYC I do not live in a harrowing daily environment and usually feel serene and safe though I try to be vigilant. I have had my wallet and/or pocketbook stolen twice and it was being overtired and not vigilant enough in a restaurant, once with a friend and once alone. Also was with a friend once in a coffee shop and a good looking young couple -- yuppies if that word is still in use -- came in, sat at the next table, and soon began to have a highly personal argument. My friend and I were embarrassed at the intimate details pouring out of their mouths and soon the girl stomped off and the guy ran after her. My friend's pocketbook was soon found missing and we realized they were grifters who had staged the fight to cause us to willfully try to look like we were not eavesdropping and used that politeness and distraction to rob us. Lili Tomlin once said, "New York is always knowing where your pocketbook is."
Anyway, going back to me helping a neighbor, this neighbor, young, pretty blonde woman who waitressed in the neighborhood, was walking into our entryway in the early evening and a man with a gun pushed her into the lobby as she unlocked the door and demanded her money. She got to let out one blood curdling scream until the gun appeared and she stopped but I dove for my phone and called 9-1-1 immediately. She gave the man a hard time and even kept a wad of cash in her back pocket secretly from him (I think I would have offered it immediately). After calling the police I opened my door to listen, too afraid at first for my own safety to rush down. I yelled down if she was all right and safe and she yelled back he was gone. I ran down to the lobby and began to help her calm down. The cops arrived almost immediately and they took her in their car to drive around and try to find the man. THEY FOUND HIM FARTHER DOWN THE AVENUE AND APPREHENDED HIM THANKS TO HER IDENTIFICATION!!! Turns out he had KILLED a woman he had robbed on 86th street earlier in the day. If the cops hadn't gotten there when they did he would have escaped!!! The fact that the cops had been so close by and that I had immediately dove for the phone and the young woman was feisty and determined to nail the bastard gave this scenario an unusually quick and positive ending!
I also remember an acquaintance whom I shared my drama with on the phone, who was a lawyer, left me dumbfounded when she launched into some new age crap about i must have willed the universe to present this experience to me through my own attitude. I was so shocked and angry at such a lack of empathy I hung up on her in a middle of one of her insulting and condescending sentences. Talk about blaming the victim!
One last thing, the fact that our model mugging boot camp class was made up of a group of women, less than 20 of us, who were all ages (a big range), sizes, personalities, physical abilities, etc., and we all went through 10 days of multiple psychodramas and group discussions on self-empowerment and emerged on the other side with such confidence and gratitude for the experience. A precious gift we were given -- a sense memory of actually rehearsing fighting for our lives physically and emotionally!!!
Thanks for listening to all of this!
best, libby
I'll be back to address more comments, but I'll give you and me a rest from the very long last one to Gerald! :-) Bringing up a lot more memories, this event and its aftermath!
Thanks for your generous and supportive comments.
best, libby
Thanks for your generous and supportive comments.
best, libby
Wait, Libby, You forgot my punctuation lesson.
I remember this one, yet I read it again with the same heart pounding sensation as before, even knowing the ending. Fear can be a gift, what you imagine yourself going through is the same to the brain as going through it, just like athletes and dancers use visualization in addition to practice. Yes, observing the class changed the outcome of a terrible situation and I am so glad it did. I understand about the curtain blowing, trauma it is very much like that, and it can surprise you when it strikes again even years later.
A terrible experience but you've turned it to your advantage, though I know it took time and didn't come easily. Thank you for sharing it again.
A terrible experience but you've turned it to your advantage, though I know it took time and didn't come easily. Thank you for sharing it again.
rita, thanks so much for reading and commenting!
jonathan, thank you! I'm trying to pay an important lesson forward!
Lyle, I remember that narrative tag line! Hah! The Naked City!
jmac! wow. the stories you do and can tell. I am so glad you survived those horrors. what trauma to face down such dangerous and anonymous to a relative degree, anyway, malice. How hard to be in a profession where danger is so omnipresent like the police, though now it is alarming with the police group-think and immunity to "shoot to kill" and ramp up the intimidation and deadly force. Guns are so not the answer as far as I am concerned but what a graphic description of the power of the shotgun. Thanks for responding once again, my friend!
MCS -- thanks so much, my friend!
FM -- so nice to hear from you. thanks. i really had to face down the ongoing denial that such things can't happen to me, only others. it was jarring but forced me to grow stronger.
myriad, thanks so much for validating this piece!
kitd -- thanks for the support!
ande, so grateful I re-posted to get new readers and thanks for support on my more personal writing!
abra, :-) thanks for commenting. I've always appreciated "thrillers" though not horror stories. With this event I got to be inside one for thank God a relatively short time and to escape so relatively quickly and safely. Such a surreal experience. Again, it was so synchronistic having my friend introducing me and role modeling with the rest of the class how to physically deal with an attacker just prior to it happening to me IRL!
bleue, thanks for rereading and the validation. I was visualizing the role-modelling from that class throughout the experience and the repeated advice of those instructors, kind of channeling them almost, and turning over my faith to their promise of the strength of my own wits and body. To trust myself. And to stay in the NOW and not divide my energy and not focus on regret for what I had done wrong and worrying about what might happen. 200% wakefulness it felt like.
Yes, as I said to jmac above, such malice ambushing one, someone willfully going so far across civil boundaries to do one harm, is chilling and traumatizing. I feel like I went through the stages of grief both quickly and then slowly. Immediately after I was angry and wanted him found and kept looking for him in the neighborhood. It felt irrational, that insistence in me and so unrealistic. Wanting justice to be done, someone who violated my sense of daily security and serenity. When I sat in the police station and being asked to name a height of the man I had no confidence in, its exactitude, and then for that one guessed height I was brought thousands of mug shots then I had to exhale and realize the chances of identifying him that way was not likely. That he would not be caught.
I did get awakened in the wee hours of the morning to be picked up by a detective to view a line-up but he wasn't among them. I did have an overly flirty detective at one point who was not being appropriate I felt. A traumatized woman is not someone to flex your ego with I'm thinking.
The writer in me got to witness some out of the ordinary situations.
And finally was the sobering realization that the passage of time would have to help me heal from the distress of both mind and body. Acceptance and respect and appreciation for that as well as the frustration to keep on slowly moving away from the experience.
After it happened I began to hear from others who shared their own harrowing experiences and had kept them to themselves. That helped me, also, bond and share with people about it. As Delia's open call has done for example, now. So great to hear from you again, my friend!
best, libby
jonathan, thank you! I'm trying to pay an important lesson forward!
Lyle, I remember that narrative tag line! Hah! The Naked City!
jmac! wow. the stories you do and can tell. I am so glad you survived those horrors. what trauma to face down such dangerous and anonymous to a relative degree, anyway, malice. How hard to be in a profession where danger is so omnipresent like the police, though now it is alarming with the police group-think and immunity to "shoot to kill" and ramp up the intimidation and deadly force. Guns are so not the answer as far as I am concerned but what a graphic description of the power of the shotgun. Thanks for responding once again, my friend!
MCS -- thanks so much, my friend!
FM -- so nice to hear from you. thanks. i really had to face down the ongoing denial that such things can't happen to me, only others. it was jarring but forced me to grow stronger.
myriad, thanks so much for validating this piece!
kitd -- thanks for the support!
ande, so grateful I re-posted to get new readers and thanks for support on my more personal writing!
abra, :-) thanks for commenting. I've always appreciated "thrillers" though not horror stories. With this event I got to be inside one for thank God a relatively short time and to escape so relatively quickly and safely. Such a surreal experience. Again, it was so synchronistic having my friend introducing me and role modeling with the rest of the class how to physically deal with an attacker just prior to it happening to me IRL!
bleue, thanks for rereading and the validation. I was visualizing the role-modelling from that class throughout the experience and the repeated advice of those instructors, kind of channeling them almost, and turning over my faith to their promise of the strength of my own wits and body. To trust myself. And to stay in the NOW and not divide my energy and not focus on regret for what I had done wrong and worrying about what might happen. 200% wakefulness it felt like.
Yes, as I said to jmac above, such malice ambushing one, someone willfully going so far across civil boundaries to do one harm, is chilling and traumatizing. I feel like I went through the stages of grief both quickly and then slowly. Immediately after I was angry and wanted him found and kept looking for him in the neighborhood. It felt irrational, that insistence in me and so unrealistic. Wanting justice to be done, someone who violated my sense of daily security and serenity. When I sat in the police station and being asked to name a height of the man I had no confidence in, its exactitude, and then for that one guessed height I was brought thousands of mug shots then I had to exhale and realize the chances of identifying him that way was not likely. That he would not be caught.
I did get awakened in the wee hours of the morning to be picked up by a detective to view a line-up but he wasn't among them. I did have an overly flirty detective at one point who was not being appropriate I felt. A traumatized woman is not someone to flex your ego with I'm thinking.
The writer in me got to witness some out of the ordinary situations.
And finally was the sobering realization that the passage of time would have to help me heal from the distress of both mind and body. Acceptance and respect and appreciation for that as well as the frustration to keep on slowly moving away from the experience.
After it happened I began to hear from others who shared their own harrowing experiences and had kept them to themselves. That helped me, also, bond and share with people about it. As Delia's open call has done for example, now. So great to hear from you again, my friend!
best, libby
mark, was ist das deal mit punctuation?
Libby - you should've won that thing! R
(((((marilyn!!!)))))) :-)
this is a gorgeous piece! i don't know what snips are but fuck that shit. you write the way you want to write because what you create is powerful, your descriptions are spot on. your heart is strong. you are a the ultimate survivor. Model Muggling rocks bigtime.
Theodora, thank you so much for such spirited generosity! I love how you talk/write/comment!!! Especially, "i don't know what snips are but fuck that shit ...!!!" Hah!! Thanks for such unconditional support. Makes me want to focus more on personal writing! :-) keep the dial on the courage channel more often! best, libby
NEVER mind, Libby. It's my problem. I have a bad case of over-comma-tization.
Thanks, for Your concern, though.
BTW - As usual Dr.> Bramhall appeared precisely at the right time, AGAIN, and put me into double digit rates; my standard for whether a post meets my expectations/desires.
Thanks, for Your concern, though.
BTW - As usual Dr.> Bramhall appeared precisely at the right time, AGAIN, and put me into double digit rates; my standard for whether a post meets my expectations/desires.
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