Ask Lemmy

(Primary Sources by Corrine Manning, Continued part 3, CW: mentions of assault):’

2. A journal entry for the same date with two sentences: “He turned out to be creepy.” And, “He wouldn’t let me sleep.”

The morning after the assault I left his flat and began to head towards school. It didn’t seem so bad. It was cold outside. My chin, where he hit me, felt chapped and swollen. I walked past a man in a business suit and he looked at my chin, looked at me. I felt filthy. I wrapped my scarf higher so that it covered my chin. At a crosswalk I pulled ginger from my bag (I don’t remember buying this). I peeled back a part of the brown skin and took a bite. It was supposed to be good for indigestion, and I felt nauseous. It was supposed to be good for breath. When I arrived at King’s Cross there were twenty or thirty men in business suits staring at the tube map. I joined them. The train wasn’t running. ​ I don’t remember this. I have constructed this, pieced it together; an effort even to use the word assault. In my primary resource, the Word document, I wrote “we all looked at the map to try to figure the way to go.” The station was closed. I remember I walked to school. I hid in the library for two hours before class started. I didn’t want anything to eat. I don’t remember class or if anyone commented on my face. Susan! Look at Susan!

Dr. Herman is gentle in her approach of dissociation. She makes it clear that it would be surprising if people didn’t use similar techniques to reduce their perception of trauma. ​“This altered state of consciousness,” she says, “might be one of nature’s small mercies. Protection against unbearable pain.” It’s really beautiful. Lots of times I don’t want to come back. When I’ve thought about the assault too much, on days when it’s the only thing on my mind, the moment of disengagement isn’t noticed but welcome. My muscles become loose and heavy. Whatever enables emotion breaks away and drops somewhere toward the bottom of my body. I feel calm and blank. Thoughts are slippery and don’t stay for long. Whatever was upsetting or reminding me is deflected and I can drift easily into a warm and sudden sleep. The downside that Dr. Herman has found is that the more powerful these altered states become, the more difficult it is to process the event preventing the integration necessary for healing. To heal is to bring into words what once existed as non-verbal. ​ Superheroes can’t heal, but can they dissociate? Every day they use the power they have to remember what happened to them. The use of their power alone keeps them present, pushes them back, back, back to that traumatic event. ​The Thing’s physical form is representative of his trauma, his difference, his extraordinary separation from society. Every time he uses his strength, every time the Human Torch converts himself into flame, every time Mr. Fantastic loosens his body, stretches, shrinks, they are reminded of the atomic rays and the crash. Despite the rage the Thing feels, he will still be the Thing. My brother was forced to confront his attack because of the public nature of it. There is a scar on the back of his head where hair won’t grow that everyone asks about. When he walks down the street in a way that assures no one will mess with him, he is reminded of the event. Every time he contorts his face, he does not forget why. ​What is painful to associate we dissociate. We restrict our ability to interpret the experience, thereby limiting the experiences we even allow ourselves to have.

Because when it happens, an uppercut, you apologize for the sound your teeth make against each other, for the fact that you only knew the term uppercut and didn't know this, that it felt; that you can say the word without mentioning chin, jaw, friction, quiet. And that he thinks your breath is shallow, and so does not let you slip away anymore (Of course you can remember his voice “Your breath is getting shallow”), and wakes you whenever you so blissfully do because he does not want you to die, even though you have decided, just moments ago that it might be preferable. Not self pity, just a simple stirring inside that accepts “I'd rather not” like cheese on top of pasta, a trip to the pool. I'd rather not. ​Just as when walking down the street afterwards everyone who looks at you can see through the knitting of the scarf and can run their tongues along that bruise, that swelling. Every man you see knows what has happened and every man you see is suddenly more likely to do it, quicker than before because you are nothing, you are rotting and spoiled. And like that, you are gone. As if time and space were broken and she went off somewhere else. The first moment of leaving the body comes fast as it always will, but soon you will come to depend on it like water in the glass, your mouth to the tap. Lots of times I don’t want to come back. ​I said, “I’m sorry.” I went to sleep. I waited until he left the room to dress. I waited until he came back to leave. I did not fight. You made your point, take my wallet. I walked to the university, I waited in the library for class to start. I went to class. I do not remember class. I apparently wrote a document on my computer and saved it as “It.” I remember getting into bed and sleeping for a long time.

“Sue! You’ve Done it! You created a shield of invisible energy! The radiation from my nuclear measuring device must have increased your power, Sue! But your shield is still too thin! Try to create a stronger one, hon! A thicker shield of invisible energy! Concentrate! That’s right!! You’re getting it!” “Oh, Reed… This is Wonderful! Your theory was right! My invisibility is a form of energy, and once I learn to control it, I can turn it into a protective screen!” Fantastic Four (Issue #33)

If I were a hero I might approach this differently. If I were a hero, this would be the story, the way a Fanboy might tell it: After her assault her mind began functioning in strange and fantastic ways! Not only were most physical moments of the event concealed to her, but she suddenly had the ability to leave her body whenever something threatened her. These bits of information fueled her on a quest for the truth! She used her ability to move deeply, in and out of situations most humans don’t have the courage to go. ​If I were a hero, that might be how the story would go. The closer I get to the truth, hauling the rock toward the surface, the more I want to pull away from it, drop it. The closer I get to the truth the less I believe it. It’s not so bad, I tell myself. It really isn’t so bad. There is a difference between the ability and the hero. I am not a hero. There are questions I will refuse to answer. ​I have a document entitled “It” that I don’t remember writing. I remember a fist against my jaw. I remember him waking me, just as I would fall asleep. I don’t know how many times. I don’t know what time it was. I don’t know how long it lasted. It is unclear what I can believe— if I am the manifestation of that experience. Dissociation is a passive thing, one of nature’s small mercies. As if time and space were broken. Like a girl in a trance. Prevents the integration necessary for healing. Feeling her plight is helpless, Sue Storm becomes visible again.

(End)

(Primary Sources by Corrine Manning, Continued part 2. CW: mentions of assault)

The Fantastic Four were humans first. They were four humans, Reed, Sue, Johnny and Ben, who were particularly devoted to their country. They took it upon themselves to try to beat the Russians in the space race, but when building the ship they failed to consider the effect the atmosphere’s cosmic rays would have on it, let alone on their own bodies. When the ship crash-landed they all had fantastic abilities: Reed, to stretch (Mr. Fantastic!) and Johnny , to burst into flames (The Human Torch!). It’s the last two, Sue and Ben, that I find particularly interesting. Sue now had the ability to become invisible (Invisible Girl), and Ben was transformed into an orange monster with incredible strength (The Thing). Even though the four pledged to use their power to help mankind, there’s something about Ben and Sue that feels different. Initially, Invisible Girl’s ability is useful for intellectual purposes but also seems like the highest form of self protection—to disappear. And Ben, The Thing, loses all recognizable human features, making him distinctly different from the others. The transformation leaves him frustrated and hostile. Unlike the other three who can blend into the human race, The Thing can’t. He is visibly stuck outside of it, which results in moments of fantastic rage. “Well maybe they’re right! Maybe I am a monster!”

He shouted: told her to leave it alone.

Then people will look at you and think, Oh boy, she’s crazy, I’m not messing with her. No one will mess with you.

Sue’s difference within the group goes beyond gender: her abilities changed and strengthened over time. Initially, her powers were ridiculous, useless. Even when under the protection of invisibility she could be made visible from someone touching her. Her power does very little to deter Miracle Man or the Submariner, villains who use her to get to the others.

“Ah! I thought so!! It’s a human! An invisible Human!”

“Oh!”

“Stop struggling! No one can escape Prince Namor.”

Seeing that her plight is helpless, Sue Storm becomes visible again.

Issue #4 The Sub Mariner.

“Too bad invisible girl!! It won’t work! I know you’re there! Become visible! The Miracle Man commands you!! Ahh! That’s more like it! And you must obey me!! I am your Master!! Signal the other member of the Fantastic Four!! I shall defeat them forever, here and now!!”

Like a girl in a trance, Susan Storm aims her small flare pistol into the sky, And…

Issue #3 Miracle Man

In the Submariner’s case, Sue’s defensive invisibility is active. To be passive, for Sue Storm, is to be visible—to give in to her visibility. Dr. Judith Lewis Herman affirms that though most hypnotic states come about from a place of choice, traumatic trancelike states do not. Celeste, the nun, even in the joy that she experiences within her disassociated states, complained that they were often “inopportune.”

[ T]hey had increased in frequency (occurring about once a week) and duration (lasting anywhere from a few seconds to several minutes) and she felt less able to prevent their onset at inopportune times or to snap herself out of this state when necessary.

​Though a sense of calm can settle on the body, there’s also something frustrating in the acknowledgement that what’s triggering the response doesn’t deserve the response. As in, sometimes it comes from a friendly hand at the center of my back, a misunderstood phrase, or even a moment that requires intense concentration, when I’m just on the brink of figuring something out. In these moments, the more I want the state to end the longer it holds. There is something to be said here about memory— what we can recall and how we can use it. You don’t have to believe me but here’s what I can say, that for most events and situations I have a good memory, an ability to remember what is said in a conversation, the gestures someone else makes. Like anyone, there are places where I fail, moments when my experience does not seem to be chronicled or digested by my consciousness. According to Freudian psychoanalysts, consciousness is something passive. We naturally bring experience into our consciousness. It is an effort to keep consciousness and experience separate. Freud uses the example of a beach ball being held underwater, and that once it’s under, muscular defenses have to remain to maintain it, because naturally, experience and consciousness want to become one. It happened so suddenly, all by itself. Herbert Fingarette and Donnel Stern assert that consciousness might not be as passive as we think. We actually have to coax our consciousness to digest our experience. To, as Stern puts it, “haul up a rock from the bottom.” Dissociation is not, in that sense, defensive. It is the personality’s last resort, when all other defensive measures have been overwhelmed. Seeing that her plight is helpless, Sue Storm becomes visible again. We only know what we can express through language, and its through language that the dissociated pieces can be reconstructed and placed together again, free of trauma and full of a new meaning. Through language we develop the ability to “correctly” process the event, to haul the rock upward. We must, Fingarette says, “conceive consciousness as active, not passive. It is something we ‘do.’ We are ‘doers,’ and consciousness is the exercise of a skill.” ​ Reed: Just as I thought! You have greater powers of invisibility than you suspect, Sue! The problem is… How do you learn to control those powers? Fantastic Four Issue #22

London, January 2004

Dissociation is the inability to reflect on an experience. I am a secondary source. I have two primary sources.

1. A document saved as “It” that is dated, what I assume to be the day after my assault January 27th, 2004 (which I didn’t access until June 28th, 2008). I do not remember writing this despite the fact that I recognize it as my own writing. This document contains physical details that I don’t remember and in some cases do not believe. What I wrote gives the sense of flickering in and out. Even then, the events of the night come in the form of questions:

“Did I choose to sleep through it? Did I really wake up when I felt his fist knock against my jaw? Did I really apologize for the sound my teeth made?” Somehow the cosmic rays have altered your atomic structure…

(Cont.)

It’s called Primary Sources by Corrine Manning. Cant find it online so here you go, separated into a few comments. CW: mentions of assault

“Susan! Look at Susan!!”

“What’s wrong?”

“You’re –Gasp- Fading Away!”

“Oh, No!! No!!”

“Somehow the cosmic rays have altered your atomic structure…making you grow invisible!”

“How… how long will it last?”

“There’s no way of knowing!!”

“Wha—what if she never gets visible again??”

“Look! I see her.”

“I’m myself again! It happened so suddenly…all by itself!”

Fantastic Four Issue #1

​ Dissociation is a super power marked by an exceptional gift of grace and control: to exit a situation and to still be physically present; to seem present to those around you and on top of you, but to not actually be there. To be able to observe with a cool distance—the physical attack is not you, in fact you may be able watch it, slow and distort time; remember only what seems useful to remember. You may leave all together. You may commune with the gods. And when it’s practiced correctly, the proprietor of the skill doesn’t need to even initialize it. It moves like a response, a highly tuned reflex. The situation might be the cause, but disassociation is the solution. With what is lost comes something gained.

​It was the blizzard of ’96. It was 3 am. ​Say that you’re on your way to pick him up, my mom said. ​Pat, my father said, tell him I’m going to pick him up. I didn’t recognize then that he was talking to my brother’s roommate. Pat, at that moment, could have been anyone. My dad turned and looked at my mom. He says he doesn’t want me to, says he’s fine. My dad has a very clear, open face that never gives away what he’s actually feeling. He keeps the same expression on his face most of the time whether he’s angry or sad. His eyes were pink then and his jaw bone pulsed under the skin of his cheek. He is a master of control and caution. On the morning my brother was jumped he could get by with grinding his teeth.

​In a case study with a Mexican nun named Celeste, Rebecca Lester, an anthropologist, learned the following: Celeste turned to me and said, ‘Rebe, do you ever feel like you’re not where you are?’ I asked her what she meant. ‘I mean, do you ever kind of go away from yourself? […] She then went on to describe experiences she had been having for over a year where she felt as if she were leaving her body, ‘as if time and space were broken’ and she ‘went off somewhere else’: It’s like all of a sudden it gets difficult to hear what’s going on around me, kind of like when you’re under water, and I know I’m about to have one of these experiences…It’s so peaceful. It’s really beautiful. Lots of times I don’t want to come back.

​ ​At some point all humans long for at least one of these abilities: to transform, to flee, and to alter. Most of the time these qualities seem completely unobtainable, the stuff of superpowers. A superpower can be any ability that is somehow above and beyond normal human ability. Celeste survived two attempted rapes, both when she was a young child. When Celeste would dissociate she felt certain she was communing with God. Comic Theorist Bradford W. Wright notes that the main draw to superheroes is the hope that a life altering ability lies within the every day American. We feel rage against injustice, and we want to believe that we’ll act when offered the chance, that we will use whatever skills we have to do what the hero should do. We might not even know what this skill is but we want to believe it’s waiting in us—waiting in everyone, waiting for the trigger. ​ “Well Maybe they’re right. Maybe I am a monster!” The Thing

My brother is a large guy but his face has gnome-like features. It was early morning when he walked through the door with my father. There was a bandage on the back of his head. He looked at me and my mother and seemed annoyed. When my mom explained to me that he had been jumped, beaten and robbed she speculated on why he was the one. What was it about him? My brother wasn’t out yet. He looked at us as if he knew this was what our conversation had been about. ​My mom got up and hugged him but he didn’t hug back. She started to pull at the bandage on his head and he shoved her away. ​He shouted: told her to leave it alone. ​I’m your mother! My brother stiffened and looked off into the room while my mom pulled back the bandage. I moved around the side of the room to see it. I didn’t need to move as quietly as I did, my brother wasn’t really there. The gash stretched across the back of his head, was bloody, swollen. I could see the staples squeezing the flesh together. I didn’t mean to say it, but it came out too quickly. Are you okay? My brother didn’t look at anyone. He laughed.

This is how I remember my brother telling me the story of that night: All the public transportation was shut down, and it was a full moon, and not so cold out. It was 1 or 2 am, but I’ve done that walk before at that time. It was so beautiful out, the snow was so high on either side of me and the moon was just glowing down. That’s where I screwed up. I relaxed. I heard some voices, and then I heard swishy pants running behind me. I didn’t turn around in time. (The sudden switch to present tense.) That’s when they started hitting me with the pipes. There are two of them. They just keep hitting me and you can look at them and realize they are probably 13. I’m down on the ground, curled up. They don’t know what they are doing. I manage to get my hand in my pocket and pull out my wallet and then I say ‘Okay, you’ve made your point. Take my wallet now.’ Then they ran away, like, skipping away and they shouted, we did it, we did it! I was probably their first one. I was totally wet and at first I thought it was from the snow, or from sweat but it was my blood. (It had soaked through two sweaters and three t shirts.) I walked home and I was counting the steps. Just trying to get home. I couldn’t stop thinking about how they had my address. That they were going to burn down my house.

​We sat for a while after that, watching TV.
​It’s like, I don’t even care about that. The thing that drives me crazy is how everyone keeps asking me if I’m okay. What am I supposed to say to them?

You don’t say anything to anyone. You don’t even need to tell them about it. No one needs to know, it won’t serve them. Every superpower has its downside. In the case of dissociation, the panic that should come in the moment, waits, comes other times, comes when it’s not necessary—can take over even if you’re not threatened. So just be still. You will feel something, sometimes, but often you won’t be able to tell what happened and what didn’t. What happened and in what order.

My brother was home for two weeks. On one of the last days I walked by the bathroom. My brother was looking at himself in the mirror and told me to join him. ​I stood next to him and faced the mirror. In the reflection I couldn’t tell if we looked alike. I made my face calm to look like his. We both stood there, looking like our father. ​He told me that I had to learn how to look and walk. He pushed his dark eyebrows closer to his eyes and his cheeks rose in response. He managed to spread his eyelids open wide. He clenched his jaw. I laughed. He released the face. ​Do it. So I did. He is nine years older and back then I still followed his direction. ​He told me to make it angrier, to look like someone’s just messed with me and I killed them, like I might kill the next person who bumped into me. We laughed at my face. This is what you have to do. Then people will look at you and think, Oh boy, she’s crazy, I’m not messing with her. No one will mess with you.

(Cont.)

Hmm I’ll try harder to find it after work, struggling to find it during my break. I read it in a creative writing class. The theme explored dissociation as a “super power”, how useful it can be when you have control contrasted with the struggle of losing control. There are several references to popular shows/movies, one example being the Invisible Woman. Some exploration of gender roles and sexism.

It’s driving me nuts that I cant find it haha. I may resort to downloading Canvas again to see if the old files are still available.

Just mr krabs