Category: Memoir

  • Great Lips

    I met up with him in December of 2024. I wanted to see if I could face him after just short of 15 years, after I’d confronted him in writing privately about the welfare check 14 years previously and after I’d sent him the “My Me Too” blog post as an attempt at closure in 2018. 

    And we had lunch, and I faced him. And I was nervous the entire time. 

    This is an abridged version of the text that poured out of me a week later, when I finally told Jared exactly what had happened:

    “…The FB block is from when I sent him the My Me Too blog post in 2018 I sent it to him via messenger and he blocked me then…. he blocked me then. Hopefully his crappy memory won’t remember and unblock me.

    There’s something else. 

    He forced a very deep kiss on me in the parking deck when he walked me to my car after lunch Wednesday. I was going to kiss him on the cheek after hugging him but there was literally zero time…. None. All of a sudden there was tongue in my mouth. Deep almost in my throat. For like 2 minutes because he was holding me tight. I was clear instantly getting in the car that it wasn’t consensual. 

    It wasn’t consensual– I wasn’t interested in cheating on you. I was ready to go and not look back. I’d gotten anxious in the restaurant. He invited me to his room and I told him no. I used you as an excuse as we left our table at the restaurant– there were people at the table right next to us and I said, “No, I don’t think Jared would like that.”…

    We should probably both get tested for STI’s because he’s had throat cancer due to HPV. He told me about the throat cancer on Wednesday and when I said I was sorry to hear it, he said, “It’s okay, I deserve it.” It wasn’t until Thursday morning that he told me it was due to HPV and that people called him a “dirty dog”– his words– for “swapping bodily fluids with too many people.”

    In the parking deck I told him that you can track my phone, before the forced kiss. On Thursday when I messaged him…..to tell him I was there, he saw my phone in my lap, and said, “I thought you might not have your phone with you.” It didn’t occur to me at the time but I realized later that he thought I might have left my phone elsewhere so that you wouldn’t know where I was. I didn’t tell him that I’d told you exactly where I was going….

    It was not my intention to be unfaithful to you at all. I needed to face him. I needed to see exactly for myself that I wasn’t wrong about 26 years ago– I needed to prove to myself that I wasn’t wrong in my memories from November 12, 1998 and that I was strong enough to face him…..

    I didn’t lie on Facebook, either– even with all that, he was so much more appropriate than I thought he might be….”

    There was a lot more to that text documentation that is saved so many places at this point. 

    And I don’t know the words that Jared had with him in the aftermath, but I do know I crumbled, and for months I became hypervigilant, and immediately I became concerned about HPV exposure and visited my doctors and the dentist for exams as best they can do (since there aren’t actual screening mechanisms for oral HPV itself unless it becomes symptomatic)….. 

    And I won’t lie, even in the midst of the psychosis of last Spring that set up in the aftermath of all this, I had the wherewithall to schedule a complete hysterectomy and ovary removal because I was worried not only about future throat cancer, it occurred to me that I’d been involved with this guy 22-27 years previously and I was concerned about the cancers that can happen after STI exposure from decades previously. And sure enough there was significant fibrosis and scar tissue when my surgeon got in there, and I have no idea what silent diseases I dealt with in my younger years that would have caused all that, though my surgeon assures me that future cancer risk in my pelvis and abdomen is low becuase she got all the fibrosis and there was no cancer in the pathology from the organs that were removed. 

    And I did actually have quite the extended low-key psychosis last Spring in the aftermath of that season of contact. And in predictable fashion, when I was in the vulnerable season of surgical recovery, as I emerged from that psychosis, I thought, surely I must have been wrong in December. Which is how October happened. 

    And I know throat cancer takes decades to develop. But every time I get a wierd sore throat, I think about it. 

    I did tell him that I was worried that he’d exposed me to his HPV. He tried to tell me “you know that’s not how that works,” gaslighting me. That’s exactly how that can work, even if it may not have been how he probably acquired it himself. 

    Great lips is the title of this post. “Great lips,” were his exact words, his only words other than “Goodbye,” after he shoved his tongue down my throat.

    I was simply an object to him. Not a person with feelings, not a person he had a history with who he might have had a duty to respect, due to the history if nothing else.

    But my assumption that any sort of regard for any history is built on my utter inability to fathom that a person might simply feel that level of cold indifference to anyone, much less someone they’d known for well over 25 years in whatever capacity the history was. 

    And it’s April of 2026 now and the seasons of renewed contact proved to me that no, even in the midst of my unwellness in 2010, I was quite on target that November of 1998 was indeed the sexual assault I’d identified it as in 2010, and that yes, the school-girl fantasy request of October of 2025 proved that indeed, all I was to him was a school-girl fantasy object fulfilled for an extended period of time. A literal object useful for my youth relative to his own age. 

    And honestly, the reframing that I’ve done in my own mind since October of 2025— the going over and over in my brain not only the recent history of 2024 and 2025 but also the entirety of my memories from 1998 to 2003…..

    It’s been devastatingly sobering and utterly heartbreaking to realize that in all that history, I was literally an object for consumption to that man for an awfully long time. No more, no less.

    And even though for the rest of my life I will worry about throat cancer, I am grateful for these seasons of recent contact. I have learned a lot about trusting myself throughout these exercises. I have learned that indeed, I made the best choice in 2003. I have learned that I have a marriage stronger than any other marriage I know. I have learned that I am ready to move forward and live in the present. I have learned that yes; I am strong. I have learned that it is true: when someone tells you exactly who they are in both words and actions, believe them. I have remembered that there is evil in the world, and I have remembered that I do not have to punish myself by being present with that evil. 

    I have learned that I have a great life; I am learning currently that there is a whole lifetime of opportunity in healing; I have learned that the best justice possible is for me to enjoy my life knowing that he will never, ever, ever know the depth of richness of relationships and love that I have in my life; he simply doesn’t have the capacity for comprehension of the types of goodness I come in contact with daily in the amazingly beautiful souls I am fortunate to live with, much less know in my communities around me. 

    Yes, trauma has hurt. Yes, trauma will continue to hurt. And yes, I am grateful for this path that I am on, that I will continue to explore because in learning to heal, I learn a little more every day about love and the type of person I want to be. 

  • Twenty-One Years

    Photo by Virginia Hall. Re-edits by me.

    The view in this photograph doesn’t exist anymore.

    And I suppose anniversaries can be like that, too.

    This photo is standing close to the arch at Epworth-By-The-Sea at St. Simons Island. We are standing facing the arch, with Virginia facing those beautiful Live Oaks in the background.

    Standing in this very spot now, there are condos in the background now in 2026 where there was only woods in 2005.

    Not all progress is positive. Even if I am a curmudgeon about progress in general, especially when it mostly only benefits rich people.

    Today was not an easy day. I have been really sick (thus the COVID test picture and post that went viral on Facebook, from the other post– last check there were over 309,800 views on that post).

    Today was our 21st anniversary, and I always get extremely anxious on special days.

    And, Jared had taken the day off (and tomorrow) to be with me all day, and Jared got called into work for an emergency. Which I didn’t mind later in the moment.

    But as typical for special occasions, there were fights last night.

    I got scared because Aquaguard came to inspect our crawlspace encapsulation, and this kid that graduated with Porter, who probably hasn’t even been on the job very long at all, tried to tell just that there are problems with our foundation.

    And, there very well might be problems. But probably not to the extent that the kid tried to scare us into buying a solution into. We will hire an independent structural engineer company when we have funds to do so. There are no external signs that there are problems, and with our house being 32 years old, these “issues” may have gone unnoticed for years upon years.

    And that sent me into a spiral of feeling like crap about being unemployable, and I posted a not very wise Facebook post that I have since archived, after Jared and I had been fighting for hours, about 11 PM last night.

    And I woke Jared up after crying myself to sleep at about 2:30 AM, and Jared hadn’t been asleep very long himself at that point.

    So, we were not set up for a very good day together.

    The day was not a loss; we had a lovely time at Gallery Row for lunch.

    But there was more fighting later in the day.

    I have high expectations for special days like anniversaries, and I’m hoping to tone them down for future events so as to not cause problems like happened today.

    But now that the day is over, I can calm down, and we can go back to real life.

    It is Easter weekend, and I am still really not feeling well– I finally called a Telehealth urgent care on Tuesday and got an antibiotic for the secondary sinus infection I have developed. But I’m still far from 100%.

    We may not make it to Good Friday service at church like planned, and I’m hoping for a better next couple of days than the past couple of days.

    I suppose having had 21 anniversaries at this point, there was bound to be a hard day mixed in somewhere.

    Neither of us even made the joke that our marriage is old enough to drink today.

  • It’s Just a Toe

    On January 21, I had a permanent matrixectomy on my left big toe. And for eight weeks and two days, I completely avoided posting any public pictures of that toe– it was gross.

    But Friday morning, March 20, I woke up and saw when I looked at my feet that there was no 1/2 inch square scab in the bottom left hand corner as had been there the night before, when I went to sleep.

    So, bored on Friday afternoon, I took the above photo with my phone, and captioned it this on Facebook:

    “It took 1 day shy of exactly two months for my gimpy toe to have the 1/2 inch square scab to fall off, apparently in one fell swoop overnight. My toe feels no different, and I didn’t feel it happen, but my big toe looks so weird without a nail or anything there even though I’ve known for 2 months this was the goal.

    To me it looks like I just have pink fingernail polish on that one toe.

    I spared y’all all the photos I took of the gore as it was in progress over the past two months— it was really gross especially about the 2-week mark. But I couldn’t resist this one.”

    And I thought nothing more about it, until I saw on Saturday that the post had 20k something views.

    As of this writing, Monday afternoon March 23, that post has had 73,212 views.

    The lone negative comment was that I needed clean my shoe, which if anybody knows anything about Birkenstocks, that is a nonissue.

    And honesty time: Had I known that that photo was going to go mini-viral: I would have gotten out the good camera. I would have trimmed on that second toe which is not quite straight with its nail, where the right side of the nail skims upwards slightly. I would have gotten the green strap from my physical therapy off the coffee table behind my foot. I would have probably, yes, worn different shoes or better yet, no shoe at all.

    It’s just a toe, people.

    But it is pretty funny that a stadium or two’s worth of people find it fascinating to look at a toe without a toenail.

    I posted the following as part of the comments:

    “Since people seem to like this post, the back story: This toenail had been giving me ingrown problems at that top left corner since I was 13 years old, and had become fungal to the point it had stopped growing over a year ago. It was so thick that I could no longer cut it at all myself. At age 46, I said enough and went to the podiatrist for a matrixectomy. I did try the prescription anti fungal lacquer and Vicks and ketoconazole cream prior to giving up. 

    I am extremely squeamish about people messing with my toes and especially my toenails. I told my doctor about my phobia, and she was very compassionate both with local anesthesia and patient with me. My doctor was great, and the whole procedure after insurance (admittedly, we do have good insurance) cost about $346 out of pocket. 

    I took Tylenol for the first two days but after that needed no pain meds, and I did have to wear flip flops (not these Birks) in the dead of winter (procedure was January 21) for a long time, and in awkward social situations at times. 

    But, for a lifetime of not having to deal with that toenail anymore….100% worth it.”

    Thankfully, most comments have been kind; a few people have shared their own feet or tips for future use as my foot settles.

    But really, people. It’s just a toe.

    Fediverse reactions

  • More Spilling Over

    In 2001 or 2002, I found a video of another girl engaged in acts with him, filmed from his vantage point. It was filmed in the house of his, the house I was in when I found it. The girl appeared to be about my age, and she had my hair color. He didn’t appear but I heard his voice. 

    That is why I think there might be video of me out there somewhere. 

    There were other patterns, with me, back in the day. He interrupted movies we were watching at the oddest times to guide me to his bedroom. He always, always had either the “Sleepless in Seattle” soundtrack or Elton John’s “Love Songs” CD playing when we were together in his bedroom. Usually things went on just long enough for the entire CD to play. The decor of the room, in retrospect, was nonexistent, which would have made the setting unidentifiable. There was literally nothing on the walls, there was no headboard on the bed, there was literally nothing about that room that had any personality at all.

    And I had no idea at the time, at age 20, that music could be used for grooming. It worked; for the rest of my life, I will think back to that time whenever I hear any one of those songs. I have spent the past 26 years doing my very own desensitization therapy of sorts, listening to those songs over and over as I am able to handle it, to be able to listen to any of those songs without throwing myself into a melancholic, longing funk. 

    And that’s all I have to say about that, today. 

  • February 3, 2011

    Detail of a 2011 Blogger template by Skincorner, featuring artwork by Amai, from the header of my blog at the time.

    “I’m determined to salvage the comfortingly wonderful customs from my heritage while, for lack of a better term, “taking out the trash,” so to speak. Example: Karo syrup makes a really good, easy topping for breads when mashed up with butter on a fork. Fantastic taste to that. However, eat too much of it, and I know I’ll have a heart attack. It’s all in the moderation. I have bipolar disorder and PTSD and I struggle with massive doses of anxiety. Generally, though, I am a pretty happy person. Except when I’m not. :) It’s pretty much just like that. And then I feel like the world is caving in. But the good news for you is that if you know me, unless you spend a lot of time and I really let you in, you won’t have to deal with any of it. Because I put on a really good cover and generally don’t let many people close. I’m slow to trust people right now. Otherwise, I’m mommy to two really funny little boys. They keep Jared and me really busy. My living room is overrun with matchbox cars and little boy-sized desks and chairs.”

    This was the “about” box on my very first blog.

    I finally got up the courage to go scouting through archive.org to look at old blog posts that are now defunct. I pulled this “about” quote from my blog as it was on February 3, 2011.

    And I can unpack quite a lot that goes unsaid between the lines now, 15 years later.

    And it is still, indeed true, 15 years later, that despite living what appears to be a fairly transparent existence online, it is true that I let remarkably few people close (pretty much 1 to be exact), especially in person, and I have learned indeed to put on a really, really great cover.

    In that paragraph, I hear the angst in my writing. I hear the quiet despondency and horror of having had my social sphere knocked out from under me just the year prior.

    On February 3, 2011, Porter would have been four and a half and Liam would have been not quite three. We were indeed in the thick of it with two very funny little boys. I was in no way prepared to give them the attention they deserved.

    In 2011, the world was falling apart in just about every way possible.

    And so, in 2011, the boys went to daycare despite me not working.

    Jared kept all of us going, day and night.

    I had visions of a “Mommy Blog,” and was not-so-quietly desperate to get back to some semblance of a professional life.

    And for sure, whatever beginnings of a social life we’d had the year prior was long gone. Church was kind but most people were distant.

    I was taking on the full identity of “sick Caroline.” And, quietly dying, horrified and terror-filled, inside.

    And in that paragraph above, I was trying to not betray that any one bit of that was actually happening.

    Over the next little while, I’m going to revisit some of those old posts, with updated commentary.

    February of 2011 was the quiet beginning of a new sort of lifestyle: a different kind of childhood for my boys than I imagined, a different sort of marriage dynamic than I’d imagined.

    A different kind of life than I’d grown up dreaming about.

    And it’s been beautiful in its own way. Arguably, my boys had a more present mother because of that season of life.

    And if I could go back and tell the girl, who probably drafted that “about” paragraph in between sobbing episodes, anything at all, it would be this:

    Those two little boys that you worry about: they will grow up to be stellarly wonderful men in spite of whatever shortcomings you have. That man you married, that man that you feel growing ever distant with the stress of life right now: this marriage that is being tested is going to find its own comfortable peace and that man is your safe haven. And the career days may very well be done, and that will always hurt. And you, dear girl, your tears are not in vain. There’s a beauty in the growth going on right now. Do not lose hope.

    That is what I would tell my 15 years’ younger self today. Because it is the same thing I can tell myself today, in 2026.