I figured out today that anti-woman shit is a trigger. 

I mean, sexism and misogyny have always bothered me. I've written plenty of articles about how law and media intersect with being a woman. But now... post-rape, I feel like everything sexist is so much more personal. I notice more.

For example, I went to a Christmas party yesterday (yes, I managed to get out of the house). It was a house party with my boyfriend's coworkers--and somewhat of an odd dynamic. Gabe is a public school English teacher. The department chair is a woman, Elizabeth, and she invited everyone over for a holiday party at her home. "Everyone" really meant Elizabeth's best friend Monica, a group of male teachers, and their female attachments. 

As an aside, all of these teachers are white. They also teach for the poorest, most "ethnically diverse" (read: Black and Hispanic) school in the county. That's another issue altogether.

At any rate. after eating (boys first to the buffet, as always), the eight male teachers crowded around the TV. There weren't any chairs left in the living room, so Elizabeth, Monica, one of the teachers' fiancees Samantha, and myself were left in the kitchen. 

At one point, one of the guys wanted to flip the channel. He called to Elizabeth, who was a whole room over, to grab him the remote that was literally a foot away from him. 

One week and one day ago I was released from the mental hospital.

Before I went, I thought of the hospital like a punishment. Sort of like, "you don't have good enough control over your mental health, so we're going to throw you in a straight jacket and lock you up permanently."

Girl, Interrupted was the extent of my mental hospital knowledge. 

It really wasn't as bad as I thought it'd be. I was admitted to a partial hospitalization program (PHP), which meant that I'd do intensive therapy for the course of a work day, but then be able to go home and sleep in my own bed. 

For the sake of this blog, we'll call my institution "Golden Fields."

It's a relatively long story as to how I ended up at Golden, so I'll make it brief.

Of all the reasons I was at Golden, this was the most obvious. Last spring, I was attacked by a very-drunk old friend (like, 14-drinks-in-drunk). I was walking him to his car trying to convince him to grab an Uber when he grabbed me, threw me into his back seat, and proceeded to both sodomize and vaginally rape me. ​