{"id":2050,"date":"2017-10-17T20:42:05","date_gmt":"2017-10-17T20:42:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/arielsheen.com\/?p=2050"},"modified":"2017-10-26T17:27:08","modified_gmt":"2017-10-26T17:27:08","slug":"beautyispain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arielsheen.com\/index.php\/2017\/10\/17\/beautyispain\/","title":{"rendered":"Reflections on a Former Lover\u2019s Suicide in the Context of #MeToo"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

Recently\u00a0I\u00a0learned that a\u00a0former significant other of mine\u00a0committed suicide. While fifteen years had passed since we were an item and in that time we\u2019d drifted apart,\u00a0I still found myself profoundly affected by this news. Especially so as something that to a large extent defined and lead to the destruction of our relationship\u00a0suddenly became something that wasn’t taboo to discuss.<\/p>\n

Given the aims of\u00a0#metoo and it’s importance for helping to\u00a0initiate conversations\u00a0that lead to policy\u00a0solutions which stop the culture of rape in America, I decided to write\u00a0a memoriam that would\u00a0add to the conversation. Lest it seem I’m taking liberties with someone else story, I’ll point out I’m only speaking with the same\u00a0openness that Krystal modeled in the descriptions of her\u00a0struggles with mental and physical health and substance usage for years on her<\/a> blog<\/a> (NSFW) and on her\u00a0social media accounts. What follows is thus\u00a0a\u00a0long format rendition of\u00a0her #metoo story, from my perspective, that I hope will not only give evidence for the need for more action to be taken to prevent rape and give appropriate support to those that have been assaulted.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Shade Going Through the Field of Time<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

*<\/strong><\/p>\n

The first time I heard Krystal say\u00a0the phase Beauty is pain<\/strong>\u00a0was to explain something to me was when we were getting ready to go out to a goth club.<\/p>\n

We were together in her bedroom at her parent\u2019s house. The door was open. I was 18, she 16. I helped her tie up a black, lacy imitation-whalebone corset.\u00a0She said that in the context of explaining how my concern over drawing the strings tight that she\u00a0have difficulty breathing\u00a0was unnecessary. \u201cBeauty is pain,”\u00a0<\/strong>she half gasped half said due\u00a0to the pressure, “and I want my bust to\u00a0look it’s best for you tonight.<\/strong> Tighten it more.\u00a0So I can barely breathe, that’s fine. My boobs will<\/em> look banging.\u201d<\/p>\n

We\u2019d then only been dating a few weeks, so at the time I thought that Beauty is Pain<\/strong>\u00a0was merely a witty comment of hers. Krystal was quick,\u00a0perceptive and had a way with words. But during our brief relationship I came to realize that there was something more to this phrase. She\u2019d repeat it in a number of different contexts, like it was a mantra, like it was a logic ever present in making itself felt in human existence.\u00a0That night, however, I didn\u2019t pick up the fullness of what all she meant by it.<\/p>\n

I was reminded of this all\u00a0a\u00a0few days after I\u2019d learned of the news of her suicide. I tried logging into an old email account I hadn\u2019t used in ages\u00a0and, sure enough, was granted access. I\u00a0re-read the pages and pages of emails – something that now seems strange to say in this texting age – and a flood of memories came back from when we were teenagers. Most\u00a0of our epistles concerns the\u00a0\u00a0stereotypical topics you’d expect of adolescents, but there was another current beyond the banal and the flowery phrases of adoration<\/a>\u00a0exchanged in the first stages of infatuation.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Silk, from personal notebook #3 2001<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In those sections where we outlined the way we understood Spirit; the shapes of our fears and how to deal with them; the outlines of the larger things we longed for; all these showed the divide between our world-views. Krystal reflections about life seemed raw and dark. Bitter. For me, while always open to admit that that\u00a0murk that exists, I always tried to aim for light. I\u2019m not saying I knew then she would take her own life,\u00a0merely that there was a difficult to negotiate\u00a0divide and her\u00a0penchant for darkness extended beyond fashion style.<\/p>\n

Because of her appearance \u2013 my freshman-year college roommates told me with more than a hint of envy in their voice how she looked like a goth Victoria\u2019s Secret model.\u00a0That night that I tied her up and we went out? She wasn\u2019t even carded by the same bouncer that closely scrutinized the one legal\u00a0ID, mine.<\/p>\n

We danced together and socialized. I wanted her to get to know my friends so didn\u2019t dominate her presence. Whenever she wasn\u2019t directly next to me in our small group, however, male strangers would try to talk to her. She was respectful, but when\u00a0conversation turned to flirtation she would quickly quit them and come over to stand close to me to show who she was with. Feeling juvenile pride at their rejection and her selection of me, I fawned over her. One person in particular \u2013 a long blond haired older man (which for me at the time meant late\u00a020s) \u00a0\u2013 caused her to draw me in especially close. Uncomfortably so. The pressure around my ribs didn’t make me worried they break, but the crush of bone against bone was no pleasant sensation.<\/p>\n

At first I thought this might be an ex that I was unaware of. A little tipsy,\u00a0I mentally prepared for a fight, but he just smiled and continued to walk on. I looked down at her face and saw an expression that I did not then and do not now know fully what it was, other than that it haunted me. I whispered in her ear “Who was that?”\u00a0and\u00a0she responded “No one, I’ll explain later.” When we got home, she shared her story with me.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Portrait 2012<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Several weeks before her and I started dating, she\u2019d been raped by that man. At a party that he’d drove her too, he\u2019d drugged her drink, cornered her and then forced himself upon her. The way she described it, she was in a murky haze due to whatever he\u2019d dosed her with. She could see what was happening, but couldn’t get her body to move in the way her brain wanted. She willed it, yet\u00a0couldn’t\u00a0fend him off. This was why she was so affected when we were out together – she’d just seen that man that literally stole her virginity.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d later learn that this same person had tried the same thing with two of my female friends. In my novel Unraveling<\/a>\u00a0the very graphic, violent scene towards such a person with similar physical features as her rapist\u00a0is a variant of the recurring fantasy that I had towards this person at this time.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Already prone to depression before, she explained, the traumatic experience had significant effects. She\u00a0had recurring nightmares,\u00a0felt anxious\u00a0when around other people,\u00a0took to cutting and became averse to most of her male friends. Beauty is pain<\/strong>, she explained, as it causes such strong desires in others that many people are willing to do unethical or immoral things to obtain or experience the object of their desires.\u00a0<\/strong>She\u00a0didn’t wholly despise her\u00a0attractive visage, but felt it was like something that she didn’t entirely want either. It was a burden. A flood of what she was struggling with continued out\u00a0and she ended it all with, ” …and you’re the first person that I shared this all with”.<\/p>\n

I felt pride that she trusted me so much.\u00a0I knew that our relationship and the disclosures she’d made implied a clear duty on my part. But how exactly to help her?\u00a0Well, that I didn’t know. And it bothered me. A lot. So much that I thought about ending the relationship. It wasn’t because she’d been raped.\u00a0No, I didn’t think that she was somehow\u00a0tainted to her core as a result of her assault. No,\u00a0it was\u00a0learning\u00a0the extent which she had suppressed so much of her emotional life that made me question whether or not a healthy relationship was possible going forward.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Portrait of Ariel Sheen<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

If this sounds shitty, it is, but full\u00a0disclosure I’d already started to lose the initial enthusiasm I had for our partnership. Even before she told me this I’d picked up that something wasn’t “right”. I told myself, however, that it was the height of inhumanity to leave her side after she’d opened up to me like that\u00a0as it’d likely lead either to her further close off from others or take her own life, something\u00a0I learned that night we talked that she’d already tried before. I decided that I’d stay in order to\u00a0try and do the best that I could to help break her out of the consciousness that kept pulling her back to the trauma’s she’d experienced.<\/p>\n

At first, it worked. The bad dreams lost their frequency and intensity. She stopped cutting as often, but communicated to me that she\u2019d only stopped as I\u2019d asked her to.\u00a0 Beauty is pain<\/strong>\u00a0and sometimes in order to keep it alive you must make\u00a0sacrifices. <\/strong>However the lessening or disappearance of each particular symptom didn\u2019t mean that she\u2019d overcome the effects the event had had on her. New ones started popped up or came back.\u00a0Like the panic attacks. Hearing her describe the horror she felt being around people\u00a0made my heart go out to her. But\u00a0on the practical side it meant that each time I’d want us to go out, I had to mind a dangerous mine field that was our communication. I didn’t want to be selfish, but I wasn’t enjoying being wholly selfless either.<\/p>\n

As our relationship continued\u00a0I felt that our time was increasingly being occupied with issues related to\u00a0her handling her rape trauma.\u00a0It\u00a0affected nearly every area of her thinking \u00a0and\u00a0I\u00a0started to resent our relationship. I told myself at the time that I stayed as I was optimistic. She was, after all, making steps to move past it\u00a0so that she was less\u00a0reactive to the many things which triggered her. Enough time has passed, however, that I don’t now think that that’s true. For one how she helped herself seemed to me to be a form of slow self-annihilation. As for why I stayed, it was more \u00a0aversion to shame for leaving someone for being raped in a bad place. It was a good intention, but the execution of which meant for an unstable relationship foundation.<\/p>\n

\"\"
“I’d Love To Break Your Heart”<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

To help “heal herself” Krystal\u00a0illicitly obtained anti-anxiety meds like Xanax. While she was pleased with the way they made her feel vacant, to me that was exactly why she shouldn\u2019t take it. The drugs shut up some the darker angels of her nature, but didn’t provide\u00a0genuine relief from the underlying issues. She needed to come into her own, not numb herself.\u00a0\u00a0Beauty is pain,<\/strong> she said with a face that was both vacant and bitter, you got what you wanted and now<\/strong>\u00a0you don\u2019t want it anymore but something else.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

My not knowing how to properly address\u00a0the impact of the trauma\u00a0was a major\u00a0reason I ended our romance. At the time I hated myself for such a rationale. Now, however, I accept it as my having acted the best way I knew how. In fact, I should have ended it way sooner rather than let it drag on like a slowly removed band-aid as there was no way for her to have had a foundation for an romantic interpersonal relationship until she had a foundation for a healthy interpersonal relationship.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
“Discarded Broken Dreams”<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Krystal later tried therapy to help with the myriad issues she struggled with.\u00a0During one of our intermittent talks she expressed aversion to talk therapy.\u00a0In her\u00a0blog<\/a> you can read of her talking about her struggles with depression and antipathy towards\u00a0the psychiatrists that labeled her bipolar<\/a>. The\u00a0dynamic she\u00a0protested then matched the dynamic that has so previously scarred her: a\u00a0male older someone handing out drugs that impact the mind to deaden the senses.<\/p>\n

Whether or not this affected treatment, it seems to me that repetition compulsion in part explains the intermittent\u00a0changes in medication and categorical\u00a0disdain for the people she had to talk to in order for her to be provided with meds. After I completed my training at FICAM in 2013, she sent me an email expressing interest in doing bioenergetic therapy with me.\u00a0I was happy at the thought of it\u00a0as I was confident I could help her make some major inroads in releasing the energies she’d internalized,\u00a0later proven true, but as she lived across the country this never happened.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Self-Portrait 2008<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I know\u00a0she knew this too at the time because\u00a0things between us afterwards were amicable. For years after our split we socialized amongst mutual friends on a not-so irregular basis and wrote each other intermittently. After I got engaged, she even sent\u00a0a nice note saying she felt happy for me as she\u2019d not ever seen me appear so consistently joyful in pictures.<\/p>\n

\"\"
“Faithful Only She”<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Lest it seem like I’m turning a whole life into the effect of a single\u00a0traumatic experience let me be clear: These memories aren\u2019t the only things that I remember about Krystal.\u00a0In fact it is far from the thing that defines her in my and other\u2019s mind. Krystal\u00a0was\u00a0kind and\u00a0smart and\u00a0creative and an amazingly talented photographer<\/a> with hustle. Hearing her talk with the passion that she had about\u00a0the arts that she practiced always\u00a0impressed and inspired me.<\/p>\n

Her self-made zine<\/a>\u00a0was an impressively put together\u00a0outlet she\u00a0curated from the creatives that were drawn to her. Her dark humor made some laugh and others squirm. She was an all around awesome girl and young woman.\u00a0I’m detailing\u00a0the long-lasting effects of the trauma as\u00a0while\u00a0I can’t honestly draw a straight line from that trauma to her choosing to kill herself,\u00a0I also feel that had she not been drugged and sexually assaulted at 15 then\u00a0she would likely still be alive.<\/p>\n

\"\"
“Creatures”<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

And it’s because of the fact that is far from an isolated incident, that with social effort could become less prevalent, that I focus on Krystal’s rape when memorializing\u00a0her art and life following her death.\u00a0I’m writing this\u00a0not just to exposit on depression, trauma and their impact on romantic relationships – but as a base for action.<\/p>\n

Those of you that read this that own her prints of Krystal\/Cannibalized’s work, I’d ask that you please\u00a0send me<\/a>\u00a0high-rendition scans of them along with typical archival info (name\/date\/etc\/). I’d like to curate\u00a0a collection of her photos\u00a0and sell the prints in a hardbound book with the\u00a0profits going to RAINN<\/a>.\u00a0If I can help fund one of their programs for\u00a0someone that needs help like Krystal\u00a0did, then I’d feel the work that I’ll put into it would be worth it.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Self-Portrait 2011<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Recently\u00a0I\u00a0learned that a\u00a0former significant other of mine\u00a0committed suicide. While fifteen years had passed since we were an item and in that time we\u2019d drifted apart,\u00a0I still found myself profoundly affected by this news. Especially so as something that to a large extent defined and lead to the destruction of our relationship\u00a0suddenly became something that wasn’t … Continue reading “Reflections on a Former Lover\u2019s Suicide in the Context of #MeToo”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,24,9,41,6,21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2050","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","category-florida","category-history","category-interview","category-photography","category-psychology"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8e7kf-x4","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arielsheen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2050","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arielsheen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arielsheen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arielsheen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arielsheen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2050"}],"version-history":[{"count":23,"href":"https:\/\/arielsheen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2050\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2179,"href":"https:\/\/arielsheen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2050\/revisions\/2179"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arielsheen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arielsheen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2050"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arielsheen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}