How can time become a special sort of balm?
What’s it worth to connect in a shared experience with another human?
As the slander went from Stories to mutual contacts, I watched as people either stayed silent or, as I had done for years, feigned excuses for Tina. “She has a hard life. She has trauma.” I could hear myself in these platitudes. Tina’s ultra, uber marginalization status, made it so she occupied a nearly impossible to hold title: the perfect victim. No one would be allowed to question or criticize. Tina wielded this social capital to take down people (almost always women) who stepped out of line, and now I was the number one defector.
I tried apologizing. I wasn’t sure what to do at this point and was horrified by the frequent posting that wasn’t seeming to let up. I offered a beautiful floral baby sheet as a peace offering. Instead, Tina unleashed rage in a personal message to me. I immediately erased it--certain if I read it more than once that the deeply hurtful words would etch themselves into my memory. I wasn’t to forget them immediately. There are bits and pieces I unfortunately do remember: Tina tearing apart my marriage, telling me I was colorist, that the experiences I had shared about racism in my own life weren’t true, that mutual people despised me. It was cruel, grotesque, and petty.
White lefty women loved Tina because she behaved unhinged. They could offer saviorism to her while consuming her chaotic life like a drug from the comfort of their stable lives. At one point this freedom had been something I admired in her, but then I saw it for what it was—a free fall. Nothing to hem it in, no “home training” as my black southern cousins called it, this behavior represented the fully grown harvest of victim mentality.
It had turned out that this fury had been behind the veil of admiration all along. I realized Tina had been mining moments of vulnerability from me, saving them, and waiting for the moment when I stepped out of line. I was everything Tina both desired and despised, a wild cocktail.
The discussions on Stories didn’t stop. I chose to stay silent on my platform, and I didn’t try and waste any serious time defending myself to anyone we had in common. Why would I? I knew it was fruitless, I understood well how the hierarchy of victimhood worked. I knew because I had believed it, too. I did attempt to warn one person, an activist influencer, but she like many others had fallen for the act. Perhaps I knew that deep down time would have its own reconning. I just had to be patient.
Sometimes Tina liked to throw around her education as qualifier for being cruel online. The truth was, Tina had never finished a degree, choosing instead to cosplay student by going to a local university’s library and photographing herself with a pile of books. She called it “fake school,” and went to great lengths to pretend the dignity she desired.
One of my deepest concerns with our culture’s obsession with marginalization is that it feeds into scarcity mindset. While the culture had been silent or frankly encouraging of Tina making shoddy life decisions, it also had crowned her victim queen. None of these accolades translated to what I believe Tina deeply desired—a stable, maybe even boring life. A raw deal: she had the title but couldn’t cash it in for anything of real value. Perhaps my advice towards traditionalism might have been out of step given Tina’s proclivities, but I deeply believe it had been part of her disordered attraction to my family and I to begin with.
I tried to ignore and move on. Periodically, Tina would stalk my page. When I announced my pregnancy with Penny she wrote a cryptic, dark “blessing” that honestly felt like a curse. After my baby arrived healthy and beautiful I admit I breathed a sigh of relief. This situation had held me down and had made me its own sort of captive. The activist and I connected one day, Tina had gone after her like she had me. We swapped stories. A few days of conversations left me feeling heard and vindicated. I breathed a second sigh of relief.
I could even laugh over the fact that Tina had replicated my wedding gown.
I’m glad you’re on the other side and able to be a bit more free. The things those people do leave a mark, and I’m sorry you had to travel that path, but you’ve retained your grace and I pray now your peace.
Katie. Thank you for sharing this deeply personal and hard story.