Her Catalyst: Part 14 of 25

In Part 14, Sharlene takes Angelisa and Rebeka to meet with an attorney and when they’re stressed, she helps them relax with a ‘comfort’ recording. Rebeka can’t believe the positive affect it has on her and finally feels some hope for her future. Sharlene’s anxiety grows when the company is about to go online then an investigative report about the company to be televised adds to her stress.

A peek inside:

Rebeka hesitates before she says, “Even though I have no interest in kissing a guy, I never would have considered the alternative if you hadn’t have said something about it. I’m a little curious, but I can also feel a bit of an internal vindictive attitude about it, as though I want to say that because males hurt me in the pursuit of their own pleasure, I’m going to reject them and seek to find and share pleasure with a female.”

Angelisa assures her, “Maybe it does feel a bit vindictive, but it’s completely understandable. Why should you be denied the opportunity to enjoy physical pleasure because somebody else was selfish and abusive towards you? You shouldn’t be forced, but neither should you be denied.”

“I can agree with you mentally, but I’m still not sure I can separate the idea of intimacy from my reactive feeling that it’s abusive and thus painful, regardless of my little bit of curiosity.”

“I imagine it will take some time for that feeling to even partially dissipate.”

Rebeka suggests, “Sometimes I’m not sure that it should.”

“Why not? Do you really want someone else to control a part of your life? Or to tell you how you should respond?”

“What do you mean? Or what are you trying to say?”

Angelisa hesitates then tries to explain, “I’m not sure. I guess I’m somewhat thinking out loud. Let’s take a hypothetical situation. One year in school, you have a single teacher who gives you demerits for raising your left hand. They’re so consistent, that you learn to never raise your left hand and after several years you still won’t. You’ll even refuse to wave to a friend if your right hand is being used for something else. There’s obviously nothing wrong with raising your left hand and the teacher was clearly abusive, but do you live the rest of your life controlled by that teacher and live in fear of raising your left hand? I’m not trying to compare that with the violation of your body, but trying to think about the idea of the abuser controlling a part of a person’s life even when they’re no longer around.”

“In other words, both the teacher and Hektor were abusive, they just used different ways of expressing their abusive attitude towards another person.”

“That’s a good way to put it.”

Rebeka summarizes, “So to say that the abuser no longer has control over me and is no longer abusing me, then I need to be able to reject what the abuser taught me to do, whether it be raising my left hand or enjoying intimacy.”

“I’m sure I’m missing something important, but that was kind of the direction of my thoughts.”

“Maybe we’re both missing something, but that seems to be the essence of the idea. . . . That’s an interesting thought. Maybe I will never enjoy intimacy, but if so, it should be because I’m not interested, not because someone taught me to find it painful and degrading.”

Angelisa nods her head as she responds, “I guess that’s what I was trying to get at, the idea that what we do or don’t do should be our choice, not how someone expressed abusive control over our life for a period of time.

“Well, I won’t say it would be easy to implement, but it makes a certain amount of sense.”

. . .

Suddenly, Angelisa exclaims, “Rats!!”

“What?”

“I haven’t been watching the time. I should be getting back . . . .”

They laugh, hug tightly, Angelisa gathers up her things, and they walk out to the vehicle. At the restaurant, they briefly hug before Angelisa steps out of the vehicle then she waves to Rebeka before she steps into the restaurant and she purposely uses her left hand.