This Hat Belonged To The Man Who Abused Me. Here's Why I Decided To Put It On.
A few years ago, on my birthday, I went to see the author Jerry Stahl do a reading at Green Apple Books in San Francisco. In conversation with the writer Joshua Mohr, Stahl said something that has stuck with me ever since: “If you write a sentence that makes you squirm, keep going. Because if it’s not dangerous, it’s not worth doing.” Perhaps I am putting that to the test now, both as a writer and as an adult survivor of childhood sexual abuse.
This year over my birthday weekend, I was invited to Mosswood Meltdown, an annual, two-day music event hosted by John Waters in Oakland, California — as a press representative for a small indie website. Mosswood Meltdown showcases predominantly punk musicians and artists who have pushed the boundaries, both in their art and society.
I was thrilled to go, especially with a press pass that would allow me backstage access, but I was less thrilled that the festivities this year happened to coincide with an exhaustive heat wave. Temperatures in the Bay Area reached triple digits, easily shattering previous records. After sweating through the first day of Mosswood in all black, I succumbed to the heat and for Day 2 of the event opted to wear light denim Levi cutoffs, a white vintage concert T-shirt, and a hat — the latter of which was a deliberate and boundary-pushing statement of my own.
The hat in question is a white-and-mustard-yellow, trucker-style cap with a mesh snapback. The front of the hat has black, capital letters and a heart and reads: “I [heart] Intercourse PA.” It is no doubt a double entendre; I would guess it was bought during the late 1970s or 1980s in Intercourse, Pennsylvania. The hat once belonged to a man who sexually abused me.
My abuser was an older male family member, and the abuse began when I was 9 and continued until I was 12. My mother and I moved into his home after my parents’ divorce. He rarely showered, he smelled perpetually of nicotine and beer, and he wore the same outfit every day: army green pants, a white T-shirt and a hat. He was a crass, bigoted, narrow-minded man, who publicly seemed to dote on me, and privately demoralized me and called me terrible slurs.
At the end of fifth grade, my mother and I moved out of my abuser’s house and into our own, but the abuse continued until the end of seventh grade.
I am frequently at what was once my abuser’s house. When my abuser died, many years ago, the house was passed down and now belongs to my mother. For the most part, I don’t walk into the house thinking, “This was a house I was abused in.” But on occasion, I come across some remaining random object that belonged to my abuser — a seemingly benign relic that was passed over for the Goodwill pickup or not spotted during spring cleaning.
When I stumbled on the hat several months ago while looking for tools inside a garage cabinet, I was startled to see it. My stomach lurched and a swell of anxiety filled me. I stood there in the dim garage light for several moments before I had a sort of Wizard of Oz, “You have no powers here” revelation. I took it off its hook, closed the cabinet door and folded it under my arm. I don’t really know what possessed me to take it, but I did feel a sense that if anyone was entitled to it, it was me.
Many years ago, my therapist had me write a letter to my abuser. He then suggested that I take the letter and drive past the house that my mother and I had lived in after we moved out of my abuser’s house. In front of the house, in the middle of the street, I stopped the car. I ripped up the letter, and tossed it from the car into the wind.
Taking the hat was another version of me taking it to the wind.
The hat had sat in the back of my closet for months, and, frankly, I had forgotten it was there. It wasn’t until I was getting ready to leave for Day 2 of Mosswood that I saw it, smashed behind books, photo albums, and a stack of dusty 7-inch records. This time my stomach didn’t lurch with a physiological response.
I had never thought of wearing the hat myself until that moment. But I put it on and found it gave me an unexpected feeling of empowerment and autonomy.
To some people, it may seem like an odd choice to wear something that once belonged to a person who abused you, but if there was anywhere that I was going to do so, it was Mosswood. My abuser would have hated Mosswood. He would have hated the drag queens, the music, the challenge of gender norms, the rejection of mainstream culture, and the spirit of individuality and independence.
I also hoped to meet one of my all-time idols, John Waters, while at the event. Waters is the embodiment of Mosswood, a champion to the outsider, the outcast, the marginalized and the misunderstood. When the opportunity to meet him was presented, I was overwhelmed with feelings of gratitude. His body of work and who he is as an individual is a large part of the reason I felt so comfortable wearing the hat that day.
The abuse I sustained during my childhood led me down a path with a variety of unhealthy coping mechanisms: disordered eating, cutting, alcoholism and drug addiction, to name a few. During the years of abuse and into my adolescence, I felt confused and overwhelmed; for years, I had horrible feelings of guilt, shame and self-loathing.
To understand how childhood trauma impacts someone over time, we can look at ACEs scores. Adverse childhood experiences scores are a way of tallying childhood traumas, in an effort to better know how to help those who have experienced them. Studies by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Kaiser Permanente have shown that a high ACEs score has correlations to things like depression, poor physical health, memory, executive function, attention, critical thinking and literacy to name a few. Additionally, a substantial ACEs score can alter the structural development of neural networks and biochemistry in children.
Trauma, like the type I experienced as a child, impacts your entire life. It’s not just the traumatic event itself that has an impact on a survivor, but also the support they receive around the event. I consider myself fortunate that I had a parent who never questioned the validity of my experience and was diligent about getting me the mental health support I needed. I began working with a psychotherapist and did group therapy throughout my teens.
Wearing the hat in a safe place felt like another way of working through what happened to me. Standing in front of the merch table for the Austin, Texas-based all-girl band Die Spitz, I ran into author and founding member of the band Spitboy, Michelle Cruz Gonzales. When she asked about my hat, I told her the backstory, half-jokingly musing that I should write an essay about it. Without missing a beat, she responded, “You should. There really is something to taking your power back.” It was that affirmation — and the overwhelming support of people I ran into throughout the day — that convinced me to share this.
I have since spent countless years in therapy, support groups and 12-step programs reconciling what happened to me as a young girl. While I have dealt with the trauma, I am reminded that it still lingers. Today, I can acknowledge the things that have happened to me and can still move forward. I am not just the sum of trauma, I am more. I am also one voice of many who have experienced such abuse.
Today, I have choices that 9-year-old me didn’t have: I can express myself and assert myself, and I can choose to wear my abuser’s hat as a representation of the work I’ve done and how far I’ve come. Not everyone may understand it, but that’s the most powerful fashion statement I can imagine.
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