Not Alone 2013-10-22

[jwhouk]

And, on another note, I think I know who Roy is.

He's the manager of Monica's antique shop, which is located downstairs from Amanda's studio.

The "cutting" part is a bit odd, though. Maybe our Miss McBride had her first "snack" while her rapist was in flagrante delecto?

Wanna bet that the suit and settlement got approved because of the legal counsel of one J. Aedeobie?

[Dave]

Damn. Pablo did it again. For a comic to reach out and hit so hard that I cry out in anguish when one of its characters speaks... wow.

She never told her friends. She never truly allowed herself to deal, or to heal.

And, now she will... in order to help another, who shares a similar pain.

Bravo, Paul.

The "cutting" part is a bit odd, though. Maybe our Miss McBride had her first "snack" while her rapist was in flagrante delecto?

Not odd at all. Self-cutting is fairly common among young women (especially) who have been abused, or are otherwise under great psychological stress that they cannot relieve in other ways. Very sad, but true.

[DilyV]

"In all that time I've never told any of my friends..."

No... you haven't, but Tina nearly gave up the secret, didn't she? Control? I'd call it denial... one of those "if a bear shits in the woods and no one is there to smell it, does it stink? kinds of things. It appears to me that she ignored and denied and buried it so deep that she rarely thought about it... until this. Jet's issues have convinced Monica that it's time to come to grips with that part of her past... and to gain some sort of resolution in the matter. What do you want to bet she realizes who Suzi is now...

[zachariah]

Self cutting is a symptom of self hate often cause by feelings of despair. It is also called self mutilation. The therapy would have addressed that. Monica is lucky she did not end up with serious scars on the parts of her body she cut.

This is a lot of background on Monica but the most interesting part is the learning capability. Did she always have it or did the event trigger it's development in her? But she clearly hid in books to avoid the rest of the world and interacting with people. This changes the nature of Shelly and Monica's friendship. Shelly clearly never knew about this but Shelly was one of the first new person to make her way past the barriers Monica had erected.

[NOTDilbert]

Sounds like she told her parents enough that they sued the hospital - but 'there was a settlement'. And probably nothing in the news - part of the settlement....

[Atomic]

I remember reading something about concentration camp survivors and others who have endured long term horrors. There is a tendency, especially among the children of such things, to quietly become collectors of minor items -- a feather, a shiny pebble, a bit of ribbon or such -- that they could carry secretly in their pockets, or put somewhere out of sight. In doing so, they've created their own personal symbol of rejection against those who've hurt them. The items would be meaningless to their oppressors, but validating to the victim -- a way to fight back.

And now we learn that Monica has an antique store in addition to an endless collection of pre-Columbian artifacts to research and explore! Such is compensation -- a private vault filled with Fuck You Bastards! artifacts, that she can share with the world if she wants to.

And now, Monica takes a step further away from the pain, by sharing hers with another.

Bravo!

[txmystic]

Beautifully and sensitively done.

[Akasha]

Damn. Pablo did it again. For a comic to reach out and hit so hard that I cry out in anguish when one of its characters speaks... wow.

She never told her friends. She never truly allowed herself to deal, or to heal.

And, now she will... in order to help another, who shares a similar pain.

Bravo, Paul.

The "cutting" part is a bit odd, though. Maybe our Miss McBride had her first "snack" while her rapist was in flagrante delecto?

Not odd at all. Self-cutting is fairly common among young women (especially) who have been abused, or are otherwise under great psychological stress that they cannot relieve in other ways. Very sad, but true.

agreed ... you tend to feel numb at times, so as if your mind is packed in cotton ... there are different reasons for self-cutting, but it makes you feel something, and focus on something else.

[jwhouk]

Yeah, it does suddenly explain a lot, doesn't it?

It still doesn't explain why there was a fermented banana in her bathroom that she mistook for toothpaste...

[Timotheus]

And sometimes they cut themselves to confirm that they are real and that they are experiencing reality. Pain equals real, therefore what they are feeling and seeing is real. At least that's what they said about why my daughter was doing it.

[Dave]

Yeah, it does suddenly explain a lot, doesn't it?

It still doesn't explain why there was a fermented banana in her bathroom that she mistook for toothpaste...

Well, we do have plenty of reason to believe that Dietzel is more than just a dog. Perhaps he is actually possessed by a trickster relative of Nudge's, who lightens up his "Keep an eye on this rather special mortal" duty with the occasional prank?

[jeffepp]

This fills in a lot of little cyphers in her past. Her family is wealthy, but she is independently wealthy on her own account, due to the settlement. There's a story behind the shop, of course, but it serves as an income as well.

It's been hinted at, if not mentioned out right, that she has a doctorate. But, that seemed odd for someone as young as M. But with the wunderkind thing, the timing makes sense.

Sometimes, though, a banana is just the result of drinking the night before. Or a lack of caffeine. Or both.

[Sidhekin]

And, on another note, I think I know who Roy is.

He's the manager of Monica's antique shop, which is located downstairs from Amanda's studio.

The "cutting" part is a bit odd, though.

Good call on Roy, I suspect. Thanks.

Bad call on the cutting, as others have noted. But quite understandable: Self cutting is still sufficiently taboo, that until I happened to encounter a self-cutting rape survivor, I had only ever encountered self-cutting as a chilling horror in horror stories. What we do not understand, makes for entertaining horrors, hm?

... I suppose Wapsi Square is a horror story too, but here the self cutting is not presented as a horror in itself. It's more real than that. Which reality may well be a horror in itself, if you've not already taken it in.

[Jay-Em]

Interesting to note that the self-cutting was part of Monica from early on in the comic.

To me that looks as if Pablo wanted to dig in Monica's past quite a bit deeper, but was really reluctant to do so. (As his facebook posts show. I have no facebook, but people were commenting about it here)Circling the hot porridge like a cat. He touched upon abuse with the Golem Girls, though.

I think it's quite brave for a male writer/artist to go for something like this. It's a really touchy subject, and a fatal mistake is easily made. As it is when dealing with the victims in one's personal life, like my ex. (No worry. She's not dead. Not thàt kind of fatal, but she's gone forever)

I'm quite the dullard. I never connected her scars and ciscumstantial tidbits she told me here&there (néver details, she probably didn't trust me enough for that, and rightly so, i'm ashamed to admit). Only when she was gone from my life, I started connecting the dots, after my sisters -both psychotherapists- gave me a layout of the situation in nó misunderstandable way.

Proving that éven being together for 7 years is nó guarantee one really "knows" their partner. They had kept themselves out, because they didn't want to mix family- and professional life. Good for them.

In hindsight, combine a string of abuse in her youth with increasingly nasty eruptions of Borderline disorder the closer we got, and the pieces start to fall into place, hrm? By then it was too late. Her being abused, had turned her into an abuser towards me, not physical, but mental, and all fell apart.

A razor sharp mind and Borderline disorder are a nasty WMD, to say the least.

Keeping all of that in mind, means that Monica is a remarkably stable person from herself. Having lived through that, and still be as "normal" as she is (despite the Jaguar-Girl thing and the poiting..) It also makes it more clear why f.i. Shelly is so attached to Monica. Or the Golem Girls. On the latter: It's not just the "Magical Linking" that keeps them around, me thinks.

Monica is one of those rare "good" people that have nó idea how much of a "rock" they are to many.

Having written all of that. I'm now ready for some levity in the shape of Bud-shenanigans or something. this arc is emotionally exhausting for me as a reader. (Imagine how it must be for the writer.. pfieww..)

[Fairportfan]

It's been hinted at, if not mentioned out right, that she has a doctorate. But, that seemed odd for someone as young as M. But with the wunderkind thing, the timing makes sense.

As i pointed out earlier: We know Monica is thirty-one, and that she was twenty-nine when they did the calendar machine bit.

So she was maybe twenty-five or twenty-seven when we met her.

That's not unreasonably young for someone who can afford to do full-time school and is smart to have a PhD, i'd say.

But knowing that she spent more than a year institutionalised did make me wonder how she'd managed it.

===================

Katherine is forty-one and has a PhD, but she spent X years in the Air Force before she began the academic thing, apparently.

[analyst]

Everybody sing!
"When you walk through the storm, hold your head up high, and don't be afraid of the dark..."

[Julie]

Beautifully done. Am I the only one who wants to see today's page colored?

I don't know how M kept that from her friends for so long though (though that could be because I'm not an overly private person, so not sharing with people in my "circle of trust" seems odd). Obviously she talked to some people abaout it (as others have pointed out) since her parents knew enough to sue and she saw therapists...so maybe she felt like that was enough. I guess it's possible (and now that I think of it, probable) that she felt it was unnecessary to share that with her friends...either because it was "past history not relevant to current life" or because she was concerned about how that would change their behavior around her.

Control? I'd call it denial... one of those "if a bear shits in the woods and no one is there to smell it, does it stink?" kinds of things. It appears to me that she ignored and denied and buried it so deep that she rarely thought about it... until this. Jet's issues have convinced Monica that it's time to come to grips with that part of her past... and to gain some sort of resolution in the matter.

While denial may be possible (though I've already listed my theories on why she didn't share this with her friends..and I don't really think denial is one of them), I don't think it's fair to assume she never came to grips with her rape. I'd say that the counselor and therapists helped a bit with that...and I'd wager that her studies also went a long way to giving her healing and resolution. It seems to me that making something out of yourself...gaining control over your life (and in M's case these days, gaining control of her abilities)...those can be viewed as validating actions that could help deal with the emotional scars left by abuse. I think that it's much more likely that Jet's pain gave Monica a reason to share something that she felt didn't need to be shared before. Granted, I do think she'll find a level of healing through this that she didn't experience on her own...but I'd say she recovered well enough before this.

[jwhouk]

The worst thing in the world is, she was in the mental institution for (essentially) telling the truth.




Which, of course, could lead to one hell of a Sucker Punch trope years from now...

[KateKane]

When I used to do self-harm it served several purposes that alternated depending on how I was feeling (or not feeling) at the time. Sometimes, when I was feeling numb and barely alive, it served to just to feel SOMETHING, even pain was better than the nothingness. At other times is served as a way to control the pain. When I was being torn apart by internal psychological and emotional pain, self-harm was a way of taking control of the pain. It was something I could control happening to me when so much else that was happening to me was completely out of my control. At other times, when my mind was going out of control, it gave me focus, centered me in the "real" and "now". It served as a touchstone to reality and a centering tool. Not a healthy one, but the only one I felt I had access to at the time.

Self-harm is a complicated issue and can stem from a wide variety of sources. This is why it is such a difficult issue to treat.

[KateKane]

You would be surprised how easy it is to hide things from those who care about you. I hid major psychological issues from pretty much everyone in my life for years. Parents, friends, lovers, doctors. All of them. People don't see what they don't want or expect to see. Hiding it simultaneously gives you a sense of control and isolation.