On Abuse and "The Taste of Poison" · 6:07pm Feb 26th, 2023
(((Heads-up: there is some dark and deeply personal stuff ahead. I don't fault anyone for not reading it.)))
This post could also be called, “Why do you do terrible things to ponies?”
In the most recent chapter of Sensation: Appleloosa, I chose to depict something very dark but very real: domestic abuse between partners. It’s been a part of the story (albeit always off-screen) since Sensation’s inception in 2014. It feels like I should let the story speak for itself (death of the author and all that), but I have more things to say, and I really, really don’t want to do harm with my story.
Feel free to skip this one if you want. It’ll likely be a bit disorganized.
Writing about dark themes, especially interpersonal ones, is extremely difficult. No matter what you have the characters say or do, you are making a statement. You’re saying something about that theme and the people involved. No matter what you do, you can’t capture the entire universe of feelings and experiences for every individual who goes through it. If you acknowledge how difficult and awful the expereince is on its own, perhaps you are being overly negative and implying that things can’t get any better. If you tie it to a person’s growth or recovery, maybe you’re making light of how hard it is on the victim. If you try to walk a middle road, maybe you’re not taking it seriously enough. There’s no way to cover everything. So, I do what I always do, and I write what I know with respect for those who have been through something similar.
Some readers will find it unpleasant. Some will find it objectionable. I don’t want to hurt anyone. I just want you to know you’re seen, and if you’ve been through something like this, the pain is real, and you aren’t at fault. It’s not your fault. And I truly believe life gets better.
I find it incredibly difficult to type the words “I was sexually abused,” because I immediatley think, “There are so many people that have it so much worse. What right do I have to claim that something awful happened to me?” It might be a defense mechanism. It might be just who I am. Ironically, the man I’m going to mention below taught me how good I am at keeping the spotlight off myself.
I was 21 and overseas for an exchange program in China. I had started coming out as bisexual less than a year prior. Spring semester, I met a man in his early 30s who was there as part of his PhD program. He knew that I was inexerienced in dating, especially with other men, and he was very attracted to me. He was also coming off of the end of a very long-term relationship. I truly believe he thought of himself as a mentor for me.
I still have incredible embarassment over some of the things we did together. I did them because he was very good at being a “mentor.” He knew how to push me outside my comfort zone, and he was able to do so with a combination of incredible charisma, lavish gifts, talking to all my friends about what he was doing for me, and knowing how to get me alone. Again, I truly believe he thought he was helping me in a way, despite saying some very insulting things about my beliefs at the time, but it was abundantly clear he wanted more from my body all the time. I am fortunate that things never escalated to physical violence (though unfortunately, I once lived with a man where that was a constant threat). I’m still not comfortable going into more detail than that right now, but I guess if we’re close friends and you want to ask about it face to face sometime, maybe I could tell the whole story.
And I felt awful when we finally and definitively broke it off. To be clear, it wasn’t some big, heroic moment where I stood up to him. It was a long, quiet, tearful, mostly one-sided (his) conversation about how I had led him on so much and taken advantage, and how sad he was that his charms hadn’t worked on me. It was apparently the first time that had happened to him.
This was all over a decade ago, and I still find it hard to write about. Like Braeburn, though, I don’t want to keep it in.
So why do I write about this type of subject matter? Like I said, it’s been a part of the story since 2015. I think, in many ways, it’s how I cope. When we use ponies to talk about our pain, there’s a layer of abstraction that makes it easier. “I’m not talking about my pain, you see. It’s clearly just a story about colorful ponies!” The extra distance, especially in a safe environment where things always turn out okay, makes the subject much more approachable.
I think the other reason is that I believe it can help people. I’ve had five people now tell me that the original Sensation helped them come out and that their lives are better for it. One of them went so far as to say they were planning on taking their own life, but the story helped them learn that they were okay and that things can get better. That alone is worth the thousands of hours I’ve put into writing these stories.
So, I take my experiences, and I make Bronze. Bronze isn’t a 1-to-1 copy of anyone I know, but an amalgamation of many experiences in my life. And those experiences have taught me: rarely is anyone purely evil for the sake of it. They do terrible things most often because they are afraid and have been hurt in the past. To me, it seems like a disservice to treat an abuser as a cackling villain with no other motivation, because that’s just not what I’ve experienced. Fear is a powerful motivator, especially the fear of losing something you think is already yours. Again, that doesn’t make their actions justified, and it doesn’t shift any blame to their victims. And again, there’s no possible way for me to write any of this in a way that covers the universal experience with abuse. I can only go by what I know.
Braeburn’s story turns around (not a spoiler – you’ve probably read Sensation if you’re also reading Sensation: Appleloosa), and I hope the story turns around for anyone else who’s had an experience like this. And I hope you find a way to heal. For me, it’s by telling stories about horses who get through the darkness to find the light.
With all the love in my heart,
Vivid
Im sorry to hear that, Vivid. It is genuinely awful that that happened to you. I hope youre feeling amazing though, and your stories continue to be fantastic <3
5715534
Thanks, Otter. I'm glad you find them meaningful.
So sorry for what happened to you, and grateful for your writing.
5715653
Thank you for the kind words. I'm glad you enjoy my stories.
I'm sorry that you had to go through that. I... don't really know what to say. I just hope things keep getting better for you. I'm glad to know you.
I’m really sorry to hear that. It’s awful that anyone has to go through that.