Clothesline Project

[shadesong]

So I went and created my t-shirt for the Clothesline Project today. http://www.emory.edu/WOMENS_CENTER/april00.html

My shirt is dark blue. It has a ring of craft-foam hands on it.... each one has the name of someone I love who has survived rape or molestation. I ran out of space for hands. I could only get eight on there.

In the middle of the hands, it says, in white:

King Solomon's mines
Exit 75
I'm still alive
I'm still alive....

This is from the Tori Amos song "Hotel". Lots of people find those lines to be the sequel to her song "Me and a Gun", which details her rape... in "Me and a Gun", she's driving all night, just getting away. "Got a full tank and some chips." So the above lines are just to say that I'm still driving. I'm still going, and I won't ever stop.

It was an emotional experience from the moment I walked into the DUC and saw the shirts. I expected, like, 10 shirts on a clothesline. There were dozens. There's not room for many more.

There were too many goddamn shirts. I'm tearing up again.

Adam and I walked, read all the shirts, I cried, we got to the Women's Center and were taken into the shirt-making room, and I cried again. I was shaking while I made the list of people who I needed to make hands for. There are too many. I hurt so much for all of us.

I'm glad I made the shirt, though.

I'm still alive...

Comments

[edie22.livejournal.com]

**hugs** I don't even know what to say. But I had to comment and say how proud --no that's not the right word, but something like that-- that you do keep going. --Edie

[shadesong.livejournal.com]

*hugs* back... thanks. :) I am feeling like a brave little toaster today.

[m0usegrrl.livejournal.com]

yeh. what edie said. ::fierce hugs for my brave, fragile little sister::

[la-belledame.livejournal.com]

Fierce hugs from me, too. I am so proud to be your friend, 'song! And I am so glad and grateful that you *are* alive.

Love, Donna

[philrancid.livejournal.com]

What is wrong with this world that there are so many fabulous women who have been abused? It fills me with rage to think of it, people like my mother, who only wanted to be loved, and what they get in return is a pain-filled mental hell.

(sound of eternal rage)

If there were one wrong in this world I could remove, it would be this one.