Intimacy is a form of trust and trust is an emotion that is attached to memory

This was Mike's apartment.... I don’t think so. I ran away with other high-risk teenagers. We met one person from Toronto who was my age and seemed honest. When we got to Vancouver, I was the only one with money—about $200. We checked the want ads and found a place for $50 a month, so we went there. It was basically a hippie commune house. The guy from Toronto had already been living on the street, and the people in that house were selling drugs. I was naive and didn’t understand what was going on at the time. But to get to the story: we were panhandling when two men walked by, one blond and one dark-haired. They were tall, and the dark-haired man had striking blue eyes. I noticed them and, in my mind, wished he would turn around so I could see them again. He got to the corner and did turn around. Then he crossed the street and looked again. After that, he spoke to his blond friend, who was very tall. The dark-haired man’s name was Mike. He looked to be in his mid-twenties. They both kept glancing toward me, then crossed over. I remember thinking, at least he looked back, and that was enough for me. We went into a restaurant with the other teenagers I was with. We had just enough money from panhandling for something small to eat, maybe fries, gravy, and a Coke. Then Mike came in with his friend. I could see them through the glass entrance. When he saw me looking toward the door, he looked startled, turned as if to leave, and bumped into his friend trying to get out. I thought maybe I had surprised him, but since he had come back, I also wondered if he had been curious about me. A few days later, everyone had moved out of that hippie house because they were being evicted. A few of us were still sleeping there on a mattress. Then the guy from Toronto came in and asked if some friends could come over. We said yes. Right behind him were Mike and Dave, the blond and dark-haired men we had seen before. I was shocked by the coincidence. At the time, I didn’t know they were dealers, and I didn’t know they were deserters from the Vietnam War, though they carried themselves like military men. Mike ended up sleeping beside me on the mattress. Nothing physical happened, but I could tell he was interested in me. He pulled me close, and there was obvious sexual tension between us. The next morning they left, and I thought that was the end of it. Later, Mike and Dave came back and invited us to their apartment. I agreed to go because I knew Mike was interested in me. We took the bus down Main toward Kitsilano, then walked along Vine toward 4th Avenue to a brown apartment building. The apartment itself was very nice, clearly not really theirs. There were certificates, degrees, and books everywhere, and it looked like it belonged to an academic, someone educated, maybe a geologist who was away in northern B.C. At that time, many young runaways, draft dodgers, and deserters from the United States were passing through Vancouver, so arrangements like that were not unusual. That night I slept with Mike, and the experience affected me deeply. In the morning, after not really sleeping, I felt an urgent need to say something to him. The only words that came to me were “I love you.” That moment stayed with me. A couple of days later, my friend and I were arrested for shoplifting. She was sent to William Roper Hull, and I still did not fully understand what it meant to be considered high risk. I ended up in a halfway house. The women there knew a bar on Hastings where everyone gathered. It was huge, almost a whole city block, with a long glass front where you could see the police wagons arriving on weekends. You could smell marijuana everywhere. It was an intense time, the kind of atmosphere people talk about when they describe the hippie movement. I was right in the middle of it. Sometimes someone would light a joint, the police would come in and drag someone out, and the crowd would actually clap. It was chaotic and surreal. At one point, a man approached me, but I did not want to go with him. I just wanted to go home. I went to the bus stop, and he followed me. When the bus arrived, he still kept asking me to come with him, and I said no. Then he stuck out his thumb, and a car with two doors pulled up behind the bus. Because I was with another guy, I assumed it was safe to get in. I was wrong. They drove past my street and over the Granville Bridge toward Kitsilano. I realized something was wrong and told the man beside me that we were being kidnapped and that he needed to help me. Instead, when I tried to grab the wheel, they shoved me back. The man with me did nothing. A few blocks later, police cars appeared and blocked the vehicle. Everyone jumped out, and there was chaos. The hitchhiker later wrote his phone number on my hand and told me the officer who had stopped us was a friend of his brother’s. Years later, I looked back on that and questioned everything. By then, I had realized Mike and Dave were dealers. The last time I saw Mike, he was standing with several other young men who looked military. He was about twenty-five, and I believed he was part of a network of Vietnam deserters trying to survive however they could. I also came to suspect that the man who attached himself to me may have been an undercover officer trying to get access to Mike and Dave through me. That showed me how deeply caught up I had become in Vancouver’s drug scene without fully understanding it. What stayed with me most was the power Mike seemed to hold and the way people responded to him. When he wanted something, others moved around him. I had never experienced that kind of male attention or influence so directly before. What remained in my memory was not only him walking away, but the charge I felt from that first moment when I noticed his blue eyes. Later, when Wichasta waste triggered that memory in me, I realized I needed to deal with the feeling itself rather than project it onto someone else. I didn't realize I did this for decades. Never acknowledging the profound effect Mike had on me. I also think there was a deeper layer to all of this: misogyny, trauma, and the toxicity Mike may have carried from Vietnam. As a brown-skinned girl, I now wonder how much of what happened had to do with what he had already lived through, including his experiences with Asian women during the war. At the time, I did not understand any of that. I only sensed pieces of it. I noticed his military duffel bag and belt, and because my father had been in the military, those details meant something to me. It all suggested he was carrying a past he had not left behind. I experience a truama bond with Mike never realizing I needed to release whatever sexual energy I attached to him. I never unstood trust until I had none. It was one thing to think I was experiencing Limerence but I really wasn't. I was okay to remember sexual desire but I never acting on it as one would be considered promiscuous. What I take from all of this now is that intimacy matters, but so does letting go. It is one thing to experience closeness; it is another to release it emotionally and physically. That is especially true for women, including Indigenous women, who may carry intimacy long after the relationship itself has ended, whether through separation, death, or trauma. Even when physical intimacy is gone, the emotional imprint remains. The challenge is learning how to hold that truth, process what it triggered, and then let it go. Even when the memory is decades old. Those emotional feelings are important to feel as the are the very foundation of the healing process. That is also why I think women often need space to process these experiences together. When someone has survived male violence and is preparing to speak, especially in a legal setting, the presence of women can create a different kind of safety, closeness, and strength. It is not about excluding men out of spite. It is about protecting the emotional space survivors need. I felt strongly about that when supporting the survivors of Nathan Chasing Horse. I wanted to respect what they needed, and I believe I did the right thing. In doing so and in understanding so, I was also able to release a truama bond created 55 years earlier. If I hadn't trusted Wichasta Waste knowing this was different. Knowing this energy he carried was something he dealt with on a daily basis; however, since I hadn't been around such energy trust was essential. It's the stubborness & my efforts to understand truama too that I felt compelled to trust him. It's not him, rather what he represented, Mike. I didn't need to pursue Wichasta Waste cause I had already experienced a masculine man in Mike. I just was triggered by Wichasta Waste to fully embrace the memories I had of Mike and to totally release Mike from my memory. It seems surreal. Yet, trust stemming from 55 years ago established a trust in the present. It's not doubt why so many people don't allow themselve to trust because they have not embraced and release this fear of abandonment, fear of violence, fear of intimacy and fear of being alone for the rest of one's life. Understanding, I am constantly alone so I am not nor do I feel uncomfortable about being alone and lonely. When I used to disclose what had happened to me, I often did it with women. Even when they brought their own experiences into the conversation, what mattered most was the nurturing presence they represented—the mothering, grand mothering, and validation that helped me feel held. I think that kind of witness matters deeply. It helps people speak, heal, and feel understood. Its amazing what one experience can have such a profound effect on the entire length of ones lifetime, but it is what it is. I knew Mike changed my life forever, but I just didn't realize I needed to revisit this memory for the rest of my life. It's a good memory of love. He is constantly in my mind and memory. I can not ever imagine what I consented to in allowing myself to love such a masculine man as Mike. Life is worth living and life is worth loving, so be mindful. I think without ever knowing such a masculine man I would surely have surcome to Nathan Chasing Horse's charm, but I didn't. I didn't cause I knew he wasn't to be trusted. He just didn't have thatis masculine energy, this masculine male energy that creates balance. Wichasta waste has this masculine energy like so many other healthy men whatever their pronoun are. Stay healthy and stay well..... People are depending on you...