M
For twenty-seven years I pretended it hadn’t really mattered. It was just harmless fun. After all, it felt good. I hadn’t spoken up. There was no violence, no force, no penetration. It hadn’t really affected me, right?
But I only ever told two people, and even then spoke of it in such a way that they too thought it had been harmless.
I’ve said for years that my depression began when I was about five. I just couldn’t figure out why. I didn’t want to admit why I was drawn to this website, why there was a chiming of recognition in the stories of pain and scarring. Lately I’ve had to face the truth. I was damaged. And the pattern of my life revealed the reality of what was done to me.
I was molested when I was five years old.
After a few months, my parents discovered she was stealing small things from our house. I never saw her again.
I began to shut down. I had been a bright, bubbly, outgoing child who made friends easily. This changed. I withdrew. I became secretive. I began to build the walls that would keep out the world that had betrayed my innocence, my trust.
The pattern of sexualization was in place. I knew things I should not have known. My best friend in first and second grade and I would play Doctor. I taught her how to take off our underwear and touch and lick Down There, to make each other feel good. My father caught us once. I lied and said we were just curious, we were just looking. I don’t know if he believed me. I think he wanted to. We were never caught again.
I lost my virginity to the boy I started dating my freshman year of college, one month after we started dating. He actually treated me well, at least to begin with. But sex still felt secret and dirty and shameful. Our relationship became mostly about sex. I was capable of orgasms, but started faking them to make it go faster and so that I didn’t have to tell him what would really work. And always, always, even when I enjoyed the sex while we had it, I would feel guilty afterward.
I remember once when we both got high on pot with some friends and he took me back into his room and we had sex and I started crying in the middle of it and he kept going and afterward he asked why and I told him that I was so confused that I thought I was being raped.
I knew it was him. And I still felt like I was being raped. I was no longer in control of my own body, my own mind, my own life.
He had become the center of my world. I never really made any friends in college, other than the friends he already had. I never did go have the semester overseas that I always dreamed of having. I never did a lot of things, because I thought it might threaten our relationship.
And I couldn’t dare threaten the relationship–even though I had already realized, though I didn’t want to admit it, that it was damaged and problematical and probably should have ended. But I was already so tied up with him: financially, physically, sexually, emotionally. I kept pushing the thoughts aside, denying the depression, avoiding the issues. Things became…dysfunctional. He was never physically abusive, and I doubt anyone would have seen him as emotionally abusive. He was controlling, in subtle ways. There was disapproval of anything that didn’t fit his strict concepts of what was okay to do, to think, to be. There were the little comments here and there: I didn’t have much common sense. I was gaining too much weight. I partied too much on the few occasions we even went to parties. There were always strings attached to gifts: expectations for what I would do with them, how I would thank him.
Sex became infrequent. We could go a couple of months without having sex. He complained. I halfheartedly tried, but we were rarely in the mood at the same time, and he never wanted to just make out, to just spend time loving each other without having to fuck every time.
We got married, bought a house, had children. We knew exactly when each child was conceived because there were only those times it could have happened. We had sex perhaps three times total during the two times I was pregnant. I had postpartum depression on top of the “regular” depression, but we were both in denial. He couldn’t fix it, couldn’t fix me, so he became angry and turned away and shut me out. I remember telling him I thought I needed help and him telling me I was being stupid and only weak people go to therapists. I needed to buck up and deal.
He always had a need for girl friends–you know, female friends, “nothing further.” He began an emotional affair with a coworker several months after our second son was born. He told me each agonizing detail, because I was his confidante. I comforted him, stood by him, became best friends with the girl. I started a physical and emotional affair with a married coworker around the same time. I told my husband nothing, lied about who I was meeting on weekend nights, hid the evidence.
The man I had the affair with built up my confidence at first. He listened to me, comforted me, stroked my ego while he stroked my body. He was enthusiastic and long-lived in bed, if not particularly excellent at satisfying me. It turned out I had a high sex drive and a kinky side. I got risky. There were other men. There were one-night stands. I told him about them all. He found it titillating, wanted to make it all part of our affair.
I started making excuses for not making it to the motel. The last two times we made arrangements to meet there, I had sudden “emergencies” with my kids. I broke it off. He sucked me back in with sweet words, twice. Even though we hadn’t had sex in months, I didn’t break things off entirely, finally, completely, until almost ten months after we had started the affair.
I tried to fix things in my marriage. I was willing to do almost anything. He didn’t know the truth, though his gut suspected. I had gotten better at sex, and we were having more of it. He suggested we look into swinging. I said I’d be interested. He took me to a strip club and we spent $200 on a stripper who was willing to get into a serious threesome session back in the filthy little stalls. We did everything you could do with underwear still on. It felt good at the time, and my husband was very excited by it all, and I felt emptier than ever. It was confirmation: I wasn’t enough. I would never be enough.
I finally told my husband the truth about the original affair. Things fell apart. He was filled with rage. He had been honest about his emotional affair, which now he wouldn’t even admit was an affair. How could I have lied? How could I have betrayed him? How could I have stopped being his little virginal whore? Within a month I hated myself so much that I tried to commit suicide and ended up in the psych ward. He hated me for that, couldn’t understand how I could leave my children. I told him the truth: I was convinced that all I did was cause people pain, that they would all be better off without me, that they could just mourn my death and move on.
It was in the hospital that I began the long, slow process towards truth and healing. I stopped lying to myself, stopped lying to other people. I discovered people did and could love me for who I really am. I discovered I could stop running. I realized that God forgave me. I realized I could forgive myself. The walls began to crumble. I made friends, found a loving and supportive church where I felt comfortable, began writing with openness and honesty.
He couldn’t handle it. He said he didn’t know who I was any more. It was a final betrayal.
We’re almost near the end of the divorce process now. We’re civil. I’m finally healing. I’ve discovered there is Joy in the world. I’ve discovered I can actually love my children, love my friends, love myself. I’m finally facing the truth: most of what I’ve believed about myself was lies that people told me.
I have started telling family and friends the truth about the molestation. My parents were horrified that it had happened under their noses. They had never had the slightest inkling about what she had done. And then my mother told me that she had wondered for years if something had happened to me when I was young, because she had seen the warning signs. She just never asked. I don’t know if I would have told her the truth. I was so accustomed to lying.Because of telling the truth, I found out that several of my friends, friends with whom I had a mysterious and almost instant connection, were also molested as children. Dysfunction calls to dysfunction; damage cries out to damage. We’re connected, these other survivors and I, connected through our pain and our scars and our survival.
And I can’t help but wonder: what did that young girl suffer in her own life that made her so sexually aware, that made her want to do such things with little girls, that made her steal compulsively? I too was sexually aware. I too introduced other little girls to my knowledge. I too stole and lied compulsively.
I can be angry about what she did, but I find that I can’t feel anything but pity for her. She was as much a victim as I.
Maybe someday I’ll be able to tell my story on my own blog, openly. For now, it’s enough to put the truth out there. I may be quiet, but I am no longer silent.
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M writes at Diapers and Dragons. She asks that you please keep all comments here on VU, rather than over on her blog.
Amy
TRIGGER WARNING: What follows is a very detailed account of a brutal sexual assault.
***
This is a very unaltered, very raw depiction of what happened to me and my daughter (from my journal written a few days after the attack).
12/10/05
An older man came to my door in the afternoon, asking to rake my leaves. I told him “no thanks.” He asked to leave his phone number. I said fine, closed the door and locked it and grabbed an envelope and sharpie for him. I opened the door and he wrote down his phone number then asked for a drink of water, so I closed the door locked it and filled a cup with water. He took the cup and pulled out a rather large knife which he used to force me into my house. My 2 year old daughter stood at the door screaming and crying while the strange man pushed me and forced me into my home. I begged him not to do anything to my little girl, he told me to shut up and hit me in the face, he asked “where’s the money” I told him I didn’t have any –my daughter in my arms crying for daddy–and begged him not to hurt my daughter or do anything in front of her. He told me to pick her up and turn her around and for me to turn around on the couch so that my rear was facing him. My little girl wriggled herself around and she could see that bastard’s face, she could see him pull down my pants–first to my knees then to my ankles, she could see him take out his penis and she could see him forcing it into my anus. The crying and the fear, my little angelic girl, I must make her safe. I continually tried to console her, “it’s okay mommy is here, mommy is here.” I was holding her and she could see him raping me. I didn’t think about what was happening to me, I felt him try to enter my vagina, then lick his fingers–where is the knife? I turn slowly, slightly, it is in his hand, he is waving it at me–I need to get Luna safe. I beg him to let me take my 2-year-old daughter to her room. He agrees, tells me to take off my pants and my shoes. I know if I don’t do what he says, Luna or I could be killed. I walk upstairs with my Luna who is hysterically sobbing, he is right behind me. “It is okay Luna, stay in your room, I love you.” I shut the door he is right behind me. I move down the steps he is right behind me. ‘Kitchen, kitchen, kitchen, knife, knife, knife, which one, knife knife, I am dead.’ My knife is on the floor, the knife is in my hand, the knife is in his chest, he stumbles. I kick him in the balls “mother fucker! get out!” I push him, and the fridge moves. I push him – ‘his knife’-I grab the blade, ‘my hand must be in pieces’ and I don’t care, “get out mother fucker” he is trying to get out himself now, stumbling, he is out! I lock the door. He trys to run but is found a few houses away, collapsed and barely breathing. I grab the phone dial 911 and tell them my address, rape, stabbed, blood – LUNA-I go get my little girl “the police are on their way ma’am, do you want me to stay on the phone?” Yes please! My little girl is alive and in my arms! I am alive, ‘Fuck this is a nightmare’. The cops catch the attacker, 51 years old, he looked like a giant to me! “You got him good” the officer told me – I hit a major artery. Please let him die I say under my breath, but he is critical, then stable. No-one understands why he is alive, should have died – death is too easy. I can’t make sense of it, of anything, nothing makes sense. How, why, nothing makes sense.
Days following are filled with every emotion. Panic hits me like a 10-ton truck, I breath, I shit, I breath, I look into my own eyes ‘pull out of this, get control.’ I breath more, I walk outside it is so cold and my body is bursting with shakes. I talk to my family, I walk, I can’t sit still, my nerves, my body is convulsing from emotions. Anxiety, overstimulation and sadness take over. I go out for a bit, have an anxiety attack and need to leave. I am going to explode my emotions are too much. My head is pounding, throbbing, dizzying. The headaches are awful. I see a counselor and cry most of the time. I feel removed from the attack, but my emotions make it very real. It’s like telling a story about someone you know, ‘how could this happen to me?’ After therapy, I feel good. Later I feel euphoric, like on a “trip” – it frightens me. My head is a balloon in the wind, the wind stops, my head stops, and the wind blows my head again. I can’t gain control. I feel a war inside my body – euphoria and misery, they are pulling and repelling and my head feels like a balloon. I sleep, no nightmares. Panic attacks, but only good dreams. I wake up in the morning, drained, depressed, down from an unwanted high and I lie around all day. I feel completely removed from the attack, and it frightens me.
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Amy writes at Love Protects.
Red
“The Birth of Pain.”
I was raped for the first time before I ever had my first kiss. By a boy I had thought I might like to kiss.
All evening long, I’d felt deliciously grown up. A high school junior, I was visiting my brother at college, drinking with him and his friends in his dorm room. They tried to give me beer, but I choked on it. So instead, they handed me a two liter of strawberry wine cooler.
Wanting to seem cool, I drank it. I drank it all. I drank until I felt dizzy, and giggly, and until my hands felt fuzzy. I drank until my crushing shyness was gone, and I could flirt with the handsome swimmer sitting next to me on the bed.
He told me I was cute. No one had ever said that to me before.
He told me I had pretty blue eyes. I was positive no one had ever noticed them before.
And then he stared. He stared and he stared and he stared until I turned red, started to mumble, and eventually, excused myself to go to the rest room.
I still can’t remember all the details of what happened next. I know that as I walked back to my brother’s room, he pulled me into a dark, empty room that smelled vaguely of armpits and stale cologne. I know that he told me that I was pretty, and pulled his face roughly to mine.
But instead of feeling delighted, my heart spiked with fear. Something was wrong. I just didn’t know what. Before I knew it, he was pulling off my clothes. Throwing me on the bed. I landed face-down, choking on the comforter.
And my hands, the hands that had felt delightfully fuzzy before, now betrayed me. They were too clumsy. They couldn’t help me. And my voice? Was gone. I couldn’t scream. Couldn’t yell. Couldn’t even form words.
I didn’t fight back. I just let it happen, letting the dizziness of the liquor keep my voice.
After it was over, I stumbled back to the bathroom. Got horribly ill in a stall.
My brother sent a friend to check on me. I told her it was just the alcohol.
She helped me back to his room. Bundled me into my sleeping bag. Where I lay, staring wide-eyed into the night as my attacker snored peacefully on the bed above me.
I never told a soul what happened. I let it eat away at me, making me terrified of the dark and afraid of strangers.
I went off to college, to a small school where no one knew my name. All in an attempt to forget. I made friends. I went to parties. I drank. A lot. Everybody thought it was just the normal college rebellion, but it wasn’t. It was something much darker.
Then, one night, I got terribly drunk. So drunk I couldn’t stand. But my friends, they wanted to go to another party, so they got me settled in one of their beds. But I couldn’t be alone. Was afraid of the dark.
So they left me with a boy. A friend who promised to watch over me.
That was the second time I was raped.
It was also the beginning of a decade long struggle with depression, and alcohol, and fear, and pain. Somewhere in the middle, I sought therapy, got diagnosed and got drugged.
But the pain still eats at me. There’s still a little voice that says “it was all your fault.” And I don’t think I’ll ever be able to shut it up.
I know I’m still afraid of strangers. Can’t stand to be left alone in the dark. My inability to forgive myself still impacts my marriage… I’m convinced my husband will someday leave me because I’m not good enough.
But I have survived. Even thrived. I have a solid marriage, a beautiful daughter and a rewarding career. Rape was not the undoing of me. It was the end of a version of me, a happier, more innocent me, but it was not the end.
It was not the end.
But still, when the pain gets to be too much, I drink.
####
Rina
I have a bone spur sitting on my spine. It doesn’t usually hurt and I rarely think about it. You can’t see it unless you are looking at an x-ray. There are no marks on my skin or visible deformities. But, I have a bone spur just the same and when the weather is bad the pain can knock the breath right out of me. They found the spur after an accident I was in and the doctors couldn’t figure it out. Bone spurs take years to form and I was too young to have one of this size. I knew immediately what caused it but my shame was too great to say anything. I remembered the beating I took for no good reason in front of my uncle who did nothing to stop it. The pain was gone within hours but there were bruises. The bruises faded within a few weeks but this spur continued to grow as the years passed. A hurt no one can see unless they go looking for it
I am not a victim. I am a survivor. A survivor of child abuse, date rape, domestic violence, rape, mental abuse, emotional abuse and of treatment no human should ever have to experience. I’ve been torn down, walked on, beat up and verbally assaulted more times that I can count. But I am not a victim. I am a survivor.
I am the product of abuse. I spent most of my young life searching for love and acceptance, convinced if I was just “good enough” I might have some value to someone. Having constantly been told I was stupid, fat, lazy and ugly, as well as being shuffled off here and there when I became a burden, had left its mark. I was never able to settle into any kind of routine or structure. Drugs and alcohol became my closest companions. The only relationships I knew were destructive and, more often than not, abusive. I gravitated towards people that I would need to prove my worth to and accepted being treated badly because it’s what I was convinced I deserved. I was repeatedly raped; emotionally, mentally, and physically battered and abused.
My high school sweetheart left me unable to walk for two years courtesy of a beating with a wooden chair. I remember going to the hospital and lying to the nurses, doctors and police who did their best to get me to press charges. I didn’t because I figured when my own brother refused to come help me that it must have been my fault. I must have done something to deserve the beating. The lesson I should have gained from being told that it would be years before I would walk again was lost on me because when I went to my mother for support I was told, “You’d better get used to it because that is how men are.” Then she proceeded to beat my head into the floor until I had a concussion in front of family members who did nothing to stop it. This simply fueled my continued belief that I was unworthy to exist.
I launched myself into downward spiral after spiral of drug and alcohol-fueled bad choices and abusive relationships. I got involved with a crack-head who sexually abused me and stole my money. A wannabe “wiseguy” who used psychological torture, as well as emotional battery, to keep me in my place. He had convinced me I could not survive without him and he was just like my mother who lavished clothing and jewelry and gifts on me so to the public I looked perfect–and then he would beat, berate and belittle me in private. A married man who used my desire to be let out of that gilded cage for his own twisted sexual wants. Until ….
There finally came a day when I came to a place in my life where I was either going to literally lie down and die or get up and fight. I chose the latter only, instead of fighting for or against other people, I fought for myself–for my sanity, for my life. I walked out the door and never looked back. I left it all behind, the men, the drugs, the alcohol and the family who really wasn’t much of a family at all. With every mile that passed I felt the toxicity begin to slough off like dead skin cells. With every day that passed the fears would lessen. It would take years for the emotional hurts to even begin to scar over and some haven’t to this day.
But I can stand here today and say that I am worth something. I have value. I am a good person. I am kind. I am compassionate. I can give and accept love. I am smart. I am talented. I am alive! I am a survivor! I am a survivor and I am here to tell you that you have value. I am here to tell you that you are worth more than the world tells you that you are. I am here to tell you to fight for yourself. You are not alone. There are many of us that are pulling for you even when you can’t see us.
