So I Woke Up in a Bad Mood Today ...

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Repercussions of Rape (Part II)

It is truly amazing to me the response I have gotten from people based on my post Repercussions of Rape (Part I).  So many people have spoken of how courageous I am and how much help it is for people who have experienced sexual assault to read it and know they're not alone.

I am truly humbled by that. Please know that I appreciate the kind notes, Facebook messages, texts, love, and support.

The truth of the matter is, I honestly thought I was over the rape.  I really did.  Like, I didn't think about it, didn't talk about it, only occasionally had nightmares about it.  I even got told by a counselor (originally he was a marriage counselor, but the third time my ex-husband showed up late to the appointment, we realized that marriage counseling was a waste of time but he would happily continue to see me as I felt I had some unresolved issues beyond being emotionally, mentally, and physically tortured by my ex) after spilling the whole rape story that I had great coping mechanisms and there was no real need for me to go back.  He was happy to have me come back if I needed it, insurance would cover it, but there was no real need.

I had no idea that it was consuming my life.

My rape was characterized by someone overpowering me, speaking down to me, telling me I was  nothing, and the guilt associated with my best friend thinking I was sleeping with some other guy in his house when he and I'd had awkward, random, drunken casual sex a few weeks before.

When I encountered a bully, and there are many adult bullies that prey on people they scent weakness in, I would get sweaty, nauseous, clumsy, and my heart would start racing.  I never knew why I had such a visceral response to assholes.

It certainly couldn't be about the rape, right?  A therapist had told me I had great coping mechanisms and a solid support system, that I was just fine.

I do not want to get into specifics here, but just imagine that a person is in a position of power over you in your professional life.  Imagine even further that this person is a bully, a cruel person known for talking about his colleagues (bosses, lateral equals, and peons like me) behind their backs, of laughing at the misfortunes of others, of speaking down to people until they couldn't stand up any longer, telling people they were wrong when this person had no idea what h/she was talking about, and pouring on the guilt by emphasizing how your shortcomings (the ones that s/he had given you) explained why you did a crappy job.

If you had survived my situation, one would think that being bullied by some pathetic loser who epitomizes the Peter Principle would be nothing ... but it wasn't.

So I messed up.  A lot.  It took me forever to do anything at work because I was so anxious, and then it reached a point where it was coming home.

Being beaten down at work every day turned me from a fairly confident woman with many and varied passions (reading, writing, the beach, traveling, spending time with friends) to one who internalized everything.  The dog knocked something off the table?  My fault.  My daughter broke her leg and had to be in a cast because she was screwing around at Hannaford?  My fault.  The washing machine broke? Yup, my fault.

At first these were just feelings, and I tried to keep them from my husband and kids.  After Gabrielle was born, though, it came out in words.  This hypothetical a-hole boss honed the keen blade of self-loathing that went back to 1998, and with the stress of Gabrielle's bloody birth, which was sort of a nightmare, I came to a point where the rape, and its repercussions, nearly killed me.

After the rape, when I washed my hands, there was blood in the sink.  I saw blood in the sink when I washed my hands a month or so ago (and, I mean, I'm an English teacher ... I felt like freaking Lady MacBeth).  I am afraid to take showers, because the shower I took following the rape was when I started to come back to myself, and I was alone and so damn scared.  I will wake up screaming, or I'll jerk awake.  According to my husband, I say the things I said to my rapist when I am asleep, sometimes in a mumble but sometimes nearly yelling.

I am not healed now.  I am in counseling, and I suspect I will be for a long time.  My husband is extremely supportive (except when he's in a bad mood, which is almost never).  I've found some online support groups and even some groups that meet face to face, but the humiliation of someone knowing about the rape makes that medium hard for me.

I guess that makes me posting about it ironic, but the thing is that I am a teacher.  I have had more than one student tell me they were sexually assaulted.  I have heard stories that make my own experience seem very small.

I guess the bottom line is, sexual assault, molestation, rape, whatever word you want to use, they are more common than you might think.  If you are reading this and you feel alone, please know that you are not.

If you are reading this and you are one of my many wonderful friends whom I've blown off, I suspect I've put enough info here for you to figure out why.    

There is a picture that circulates around Facebook from time to time, and I guess that's what I want to end with.

Repercussions of Rape (Part I)

One night in early January of 1998, I got very drunk and had sex with my best friend.  I, of course, wanted to talk about it, even asked, "So that happened because we were so drunk, right?" because then of course we could laugh it off and move on and so on.  He said, "Being drunk had nothing to do with it."

Our friendship was a bit awkward after that, to say the least.

A couple of weeks later, we were out with a couple of his friends.  I was on my second drink at the bar (and that was when I could hold my liquor pretty well for a college girl), and suddenly I was cuckoo, like falling over my feet wasted.  It got worse instead of better, and I vaguely remember walking back to my best friend's condo.  He went upstairs with one of the other guys, and I went out to the balcony to smoke a cigarette with this guy, Tom.  I went to the bathroom, and when I came back, he gave me another beer.

**Note: I am putting in some details.  If this will bother you, please don't read it**
The next thing I remember, I was being sodomized on the pullout couch.  Words cannot express how painful it was.  When I went to cry out, I realized that my mouth felt like it had been propped open for hours.

"Stop!"I tried to yell, but it came out a whisper.  He did stop what he was doing, though.

"You shut up, bitch, or I'll kill you.  You and your little loverboy upstairs."

"He's not my--" I began, and he interrupted me by ... well, by filling up my mouth again.  I quickly realized why my mouth was so sore.

I was crying so hard, but I did it silently.

He said, "You're getting snot on my dick.  You'd better stop or I'll make you lick it off."

I guess he had an aversion to mucous, because he got on top of me and started raping me vaginally.  He had obviously spent some time doing this already.  The sheets of the pull-out couch were white, and I'd slept platonically on them with my best friend many, many times.  They were spotted with blood, I realized, and then I looked around and it occurred to me that "spotted" was a weak word.  This had clearly been going on a long time.

I begged him to stop over and over and he said, "You're really boring."

Finally, I said, "I want you to come.  I want to make you feel good."

He stopped what he was doing (briefly), got in my face, and said, "You don't have the stuff to make me come, little girl. You just don't have it."

Then I kind of blacked out again, which I'm glad about, and the next thing I know, someone is coming down the stairs.  It was, of course, my best friend, the one which I'd had drunken casual sex with just a couple weeks before.

I was so sore and doped up and naked and bloody and ashamed that I just said, "I'm going to go home, I think."

He didn't say anything.

I grabbed my clothes and ran for the bathroom.  I couldn't pee, even though I had to go terribly.  I sat there trying to make pee come out, but no luck.  When I stood to get dressed, I cried with pain and got very scared when I saw all the blood in the toilet bowl.

I flushed and went to the sink.  My hands were spotted with blood like a henna tattoo, and I used soap for what felt like forever, but even after that I don't know if the blood was gone or not.  I was still seeing it.

I walked out the door without saying goodbye and went home.  I locked the door and took a bath and looked at the bruises and felt the blood still seeping out of every orifice.  My jaw ached terribly and popped every time I went to open my mouth.  He had bitten off a piece of my nipple, and that hit me hard. I had fed my daughter with that nipple.

I laid in the bathtub until the water got cold, then I reran another tubful.  My vagina and anus were still bleeding, and I was afraid to look.  I fell asleep in the bathtub, and when I woke up I felt alive and myself, at least.

I got dressed in sweats and a t-shirt and made a grilled cheese sandwich.  I cleaned my apartment, even though it hurt terribly.  My best friend stopped by later, and I was going to tell him until I saw his face.  He had a bag with him, and he wouldn't look at me, just handed me the bag.

"The sheets," he said.  "There's blood all over them.  You ruined the sheets, but it's your blood, so maybe you won't mind how dirty they are" or something like that, and then he left.

"I had my period," I yelled after him.  "I just had my period, that's what the blood is."

He didn't listen.  He knew damn well I was lying.  He just didn't know why.

And life went on.  I put on a huge amount of weight and cut my hair short because I didn't want anyone to think of me as pretty.  I became sexually promiscuous with some pretty shady characters.  I basically gave Emily to my parents for awhile because I was such a mess.  I flunked out of college.

The woman is this picture (circa 2009) thinks the rape is behind her.  She has no idea that, even though her life is "together" on the surface, that ugliness is still inside ... and might always be there.

My parents knew that something had happened, but they didn't know what, and I certainly couldn't tell them.   They made a deal where they would pay for me to take a summer course at UNH and, if I did well, they would pay for me to go part-time in the fall, and, if that was successful, return to being a full-time student in the spring.

I had some successes in college, and that built up a bit of the confidence.  I met and married my ex-husband.  I became a teacher.  Life went on.

Until I bumped into my best friend at Wal-Mart one day in 2009 and asked if we could get a drink, that I had some things I needed to talk to him about.  That whole saga is recorded here, if you're interested in reading it.

I figured that my best friend knowing the truth would be an absolution of some sort, because I knew I had hurt him badly, and it was.

I truly believed that the rape was in the past, that I had healed, that I was over it.

This is all I can write for right now.  I'm starting to get upset and anxious, but I'll write "Repercussions of Rape Part II" in the next few days.

I will say this, to anyone who has ever been raped or molested or anything like that ... please, please, please know that it's not your fault, and know that there are people who will listen.  Sometimes it just takes awhile to be able to say the words ...

Concussion: Can't Think Much, But Feeling the Love Like You Can't Imagine

Sometimes, it takes an extreme event to make you realize how lucky you are, how love surrounds you everywhere even if you're not aware of it, that people care.  I think I must be a bit obtuse (or else a little bit negative, which I hope is not true because negative people irritate me ...), though, because it always seems to take some sort of crazy experience to make me realize how good the world really is.

When I was taking a shower on Saturday afternoon, I slipped and found myself suddenly airborne.  I landed on my face straight on the solid wood wall behind the tub (with such force that the shampoo and conditioner bottle flew into the toilet ... yeah, it was funny later), and the next thing I remember was sitting on the floor of the tub with blood gushing.

It was really scary, to say the least.  My first concern was my teeth (like most people that wore braces, I'm ridiculously paranoid about my teeth), but they all seemed to be there.  Relieved that I wasn't toothless, I figured out that I was bleeding from my upper lip and nose.

And that it hurt.  A lot.

I was really dizzy and my head was throbbing, but I was more caught up in the blood (oh, and okay, the very good possibility that I was going to have a huge scar on my face ... I really am a bit more appearance-obsessed than I'd like to think).

I got dressed quickly and took a picture.

The reason for a shower at two in the afternoon was because I had to be at school to chaperone a dance and wanted to be clean for the occasion.  My mother, who helped me ice and seal the cut on my face so I would not need stitches, did not think driving to work was a good idea, but I'm Co-Advisor of the senior class, which was putting the dance on, so I really had to be there.

I took this picture at a red light, just so I could monitor progress ...

Anyway, I felt okay until I got to school.  Once there, I got extremely dizzy, the muscles in my neck started killing me, and what had been a minor headache started to boom out of control.  My colleagues and the principal very kindly let me leave early to go to the hospital to be checked out.

When I got to the hospital, they put on a neck brace since the side of my neck was really sore.

As soon as the neck brace was on, my arm started to hurt horribly.  Now, it had been hurting a bit, but I figured I'd just fallen on it when I went down (I don't remember what happened after hitting my face on the wooden shelf), but the neck brace caused it to just scream.  It was awful.

Turns out my arm was black with bruises, and they thought I might have broken or dislocated my collarbone.

After x-rays and CT scans, it was determined that I had no broken bones (arm, collarbone, or face).  I did, however, have a concussion, a neck strain, and a rather ugly cut on my upper lip.  Oh, and a bad attitude.

My mom came and got me, and I introduced her to the joys of the drive-through pharmacy, then we went home.

I actually felt pretty good on Sunday and wanted to go to work on Monday (I hate missing work, and it ends up happening far too often because I'm unlucky), but the doctor note said I could not work on Monday, so I was stuck at home.

Which ended up being a really good thing.

I started off by being all upset at how awful I looked.  I posted this pic on Facebook stating that I guess now I know what I'll look like when I'm old (or if I became a meth addict or something).

As the morning went on, I started throwing up, which was, according to the discharge papers, something I should be concerned about.  I also got extremely dizzy (like, standing up and trying to walk was like being on a ship in the middle of a hurricane) and my headache just exploded with pain.

I don't remember doing this, but I wrote on Facebook meaning to ask my sister (she's a microbiologist, but for some reason I go to her for medical advice) if throwing up multiple times and being dizzy a couple of days after a concussion was normal, but I ended up posting on my own wall and tagging her in it.

I guess what got scary was that I was making typos and spelling/grammar errors.  I am ridiculously anal about spelling and grammar (I even put semi-colons in my text messages ;-)), so a lot of people started to get nervous and worried about me.

My mom also just forwarded me the following e-mail exchange we had yesterday morning, which scared her badly (I should note that my mom is a nurse practitioner, so I asked her for medical advice, too).  I'm sharing it here because I still can't believe that I wrote it ...

Hi Mommy,  

 I just threw up for the second time this morning. Is this something I should be worried about? I've felt "sick" all morning and figured itwas from the pain medicine, but wanted to see what you thought. Myheadache is really bad, too, so maybe that's why (sometimes when I get bad migraines I throw up). I wanted to let you know, though. Hope your day is going well Love you, Kate

 Hi Katie, Two things:  Is your headache the same or worse?     And:   Can you just take the valium and not the Percocet (it has Codeine in it and that gave you some trouble before)?   Try to drink some coke or other liquids and keep me posted. Love, Mom
Hi mommy,About the same. I think as long as I just sithere and don't move I'll beokay. I feel like I'm going to trow up again, though, so I'll probablyhave to figure our how to get to the bathroom. Well not how but howwithout getting more dizzy. I'm okay though.
I love you!Kate
Sent from my iPhone 

Hi Mommy,
My headache is worse (althoug that might be from throwing off)
U'll take just the Valium after my stomach settles. Can I take ibuprofenthough. My head hurts.
I'm also dizzy, but that might be from throwing up. 
Can I use the cursed word lol?
Love you,kate

My mom came home from work and helped me get dressed and took me back to the ER.  The worst part was that the sun was so bright I thought my head would explode.  It was horrible.

Anyway, they did another CT scan and gave me medication via IV, and I felt much better when I woke up.  They'd given me Percocet (for pain) and Valium (for muscle relaxant) on Saturday, and they changed it to a prescription Naproxen, and I'm feeling much better now.

I have a headache right now and I'm a little sensitive to light (and my arm is still pretty sore), but I've had lots of migraines worse than this.  Also, pics of  me today don't look like mug shots ;-)

But none of that, believe it or not, is the point of this post.  It's just relevant back story.

I wrote a piece for Zelda Lily that ran earlier this week that dealt with the way technology has really taken over communication in 2012.  A guy named Jake Reilly gave up social networking (from Facebook to texting and everything in between, including cell phones and e-mail).  I thought it sounded cool, but opined that I'd never be able to do it myself.


You know what?


I'm awfully grateful for technology.  Not only did my mom come right home from work as soon as she realized that something funny was going on with me (she thought I had a subdural hematoma and would need surgery--I have no idea what that means, but it doesn't sound good), but my Facebook wall just lit the heck up.


It might sound small and insignificant, but people that I haven't seen or spoken to face to face in years were offering concern and advice.  One friend texted to say that they needed my address since they were calling an ambulance.  That just totally blows my mind (which, thanks to the concussion, probably doesn't take much, but still ...)


Now, I might be an unusual case since anything I write with spelling and grammar mistakes is kind of a flashing red warning light, but still ...


From a fair distance away, people were not only worried but willing (and able, which is just remarkable) to take action and get me help.  That's just ... well, mind-boggling.


That and the number of people that cared.  My mom kind of has to care about me (as she tells me all the time, it's in the job description), and Henry drove straight to the hospital as soon as his work day was over (he didn't find out before then because he follows the "no cell phones at school" policy ;-)), my aunt who is an O.R. nurse at the hospital I was at came down to see what was going on (she'd been following the concussion drama online), but ... all those people on Facebook, man.


All those people caring.


It's not just mind-boggling ... it's humbling.


I am so full of love for everyone that showed caring and concern for me yesterday.  I am incredibly grateful ... and I am incredibly lucky.


Just curious, if you get a chance to go read my ZL piece, what are your thoughts on technology?  Is it overused?  Are we turning into vegetables (or angry birds) as we drool at computer and/or cell phone screens, or is technology a good thing?


After yesterday, I am singing the praises of technology.  Something else to be grateful for :-)


xoxo