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.

Unspeakable Trauma I'm Trying to Work Through: To Post or Not to Post

I was raped in the winter of 1998.

I hadn't thought of the rape in a long time, since getting a fragile peace in April of 2009 from my good friend that was mixed up in the whole mess. Making sure he knew the whole story was important to me in 2009 (click here to see why).

In 2014, I have been talking more about the fact that I was raped.  I do not want to talk about the rape.  I do not want to talk about it with my therapist. I do not want to talk about it with my husband.  I do not want to talk about it with anybody.

But since I mentioned it, I have had three separate people contact me and tell me that they also had been raped, sexually abused, or otherwise tortured. I had no idea how prevalent it was, how many unspoken stories there are.

And I wonder if it is time for me to talk about it.

I have no idea how many people read this blog, and I'm under no illusion that it's a staggering number.  I don't want to write a piece about rape that nobody will read, but by the same token I don't want to write about this traumatic event and have people read it just because it's got a buzzword.

I will tell you one thing about my rape.  I had to have part of my body surgically repaired.  Remember that hemorrhoid surgery?  Yeah, not a bad cover story...my mother didn't even know. So it's a bit gory.

In therapy, they are trying to make me do a play-by-play.  I don't want to talk about it.  I want to forget about it.

But that's not possible.

Writing has always been a better medium for me.

My story is a lesson in stupidity (don't ever put your drink down, even for a second), but it's also a lesson in pain and the long lasting effects of such a trauma.

One thing I've learned in the past few months is that I am still impacted by that event.  It has, in many ways, shaped my adult life.

But is it worth sharing?

I'm not sure ...

My Dark Times

The dark times. I think I've had them all my life, periods of time where things felt hopeless, dark, devastating, and ... all right, I'm using the word, depressing.

The dark times predate things brought about by my own stupidity, but it really bugs me when people blame all their problems on a dysfunctional childhood, so I won't. My mother's imbalanced thyroid and my father's affair with the victim-witness advocate at his office and their subsequent acrimonious divorce did not cause the dark times. There were times I lived in a darkness inside of myself long before my father walked out the door and my mother told me that it was my fault.

Sometimes I think I would be a therapist's greatest dream come true.

The problem is that I don't believe in therapy. I've seen too many people become four or five times more fucked up than they were going in following therapy. I've seen therapy destroy familial relationships. I've observed people who learned through therapy to direct their hate and angry feelings onto people that weren't the only people responsible for said hate and angry feelings. In a nutshell, more often than not, I've seen therapy make problems bigger even as the individual in therapy thinks they become smaller. I'm sure this is not always the case, but I guess I'm one of those people who can only judge on what I've seen, and that's what I've seen.

Is there truly a value for therapy? And how about medication? I've heard about the wonders it allegedly works, but I haven't seen such an idyllic experience in my observations. Sometimes I wish that medication was truly the panacea that so many people think it is. Any thoughts on this? Perhaps I need to change my thinking on this one ...

In my experience, all medication does is change the essence of who or what a person is. It's not that I don't believe in depression or anxiety or whatever. Trust me, I know as well as anybody that they exist. Frightening as this sounds, I found self-medicating through a variety of substances to be more helpful than any of those drug-of-the-month with full page ads in magazines and those ridiculous television spots to be. For example, one of my favorite people in the world became a completely different person after starting Lexapro. He is as addicted to the so-called security offered through that doctor-approved drugging as I ever was to anything. His refusal to admit to the changes brought about by the Lexapro, none of them positive in my opinion, has altered the nature of our relationship, possibly forever.

When push comes to shove, what's the difference, really, between wanting a Marlboro when you're overwhelmed by stress and wanting an Ativan?

I just read through what I wrote, and I almost deleted it. The thing is, though, everyone who knows me well is aware of the dark times. They are also aware that I've tried various ways to make them go away, both medically-sanctioned ways and ways that could probably have me put in jail. I'm reading Stephen King's It at the moment, though, and it made me think about the combination of light and darkness that exists in everyone, the yin and yang, the balance.

I guess I can write this now because I actually like myself now. There are a lot of good things about me, and I can admit that even as I know that there are some things that are not so good. The thing is, the dark times are a part of me. The black cloud that threatens to overwhelm me sometimes is as much a part of who I am as the smile and the laughter that many people think is me.

Can I embrace the things that make me so woefully unhappy when they are ingrained in my soul, pumped through my heart, an integral part of the very air I breathe? Would trying to get rid of those black feelings alter the essence of who I am?