by Band Back Together | Apr 20, 2016 | Child Grooming, Child Sexual Abuse, Date/Acquaintance Rape, Fear, Gang Rape, Guilt, Intimate Partner Rape, Love, Male Sexual Assault, Rape/Sexual Assault, Self-Esteem, Statutory Rape |
In the United States, every 107 seconds, someone is sexually assaulted. Four of every five sexual assaults are committed by someone known to the victim. 68% of all sexual assaults go unreported to the proper authorities.
Why? Why do so many sexual assaults go unreported?
Shame. Self blame. Embarrassment. Fear that no one would believe their story. Fear that they may have caused it. Not wanting to be the victim. Wanting to move past the sexual assault. There are a multitude of reasons why sexual assaults go unreported.
Just as there are a number of types of rape (gang rape, date/acquaintance rape, intimate partner rape, statutory rape, sexual assault), there are a multitude of responses to sexual assault. Each of which is completely normal.
This April, The Band Back Together Project is shining a light into the darkness of sexual assault. Please share your story of sexual assault so that we can Light the Darkness.
All are welcome.
I’ve been with my boyfriend for seven months. He moved into my university house, and it wasn’t long before we fell in love with each other. He is the most incredible, caring and loving person I have ever had the pleasure to meet, and I love him so ridiculously much.
He has tried so hard (and it has been hard) to help me become my own person. I’m only 19, but I have been through a lot in those 19 years. I used to live in a women’s refuge, I have been raped by several people, including my uncle who groomed me and coerced me when I had nobody else to show me love. I was 15. Due to all this, I had very very little self respect or self worth.
A few days after he moved in, the evening of our first kiss, I raped him. It was my 19th birthday, and I was so drunk I can’t remember it in the slightest. I didn’t even find out until a month or two afterward. Apparently, I was pulling him onto me, trying to take both of our clothes off. He kept saying no, but in the end, gave in and had sex with me. He did it because he knew I’d never been fully accepted by anyone before, and he wanted to give that to me. Even if it meant giving that.
For seven months, he has felt totally okay with it. Until this morning. He keeps saying he’s sorry because he loves me so much and wants so much for us. He knows it wasn’t really me, but he doesn’t know if he can be with me. He doesn’t know if he can forget. He won’t even let me touch him anymore.
I don’t know what to do. I want to be with him so badly. I’ll never love or be loved like that again. How can I help him to move on from it? How can I help him rebuild his self worth?
by Band Back Together | Apr 19, 2016 | Child Neglect, Child Sexual Abuse, Childhood Bullying, Teen Bullying, Teen Self Injury |
To the 2 year old little girl, Allison, with brown eyes that love everyone and everything you are perfect never change.
3 year old Allison:
The dog bite and 120 plus stitches you will need in your face will only hurt for a little bit. It’s what comes later that will really hurt you.
4 year old Allison:
The daycare teachers and other kids at daycare will call you the ugly duckling. Don’t cry to much about it because at the end of the story the duck ends up being a swan. But that’s just a story and stories aren’t true. Right?
5 year old Allison:
Now is when you should try and run away from people. Here is when you change schools for the first time and you have to deal with the bullies again. Now is when you will have to talk to the state police about your aunt sexually harassing and sexually assaulting you for a couple of years. But that’s okay because that’s how you show people you love them. WRONG!!!! Now is when all the nightmares will start and you won’t sleep for the next couple of weeks and, sleeping the next couple of months without waking up screaming will be a miracle.
6,7,& 8 year old Allison:
These years will be different right? Wrong! These years the bullies get worse because they make new friends and become “Popular”. Don’t worry about what popular means you’ll find out within the next couple of years. But on the plus side you make a few new friends too. The downside to these friends one will steal your things when you have her spend the night, one will hate you most of the time, and the other is a boy that only has you for a friend.
9, 10, 11, & 12 year old Allison:
Those boys who always “pick on you” as the teachers call it only do it because they like you. Let me tell you how wrong that is. Those boys don’t like and probably never will. They are rude and can get away with murder because their dad is the big man at the school. You will be hurt emotionally, physically, and spiritually because of these boys and the fact that no one will help you because their daddy signs everyone’s paychecks. The teachers will say money is more important than you. You can’t get help.
You’ve made it this far through hell. Don’t look anyone in the eyes and don’t speak unless spoken too. You will break down in tears because now the boys are sexually harassing you and it brings back the nightmares. But still no help.
13 year old Allison:
You move schools to a place where no one knows your name. You will feel relief but only till a group of girls start to bully you. Those girls don’t matter though because later on they will become so of your closest friends. What really matters is that at the end of the year there will be a boy who takes his junk out in science class and measures it to see how manly he is. He will blame you on telling even though you didn’t. He will tell you that he is going to make small but deep cuts on you after he beats you so you will feel pain and slowly bleed out. The nightmares will come back but now you have him and his “manhood” threatening to kill you after your aunt takes advantage of you. You start to cut.
14, 15, & 16 year old Allison:
You’re in high school. The first day will go okay until you run into him in the hallway and you have a panic attack. You will have a panic attack at least once a day and will end up with a few new cuts for every panic attack. The nightmares will start again and for every sleepless night you add a couple of new cuts. Your wrist will be stained red for awhile but that’s okay because you realize how poetic black is and you wear it almost every day.
17 year old (Present day) Allison:
You have stopped cutting and hopefully for good this time. You never see him at school anymore but that’s because he is in a different building now. You’re a senior in high school, have panic attacks, social anxiety, and migraines often. You are falling apart and you shouldn’t be. You’ve been through so much that you will be up one night at 12 writing this warning because the nightmares wont stop and you haven’t been able to sleep all week because of them.
Thanks to all the crap that has happened I don’t feel. The only time I ever feel anything truly is when I physical hurt myself or when I have the nightmares. Other than those times I don’t know what’s wrong with me. It’s not normal for a 17 year old girl to not feel emotions. I talk to my mom about all of this all the time; she just doesn’t know how bad all this actually is.
Am I the only one who feels this way? Am I the only 17 year old who questions life, God, death, and emotions?
by Band Back Together | Apr 18, 2016 | Alcohol Addiction, Coping With Depression, Depression |
Mental Illnesses are prevalent in our world. They greatly affect not only the individual involved, but the people around them. In the month of April, we focus our spotlight on Mental Health, in order to heal together and break down stigmas.
We want your stories. How has your own, or someone else’s mental illness affected your life? How are you rising above stigmas?
Please share your stories with us during the month of April.
I lost my adult son to depression and alcohol and feel very guilty that I didn’t see his struggle. The days before his death I could have caught him, helped him, saved him. One email, one text. 2 years on, every day I wake and think of him and think of how I failed him. I lost not only my son but my self. When I got the call I fell to my knees and I have never really got up again. My wife left me because she did not want to help me grieve, and I cannot blame her. Will I recover? One day, one day far away I hope I will.
The purpose of this note is however not about me. I’m just like any of a million other parents this year, and next year, and the year after. Its about the other survivors like you. You need to know that you should support every charity, every effort, to work out why this this life toll, that outweighs road deaths by 2-1, happens in this modern day.
You should look at that drink in your hand, or that of your friend, who drinks too much. My son died of extreme alcohol withdrawal and I would wish that on no-one. At the last he must have been terrified. You might be one step away from someone who needs help. Help them.
Thank you for reading and listening.
by Band Back Together | Apr 15, 2016 | Anger, Date/Acquaintance Rape |
In the United States, every 107 seconds, someone is sexually assaulted. Four of every five sexual assaults are committed by someone known to the victim. 68% of all sexual assaults go unreported to the proper authorities.
Why? Why do so many sexual assaults go unreported?
Shame. Self blame. Embarrassment. Fear that no one would believe their story. Fear that they may have caused it. Not wanting to be the victim. Wanting to move past the sexual assault. There are a multitude of reasons why sexual assaults go unreported.
Just as there are a number of types of rape (gang rape, date/acquaintance rape, intimate partner rape, statutory rape, sexual assault), there are a multitude of responses to sexual assault. Each of which is completely normal.
This April, The Band Back Together Project is shining a light into the darkness of sexual assault. Please share your story of sexual assault so that we can Light the Darkness.
All are welcome.
I was raped about three and a half years ago. There are still times I think about it, but it doesn’t generally run my life.
Today was a hard day for me, though. I wrote my rapist a letter (obviously not one that he’ll ever see) and realized some things about myself in it, and in doing so, I became very emotionally overwhelmed.
My current boyfriend, who knows about what happened to me, got mad at me for being so upset tonight, even after I told him why I was. I don’t remember his exact words, but he said something along the lines of, “It’s been three years already!” implying that I should already be over it.
Should I be?
Am I just pointlessly obsessing over something that is obviously never going to change?
If so, how do I make it stop?
I don’t like it either, and I’m not choosing to have the memories I have.
by Band Back Together | Apr 13, 2016 | Dissociative Identity Disorder, Inpatient Psychiatric Care, Teens: Mental Illness |
Looking back on my/our times inpatient, I see an array of different experiences. Whilst at first I felt locked up, caged and incapacitated, later on I felt safer and more in agency of myself. My first inpatient experience was in 2010. This is what I wrote about it:
“I was in psychiatric hospital from April to June 2010. The rooms were cold, with white walls and loud air conditioning. I always fell asleep watching the wall, the shadows portrayed on it by the blinds.
(…)
The worst of all was when the visits went from once a week to none. When my phone was taken away from me. When I wasn’t allowed to see my parents.
(…)
Being caged in a room with no lock, no security, no privacy, without any contact into the world — and no hugs, that was what hospital was like.
I can’t believe I went there by choice.”
The hospital rooms I’ve been in still aren’t all that comfortable. The one I’m in right now is a mix-match of blues and purples (with a blue ceiling, of all things!) and the clock on the front wall is loud and crooked.
Here, we fall asleep with not just our teddy bear but also with our unicorn, bundled up in surprisingly comfortable hospital sheets. Here there is much less need for the sort of musical escapism I did as a teenage patient. Here I am a subject, an agent in my own treatment, and my folks no longer dictate my medical ways. On the contrary, I/we decide how and when and why I am treated.
I was visited by a friend last night, and would most likely be visited by my family and other friends if I were/am to stay longer. My friend gave me the biggest of hugs and played with my hair and kissed my forehead while we lay on my hospital bed talking at ease.
This time round, I have my phone, my laptop, my tablet – all connection to the outer world is intact. We are not trapped or suffocated, though staying within these four walls does get a tad bit boring in the end when I’ve finished all imaginable tasks on my computer.
And I do not regret coming here by choice, or having come here the last few times this past February and the year before. In between we have been treated in an open Daytime Ward, a six-hours-per-day sort of thing, like a part-time job except your job is, well, your own health and well-being.
Unfortunately, it is still a struggle for the staff to understand our condition and our way of being. The phrase ”So I hear you have these personalities?” is still a frequent visitor, and if I don’t remind them they’ll forget I’m not L (unfortunately, L is still up in her Limbo Room).
I’m seeing the doc today. Going to determine whether I leave or stay. Wish me luck!
By-theclocksystem
