by Band Back Together | Oct 14, 2010 | Abuse, Alcohol Addiction, Coping With Domestic Abuse, Domestic Abuse, Intimate Partner Rape, Rape/Sexual Assault |
It’s your 27th birthday today. All day today, everything I signed and dated put knots in my stomach.
This is the first time in three years that I am not bending to your will.
The first birthday of yours that we spent together was the first time I felt truly afraid of you. It was the first time you made it entirely clear what you were capable of and willing to do to me.
I was to start my first post-college job that day. The night before you got drunk. You were throwing things, making degrading jokes, grabbing at me and my clothes, and cutting me down to size. You made it clear that I was worthless and that the job I was to start as a social worker was pointless.
That I had no worth…to society or to you.
After you destroyed our living room and kitchen, you began throwing beer cans and blasting your racist music. You kept me awake until three in the morning with the noise. Besides, I was too afraid to sleep and leave you unattended in the house. You came upstairs and realized that I was still awake. I tried to explain to you that I needed to sleep which you thought that was funny. You said that I had kept you up many a night when you had to work and that I would be fine.
You then proceeded to “do” what you wanted. After my first day, I came home and surprised you with a cake and a card. You thought they were both bullshit. You wanted booze instead. You did not ask about my day. Instead, you sent me a text in the middle of the day to pick up alcohol for you.
Now we’re done. So entirely done. And I still have moments where I feel worthless, useless, and unable to ever love or be loved again. I don’t trust men. I don’t like being touched. I have a hard time eating, sleeping is impossible, and romance makes me so angry.
My emotions are raw and I feel like I’m trying to swim out of the center of a lake. I can see myself on the shore but it takes one stroke at a time to get there.
Now you’ve moved on to another woman. I’m relieved that it’s no longer me that is the center of your “affections.” I’m hurt that it was so easy for you to move on when I’m stuck. I still hurt and rage and ache.
I didn’t expect today to be so hard. After all, it’s YOUR day, not mine. But I’m proud because I made it through. I’ll keep swimming back to myself and away from the sinking pit that you pulled me into.
I’ll find myself.
I will heal.
by Band Back Together | Oct 12, 2010 | Child Abuse, Child Sexual Abuse, Date/Acquaintance Rape, Rape/Sexual Assault |
When I was fourteen years old, I was raped. I was raped by a Vietnam Veteran, so to the rest of the world, he was a hero. And I was no angel. I hung out with 19-year olds. I smoked pot. I wanted to get away from my parents because they had a toddler that I was expected (and often did) to care for.
The night it happened, I’d gone for a walk with my older female friend and along the way, we were picked up by a local friend, Mike, who had to be about 20. He had the good weed. He had the hook-ups. He knew where to go.
The car ride was fun but my so-called friend left me to go with Mike to have The Sex. She left me alone with a way older man (who seemed to have PTSD) who decided that if I smoked pot, I must be all into him.
He tried to woo me by bringing hot dogs drenched with ketchup (which today I cannot look at without gagging). Then, he threw me to the floor, and started ripping off my clothes. Mike, the thug that he was, DID try to stop him when he heard me screaming, but backed down when a gun appeared. I ran off and hid under a car.
He found me.
I didn’t hide well enough and The Rapist found me. He dragged me out and proceeded to…well, it didn’t REALLY happen, right? It was just fingers and a dick trying to get into my crotch. Mike got there and stopped him from really doing it. Is Mike a friend? Did he put me in this position? There WAS penetration, and bruising.
I have never had a healthy relationship with men other than my male FRIENDS, the ones who don’t decide to be more than friends later.
Later, I confided in a boyfriend who was friends with The Rapist’s big brother. He let The Rapist into his house when I was cooking dinner for his friends. I about died. The Rapist didn’t even recognize me. I about dropped. My boyfriend KNEW because I’d told him what had happened. But my boyfriend thought that it was okay because The Rapist didn’t remember raping me.
I’ve never had decent romantic relationships. I have loved, I have been punched, I have been left and I’ve left too.
Now I just don’t want a man. I’m happy in my own little world. Sad thing is, the age has reversed.
Now I am 41.
To this day, hot dogs with ketchup make me throw up a bit in my mouth.
I originally wanted to do a post about children’s foundations, my favorite Make A Wish, but then I realized how broken I still am. Please be aware of http://www.rainn.org/
by Band Back Together | Oct 1, 2010 | Addiction, Adult Survivors of Childhood Sexual Abuse, Alcohol Addiction, Anger, Blended Families, Child Abuse, Child Grooming, Child Sexual Abuse, Childhood Fears, Fear, Incest, Rape/Sexual Assault, Shame, Therapy |
I was the first girl in my family. Six older brothers, one younger sister from my mother’s second marriage.
The man who became my stepfather was an alcoholic. He was abusive. He would beat everyone except my sister. After all “she was his” but we weren’t angry about her being spared. We were thankful. She was safe.
He would think of ways to inflict more pain during our beatings. He would gloat about his “latest idea”. He was so excited when he created a board for our beatings that had circles and lightning bolts cut out of it. Thrilled when he saw that his plan worked. The cut-outs left circular and lightning bolt blisters on us where he had hit us with it. Our butts, our legs, our back. Wherever his newest invention connected with our flesh.
We couldn’t control our stepfather. We couldn’t control his drinking. We couldn’t control his beatings. And by God, you had better cry when he beat you. One of my brothers tried to control the only thing he could. He decided not to give him the satisfaction of seeing the pain he was causing. When he didn’t cry, he was beaten harder. Then harder still. Then harder, until the rest of us were screaming that he was going to kill my brother. He finally gave up in disgust and went to the bar. My brother was home from school for a long time after that beating.
There were days that he felt “fatherly.” He would take me, at three or four years old, to the bar with him to show off his “little girl.” There I would sit, hours on end, surrounded all the other drunks who weren’t home with their families. Even at that age, I knew this wasn’t the right place for me. I didn’t like the way the men looked at me. Asked me to sit on their laps.
I was scared.
When I was seven, my stepfather upped the ante and found a way to scar my soul. He began sexually abusing me. He didn’t start out with other things to gain my trust, or tell me how special I was, or try to make me believe this was because he loved me, like so many other abusers do. No, he did what he wanted with no preamble. He took what he wanted violently. HE was angry with ME afterward. HE was disgusted by ME afterward. He had found a much more efficient way to destroy me than a beating.
This abuse went on for years. I started walking to a little country church every Sunday. It began as a way to get out of the house. It became my only source of hope.
He tortured my brothers and I. He waved guns in his drunken stupors. He humiliated us by bursting into our grade school classrooms drunk and demanding we leave with him. (This was in the 70′s. The school let him take us when he could barely stand. I would hope that wouldn’t happen to children these days.) He would be gone for days or weeks at a time. We would learn not to relax when he was gone, as soon as we did he would return. It was as if he knew we were suddenly feeling safer in our home and he couldn’t have that.
When I was in sixth grade, my mother divorced him. I felt guilty for the internal relief I had over him leaving our lives. After all, the Bible says to honor your mother and father. I struggled with that for such a long time. Now I know that I couldn’t be expected to honoring a man who was so unhonorable. No loving God would ever expect that.
I haven’t seen him in the 30 something years since the divorce. Thank God I haven’t seen him again.
I followed the Family Rules for a very long time. I didn’t tell anyone outside the family. I took on the shame. I took the responsibility. I took the burden. I took the pain.
But eventually I grew up. I married. I told my husband some of what happened after we had been married a little over a year. I regret that, I should have told him sooner. But I couldn’t. I wasn’t ready. Thankfully, he is a wonderful, gentle soul and understood why I didn’t tell him sooner. And he didn’t run from my pain. He didn’t run from my past. He didn’t see me as the damaged goods. He was supportive. He was awesome. We have been married 30 years now.
We had children. A boy and a girl. As my daughter grew, the childhood I tried to forget started pushing itself forward in my mind. First a whisper, then a speaking voice, and eventually screaming YOU CANNOT IGNORE ME! I was a mess. So emotional, so raw, so frightened to face it – to speak the truth.
Eventually, I had to seek counseling. I could not get through a day without the memories forcing themselves front and center, in my dreams at night, in my day with flashbacks. Horrible, painful, frightening memories.
I was blessed. I found a wonderful counselor on my first try. She guided me. She gave me a place to speak. She encouraged me when I felt overwhelmed (most of the first year). She HEARD me. She didn’t judge me. She showed me that the shame and disgust didn’t belong to me. They belonged to HIM. It took a while for me to believe her. That pain, shame and disgust had been mine for so long.
Eventually, the shame and pain was transformed into anger. No, that isn’t quite right…it turned into ANGER! Anger that frightened me with it’s intensity. But finally I was feeling the anger at what he had done to the little girl I once was. Once I found the anger it was a very good thing that I didn’t run into him (he lives in another state). I would have ripped his manhood from his body and shoved it down the throat that used to tell me it was my fault.
I went to therapy for a year and a half. I won’t sugar coat it, it was a very tough year and a half. There was a lot of hard emotional work to be done. But oh, what a gift that therapy was for me.
I KNOW it wasn’t my fault. I KNOW I didn’t deserve what he did. I KNOW it wasn’t the clothes I wore, the way I acted, the choices I made. It was HIM. He is a sick perverted person.
Therapy made me a stronger person. My hard work transformed a victim into a survivor. It helped me become a better mother, a better wife, a better human being. It helped my soul to be set free from my past.
My younger sister? The one that was “really his”? The one he spared the abuse? She grew up to feel horribly guilty for what her birth father did to us. (We are all still thankful she didn’t suffer along with us.) She couldn’t escape the pain of her guilt. She began abusing drugs as a teen. She is forty three now. She has spent the last 27 years in a deep pit of drugs and alcohol trying to escape the past. She lost custody of her son when he was five, due to her addictions. My husband and I adopted him. We couldn’t stand to let him go to strangers and lose everyone he had ever known. We couldn’t stand to lose him in our lives either. We continue to help him battle the demons his past have created. Spared her? I don’t think so.
I am no longer angry. Don’t misunderstand me, I don’t want to ever be anywhere near my stepfather. But I don’t want to harm him anymore either. Growth. Now, if I think of him, I feel pity for the twisted, dark, hurtful person he is. But I don’t feel sorry for him either. He made his choices. If what he did haunts him when he least expects it, that is his consequence. Somewhere deep inside of him he knows what he did, who he is.
I don’t want to give him one more minute of my life. A minute I spend hating him, is one more minute he owns. He took enough. He took too much. He can’t have any more.
by Band Back Together | Sep 14, 2010 | Coping With Depression, Healing From A Rape or Sexual Asault, Major Depressive Disorder, Rape/Sexual Assault |
Last year, my youngest daughter got a strange rash the day before my birthday. I took her to the ER that day because her doctor was “too busy to deal with a rash.” She was diagnosed with shingles *ewww* and I called my mom and arranged for her to take my two oldest so that they didn’t get sick. Also I wanted to catch up on my Netflix and I knew the baby would be sleeping. (Woot!)
My birthday came and went, and my husband and I decided not to celebrate.
Five days later my husband decided he was going to go out with some of his buddies. I admit to being a little upset about it, since I hadn’t been out in months. I picked up a good bottle of wine, put the baby to sleep, and got a little tipsy, before passing out in bed. I woke up sometime later to hear banging on the door. My husband habitually lost his keys while drinking so I stumbled down the stairs and pulled the door open to let him in so I could go back to sleep.
It wasn’t my husband.
I was sprayed in the face with what I believe was Lysol and got a good bash to my head. Luckily,I don’t remember much of the whole incident. When my husband came home he found the door open and I was lying on the floor in the living room with my clothes ripped off and a vacuum cord wrapped around my neck, thankfully unconscious.
Our then three year old was sleeping in an upstairs room, blessedly undisturbed. My mom came over and an ambulance took me to the hospital. I don’t remember much of this either because they had to sedate me since I wouldn’t stop screaming. After a lot of persuasion, I agreed to letting the police do a rape kit. At that point, I didn’t understand what was happening but I was scared and HURT. I felt violated and I didn’t want anyone to touch me.
They sent me home with ice packs, Valium, and a drug called Combivir, just in case my attacker had HIV. On top of the physical and mental stresses my body was already going through, the Comibivir would give me the same symptoms as someone undergoing chemo. I would be sick, and lose my hair, among many other side effects. My mom and sister decided that they would take the kids for the two months that I would have to take the medicine.
My husband and I banded together for the first time ever. He found us a new apartment because I didn’t feel safe in ours. His parents came up to help us move.
I spiraled into a depression. I soaked in it. Two months turned into my mom taking the kids for almost a year. We moved again because I couldn’t stand being in our city anymore. I still had problems getting out of bed. My husband didn’t want me to take anti-depressants because he wanted me to get better on my own and he saw the meds as a crutch. We fought. He cheated. I became more depressed. It hurt to talk to my kids, to let them see me because I’d lost a lot of weight and I looked like shit – to put it bluntly.
I contemplated suicide, and I finally found rainn.org, and their virtual counselors. I talked to someone every day, sometimes several times a day. I stopped taking two Valium an hour and started eating without the fight from my husband.
I still dream about it most nights. I still get horrible feelings whenever I smell Lysol. I still don’t feel sexy, but since then it’s almost like I crave sex. I want it more than ever. I’m sure if my husband knew that my new found randiness was due to the fact that I wanted to erase everything else, he would stop having sex with me.
I know that rape happens to millions of women but I still feel alone; I still feel like damaged goods.
