by Band Back Together | Aug 18, 2015 | Bullying, Depression, Loneliness, Sadness, Self Loathing, Shame |
Untreated depression leads to chronic depersonalization” would be a meaningful statement if you meant something, but you mean nothing.
You are not a hardy child of Appalachia; stop wasting your days listening to bluegrass playlists, pining for a time that will never exist. You are weak. People wade through hells far deeper than this one, the soles of their feet scorched but their ankles held intact. But your tendons are peeling like the stalk of a pineapple, the skin on your knee burnt off to display brittle bone, graham cracker bone, bone of yarn, bone of string cheese.
Stay inside where neighbors cannot see the grotesque state of your legs. Stay inside where you cannot chant for them: gooble-gobble, one of us.
Do you want to know what a real person looks like? Don’t skip class this week. Arrive late and sit in one of the satellite desks. Never learn what Marx said. Observe the others mid-digestion and covet their hairlines, their builds. Sketch a series of concentric circles and keep your head down, because you are not a scholar, you are a machine, you are an alarm clock, you are a Disney Channel original series, you are just a paideia, you are mendacity itself. Masturbate for me; you deserve the shame of an amputee juggler on a unicycle, you deserve the shame of a hapless fourteen-year-old YouTube celebrity. Look around you and tell me if any of the people you see had to order their bootstraps off the Silk Road. Every waste of Bitcoins is melancholy, o destitute child, they don’t weave bootstraps in your size.
What you are going to need is a course of Paxil. It is a medication that, by the miracle of contemporary science, will make it easier for you to be worthless. You will be glad to have taken it, as it will make you scream less and sleep more. It will take your ragged canyon and level it out into mesa, and then it will take your mesa and build a timeshare resort. Paxil is an electric fence between banality and suicidality. Paxil is the opposite of filthy, passionate fucking. The instructions on the back of the bottle tell you to stream amateur porn and look at the way they want each other, then take down two pills with a light snack. You are going to forget, but don’t forget: you have to be beautiful to be hired as a caricature artist at the renaissance fair. Don’t forget, you have to do your laundry more often than you do now.
by Band Back Together | Jul 28, 2015 | Anger, Date/Acquaintance Rape, Guilt, Healing From A Rape or Sexual Asault, Shame |
This is her horrible, uplifting, beautiful story:
At age 35, I went with my father to a professional baseball team’s Fantasy Camp. Our coaches were former professional baseball players and current minor league coaches. I played softball my whole life; I was a good ball player. I held my own with the guys. I was accepted. I had a great week.
Thursday night after the championship game, I was outside the complex where we were staying, talking on the phone to my husband. I was approached by one of the coaches, currently a minor league manager, who was roughly my age. We’d been friendly all week. He asked if he could buy me a beer in the lounge and I agreed. This wasn’t the first beer I’d been offered that week. That’s what you did – you bought people beers. I told him I’d meet him in a few minutes.
I went back to my room to grab some money and tell my dad where I was going. On my way back out, I saw him at the back door of the complex. He waved and asked if I would walk around with him. He handed me a can of beer and we walked out back. We talked about baseball mostly.
We stopped walking at one point and he asked how long I’d been married. I told him ten years. He said twelve years. We talked about kids and my work. We got in to a debate about one of my plays earlier in the week. Then he grabbed me and tried to kiss me. I said “Whoa, no, no, no, I think you’ve got the wrong idea about me.” He pulled away immediately and apologized over and over. I told him I had to go and we quickly parted.
While this situation made me uncomfortable, I wasn’t upset, angry, or scared. I was actually sort of flattered. The next day, we played a game in the morning and then our week was over. I went to the training room to get an injury taken care of and when I walked out, I ran straight in to him. He said hello and we talked about our games that morning. He asked what my plans were for the afternoon. I told him my dad had gone to my cousin’s for the afternoon so I didn’t have any plans. He asked what room I was in and I told him. He said he had some things to take care of and then he’d swing by. I thought nothing of it. I figured he wanted to hang out and apologize for the night before.
He came by ten minutes later and I let him in. I was completely at ease. He was extremely charismatic and very charming. I sat on my bed and he sat on my couch. He asked to put the television on. I told him sure. He put on the MLB channel and we continued to chat. Around three, asked when my dad was coming back. I thought my dad had said around 4:30.
He said, “Why don’t you call and make sure?” I told him I didn’t see a reason to. He persisted to the point where he finally said, “Make the call,” pretty forcefully. Still, I wasn’t alarmed. I ran outside and called my dad, who assured me he would be back around 4:30. I told him.
I had pretty seriously injured my finger earlier in the week and he asked how it was. I told him it was getting better but still pretty sore. He asked to see it, and I held it up. He asked to see it up close so I stood and walked over to him with my hand out.
He didn’t look at my finger.
He grabbed my wrist and pulled me on top of him. He tried to kiss me. I kept turning my head from side to side and arched my back. I said, “I can’t do this. I can’t do this.” “Yes you can,” he replied. “I’m married, you’re married. I can’t do this.” “Yes you can.” “You don’t understand, I love my husband. I don’t want to do this,” I started crying.
He caught my head with one hand while the other remained tight around my waist. He started kissing my mouth. After a few seconds of struggling, I started to kiss him back. I instantly became nauseated.
After only a few moments of kissing him, I pulled away and told him I needed to use the bathroom; it was an emergency. I ran to the bathroom. I was shaking so badly. I tried to calm down. My head was spinning. It felt almost as if I had been drugged or had too much alcohol, that’s how foggy my brain was. My heart was pounding so hard and so fast.
I thought, “I’m just going to make him leave and if he won’t, then I will. He stopped yesterday. He will stop today.”
I opened the bathroom door and he was standing right in front of it. He grabbed me and half carried, half dragged me to the couch. He tried to pull me down on him but I managed to end up next to him. I had on a t-shirt and shorts along with a bra and panties. He had his left arm tightly around my waist, like a vise. That arm never left my waist.
I again said, “I can’t do this. I can’t do this.”
I was ignored.
That was when my body and mind shut down. I was no longer able to control my body. My senses were gone. I knew his hands and mouth were on me but I couldn’t feel them. I couldn’t smell, I couldn’t see. I felt like I was in a dream. And my body was frozen. When I tried to move, it felt like I was stuck in thick mud. I could hardly move at all. And I knew. I knew what was going to happen. It was inevitable.
He grabbed my hand and put it on his penis that he had pulled out of his pants at some point. He held my hand there and began stroking himself with my hand. I thought, “If that’s all it’s going to be, I may be able to live with this.” But it wasn’t.
He pulled me on top of him and pushed my shorts and panties aside. He asked me if I could get pregnant. I told him no. I asked if he had any diseases and he told me no.
One arm around my waist and the other on my thigh, I had bruises for weeks from his hands. It was rough and it was fast. But I never felt it. I never felt anything. Like all my senses were gone.
He finished and got up. Told me not to tell anyone and that he “hoped I would be back at camp next year.” And then he left.
I jumped in the shower. I was on day three of my period. There was blood everywhere. I thought maybe this was a dream. This has to be a dream. I got out and got myself ready for our closing dinner that night. I know my dad knew something happened. I was quiet and withdrawn. I hardly said a word all night. He wasn’t at the dinner. I never saw him again. The next day we flew home with me saying less than fifty words to my dad all day.
As soon as we pulled up at my house and I saw my husband, I burst in to tears. I told him I had missed him so much. We had been dating since we were in eighth grade and married for almost ten years. We have three beautiful daughters. We are as close as it gets. After the girls were in bed, he asked me what was wrong; what happened? He could tell there was something definitely wrong.
I told him.
I told him the whole story. I felt like I had cheated on him and he deserved to know every detail. He listened patiently. I told the story sobbing. I felt sickened and guilty and ashamed. I hadn’t fought him. I didn’t hit him or punch him or kick him. I didn’t scream. I had, in fact, kissed him back at one point. I’d also asked him if he had any diseases.
Didn’t all these things mean that I was okay with what was happening? Hadn’t my lack of resistance when my body went numb told him it was okay to proceed?
My husband asked if I ever had any intentions of being intimate with him. I told him that I had no intentions whatsoever. I never even wanted to kiss him, let alone have sex with him. I thought we could be friends. We had a good rapport through the whole week. I thought it was cool to be friends with a professional baseball manager. My intentions were purely innocent.
My husband said, “If you had no intentions of being intimate with him, and you told him “I can’t do this” repeatedly, then you were raped.” The thought hit me like a ton of bricks. How could I have been raped? He didn’t have a gun or hold a knife to my throat. I didn’t fight him. And my husband said that none of that mattered. What he did was against my will and I’d told him as much.
My husband is the most supportive person I’ve ever met. He never once doubted me, even when I doubted myself. He encouraged me to tell my best friend who also agreed that I was raped. I made an appointment to see a counselor the next week. I’d done a lot of reading about rape between the assault and the first meeting with my counselor. I was really beginning to understand the concept of being raped.
Being raped was never something I thought could happen to me. I’m smart, I’m strong, I’m athletic, I’m a professional in my community, I’m a good wife, and a mother of three. How could I be raped?
The first meeting with my counselor was an eye opener. He explained to me the physiology behind our “fight or flight” response. It’s not really just fight or flight, but that it’s “fight, flight, or freeze.” An overwhelming number of rape victims freeze instead of fighting. He gave me the analogy of someone coming up to him on the street and asking for his wallet with no weapon. What does law enforcement tell us to do? Give the perpetrator what he wants. Because if we don’t, we may very well get hurt. We are conditioned this way.
My body and mind shut down to preserve themselves. If I’d fought, he could have easily hurt me. This man was conditioned as a professional athlete. From the bruises on my body, one could see how strong he was. But why had I asked him if he had diseases? Was that the green light for him? One author on this website absolutely nailed it when she said “it wasn’t consent, it was resignation,” (I wish I could find her particular story and give her proper credit) after she asked her rapist if he had a condom. What an epiphany that one line gave me. Finally I had some answers to the questions I’d been asking.
And finally, I came to accept that I was raped.
It’s been 2 months. And it still hurts. A lot. I called my rapist three days ago at the encouragement of my counselor and husband. I always hold people accountable for their actions, so they both thought the best way to get closure was to talk to him.
So I did.
I told him he hurt me. That I cry every day. That what happened in that room was never okay with me. He told me that yes, he probably pushed me too hard, he lost control, and he couldn’t stop. I asked if he heard me say, “I can’t do this.” He told me that yes, he heard me but didn’t think I meant it. He apologized over and over again. He said he felt like shit. I told him I’d been feeling that way for weeks.
He said that he hoped we could be friends; that’s all he wanted from me anyway. That he never had the intention of having sex with me either. I told him he was full of bullshit and that we would not be friends and I wouldn’t be calling him again.
That call was very liberating. I felt like all the chains that were wrapped around me were gone. But I still have bad days and good days. Bad moments and good ones. I’ve been plagued with panic attacks since the assault. Now I don’t have them as frequently or as badly, but they are still there. This is still pretty fresh and new and I know that I still need to heal. I don’t trust men in general. This man was Venezuelan and any time I see a man of Latin descent, I want to stab them. Hopefully, in time, that feeling will dissipate.
I’m writing this in part as therapy for me and in part so that other people that have had the same sort of experience can feel a little bit reassured. That they aren’t crazy. That there are other people out there that have been through it, and are still going through it. But that there is hope that it can get better.
With the right support, you can heal from rape.
That’s how I felt after reading all the stories on The Band. I felt like these people all helped me understand what happened to me and now it’s my turn to help others. The guilt, the shame, the blame, the disgust and the anger can all be healed.
by Band Back Together | Dec 19, 2014 | Child Sexual Abuse, Shame, Uncategorized |
I’ve been keeping this a secret for years. The only thing I know is how to keep it a secret. I was molested as a child by two people, different times and no one in my family knows. Not my mom. Not my dad. Not my brothers.
How do you open up about this to someone you love? How will they believe anything you say? How will they believe you after all the years that has passed? Why is it easier to let your best friends know, but not your family?
I don’t want to tell my family because who knows what will happen after. I’m scared. I’m scared they won’t believe me and call me a liar. I’m scared what they might do to them.
But I still want to tell them. I just don’t know how. If I tell them, it’ll set me free. A huge weight lifted from my shoulders. This is probably the one thing keeping me from moving on.
It hurts me to hurt my family, but it hurts me more to keep this from my family. I think about it too much when I shouldn’t, but I don’t know what to do. I’m clueless.
by Band Back Together | Sep 4, 2014 | Anxiety, Anxiety Disorders, Narcissistic Personality Disorder, Self Injury, Shame, Trauma |
I didn’t get to work yesterday. I went to the hospital instead. At the insistence of my fiance, I called in sick and we headed out. This was after three days of hearts pounding, palm-sweating, barely able to focus anxiety. We pulled off the road for gas and breakfast only to have the car completely break down. We weren’t going any further that way. Our replacement car is over a week late, the current broken down junker has been a death trap for a while now. Needless to say, this turn of events did little to improve my stress level. I did my breathing exercises and fought a losing battle to stay calm. We called a cab, we got to the hospital. Very friendly people. Smiling nurses, nodding sympathetically to my plight. Always the same questions “Any idea as to what set you off? Do you have any triggers? Are you at risk of self harm?” and “Who’s this with you? Do you want him to stay?”
No, no, and hell no. My Fiance, yes.
The thing is, nothing has gone wrong. Work is awesome. My recent trip with my mother was fantastic. I met my fiance’s mother, a narcissistic woman I’d been dreading encountering. It was a pleasant visit, far better than expected. There’s just the background negativity that isn’t going anywhere, that for some reason, some unknown reason, was louder and more demanding than it has been since I was in the midst of abuse. Stuff like that I’m not good enough, my life is going to fall apart, it’s my fault my step father got away with so much, that he has uncontested custody of my little sisters. Sisters I miss so badly, and want to have as bridesmaids at my wedding. Sisters I may never see again. Just the same old shitty baggage, that isn’t going anywhere. I wish I knew how to just let go. The doctor gave me some pills. They put me to sleep, and for a while the background stuff is gone. It’s not perfect, but it helps me focus on the pretty A+ foreground I’m making myself. For now it’ll do.
Until I can let go of the shitty past and current yet distant circumstances beyond my control, it’ll have to do.
by Band Back Together | Jul 11, 2014 | Date/Acquaintance Rape, Fear, Guilt, Healing From A Rape or Sexual Asault, Rape/Sexual Assault, Sadness, Shame |
I found this site while googling help for sexual assault.
At the end of what I thought was a good night with friends, my friend’s husband touched me inappropriately. Down there.
I was asleep and woke to find him breathing over me, with his hands where they shouldn’t be. I got out of there so quickly that I didn’t even bother to find my shoes. I have been through a difficult time recently and during the evening I had confided in my friends about how I was feeling. It only adds to how violated I feel.
His wife is lovely and we have become close friends in the year that we have known each other, but now I don’t know what to do. What do I say when I don’t want to go to her house? I can’t tell her, I don’t want to lose her as a friend. I can’t tell anyone else, I’m already judging myself. The fact that he would do this while I was asleep makes me wonder if he has he done this to other people. I feel so lost, dirty and ashamed.
by Band Back Together | May 26, 2014 | Anger, Depression, Help With Relationships, Jealousy, Love, Romantic Relationships, Shame |
We all have letters we’d like to send, but know that we can’t. A letter to someone we no longer have a relationship with, a letter to a family member or friend who has died, a letter to reclaim our power or our voice from an abuser.
Letters where actual contact is just not possible.
Do you have a letter you can’t send?
Why not send it to The Band?
Dear Bryan,
I know that our relationship is long over. I have moved on and so have you.
I’m confused though.
The way you spoke to me those last few days, made me think that you wouldn’t find someone else. You told me that I didn’t meet your religious standards, but how does she? I would have converted for you. Hell, I would have done anything for you.
You let me go and said I wasn’t good enough, so how is she? Do I not deserve answers? I want to forget the pain that I went through for you, but your words repeat in my head on the nights that he works late. He knows some of what I went through for you, but never the words you said.
Why was I not good enough? Why was your only explanation “I didn’t plan on dating her?” Just why?
