I am trying... ** This post is about rape **
I don't know where to start with this post, I've never been able to begin at any certain point when speaking about this.
I suppose I'll start with what happened, then move to what has happened since..
I was raped in the bathroom of a restaurant.
I went for a pee break, possible make up check but never imagined a man would be waiting for me on the opposite side of the swinging stall doors.
I'm fairly strong for a girl but no amount of kicking or screaming could have released me from his grasp.
I will not get into it further.. only to tell that I left the bathroom after I heard him leave, under strict instruction to not move under the threat of my life.
I absentmindedly fixed my hair and went back to my table.
I acted normally.. I knew that none of my dinner companions knew me well enough to sense anything was wrong.
The effects of this feel as if they're close to being nonexistent.
Perhaps I should keep it all close to myself in such a way that I remind myself of it everyday.
I do not feel in any way that it was my fault, or that I could have done anything to prevent it, but I do feel that after it happened, I felt a sense of self loathing for a long while. My body was no longer something I gave at will, but something that was taken without my control.
I became unable to give myself to anyone I cared about, although I slept with many people.
Without feeling, without awareness, with the help of some very good pot and very strong drinks.
I numbed myself through it. I was a shell... I tried daily to find a different way to take the edge off.
Then one day I woke up, I was tired (and broke) from all the things I had done to myself in order to avoid dealing with this dead feeling inside.
I wouldn't call it an epiphany.. just that I discovered over time that regardless of how cunt-y love could be, it was much better going through than allowing myself to be used and hiding behind vices.
I suppose now that time has passed, I can see that regardless of the fact that we all come to this wonderful Blog to complain, share and grieve about love, we'd all *most likely* feel lost without it...
After all that has happened, I have let the rape become a part of my being that keeps me aware, keeps me true to myself and all those small things that are a part of my life.
Maybe I'm just using another form of avoidance.
It may very well have fucked me up in a way I can't fathom, can't see, but right now it seems that it's a single paragraph on a page in my storybook.
I suppose I'll start with what happened, then move to what has happened since..
I was raped in the bathroom of a restaurant.
I went for a pee break, possible make up check but never imagined a man would be waiting for me on the opposite side of the swinging stall doors.
I'm fairly strong for a girl but no amount of kicking or screaming could have released me from his grasp.
I will not get into it further.. only to tell that I left the bathroom after I heard him leave, under strict instruction to not move under the threat of my life.
I absentmindedly fixed my hair and went back to my table.
I acted normally.. I knew that none of my dinner companions knew me well enough to sense anything was wrong.
The effects of this feel as if they're close to being nonexistent.
Perhaps I should keep it all close to myself in such a way that I remind myself of it everyday.
I do not feel in any way that it was my fault, or that I could have done anything to prevent it, but I do feel that after it happened, I felt a sense of self loathing for a long while. My body was no longer something I gave at will, but something that was taken without my control.
I became unable to give myself to anyone I cared about, although I slept with many people.
Without feeling, without awareness, with the help of some very good pot and very strong drinks.
I numbed myself through it. I was a shell... I tried daily to find a different way to take the edge off.
Then one day I woke up, I was tired (and broke) from all the things I had done to myself in order to avoid dealing with this dead feeling inside.
I wouldn't call it an epiphany.. just that I discovered over time that regardless of how cunt-y love could be, it was much better going through than allowing myself to be used and hiding behind vices.
I suppose now that time has passed, I can see that regardless of the fact that we all come to this wonderful Blog to complain, share and grieve about love, we'd all *most likely* feel lost without it...
After all that has happened, I have let the rape become a part of my being that keeps me aware, keeps me true to myself and all those small things that are a part of my life.
Maybe I'm just using another form of avoidance.
It may very well have fucked me up in a way I can't fathom, can't see, but right now it seems that it's a single paragraph on a page in my storybook.
posted by Anonymous | 7:47 pm
Rape is always a topic that leaves a woman either with a sense of knowing because it almost or did happen to her, or scared it could happen to her one day. (I am part of the latter group.)
Obviously your ordeal left you scared and fucked up (trying to numb one's pain is sure sign of fuckage, and every goes through it at some point or another), but it is a positive thing that you feel more aware of the smaller things in life. People who are capable of acknowledging such things are always more self-assured and know what they want.
I'm gonna end the comment here because I suddenly went blank. ;) Good luck with the future and with love and all that great stuff.
That is horrific and nobody should have to go through something like that and the guy that did it sorely deserves an ice pick through the jugular.
Disclaimers aside, it sounds like you have gone through the most effed up stages and have come out on the other side - certainly a different person, but as they say (or as I say) experience is synonymous to wisdom. Good on you for posting about it, because surely that means the avoidance is dying.
Thanks for sharing that with us. They say it is wise to learn from the experiences of others without necessarily having to live through their, in this case, effed up experience. I am glad that you are able to deal with this more now, and slowly getting rid of that numbness.
> more vile and heinous than murder
No it isn't. Lets keep a bit of perspective here. Its possible to stop being a rape victim, and thats just what this woman has accomplished.
Its not possible to stop being a murder victim.
(who should then also be killed)
Hmm I lost my virginity to a rapist. Even though I went to the police, got him caught, went to court, got him convicted and he went to gaol, I still went through the same self loathing and self destructive behaviour.
I thought I was fine and liberated and using men for what I wanted. Well I was, I was using them to punsih myself for being too weak, or stupid or whatever it was that attracted him to me (when all it really was, was being in the wrong place at the wrong time).
I have lived a a few years since it happened (2 decades plus) and somewhere along the line I realised that everyone on this planet is fucked up in some way and the ones that remain fucked up are the ones that focus on what they think fucked them up. So I stopped focussing on that event and the aftermath, and started focussing on how talented I was, how smart and nice a person I was. It felt unnatural and weird and I felt absolutely FAKE, but in the end I won out and I am happier (and a better person for it).
Hang in there. It's just something that happened in the past and is no longer a reality, it is only a memory. Here and now is real.
Hi. This was very brave of you to write about your experience. I think that the fact that you can consign the rape to a 'single paragraph on a page in my storybook' is testement to how far you have come since the rape. You're not allowing that pervert to take hold of your life and strangle it, which leaves him powerless.
FORGIVE ME for not being able to dish out sympathetic words.
I find it insanely hard to believe that somebody who just went through a traumatic experience, such as rape, could manage to stumble back into a social situation without so much as showing a shred of evidence to what had just happened, in a VERY PUBLIC setting...
But perhaps that is just the idealistic part of me, trying to convince myself that rape doesn't actually happen in such afternoon-soap-opera ways.
I am obviously quite aware of how much of an arse I could possibly sound, but this post sounds more like a cry for attention than a casual story-telling of a disgusting event.
Rape is twisted and demented and strange in so many ways, but parading around like a pseudo rape-y is worse.
I loathe this whole topic. Completely and utterly. And I wish nothing but the worst pain on the people who pass it around like bad advice for rambling jackasses.
Jen, I wouldn't take Didums' comment too seriously. It's way too harsh. She never minds coming off as an arse and I think you touched a nerve with your post. She just reacts in extraordiarily tactless ways, is all.
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No posting of personal information, ta.