How do I tell Jeremy the most beautiful man in the world that someone has ruin that part of our reationship forever or at least for a while? Was I the dub one did I do something wrong ... no I did not fight it a lot but I said no agian and again and again...
To this day I thank I God that I was on the Pill (for my periods) and that he took me home...
I cry a lot these days(just in the last few weeks) and some times I tell my professors I have food poisoning when I just can't make it to class and Last week Jeremy and I got all dressed up and danced all night and for the first time since August I felt beautiful... Thank you for your web page and thank Tori for her music... Jeremy doesn't understand why I like her music (he does too but I think he likes her more) maybe one day I can tell him...
Maybe the pain gets better please
I would really like to thank you for your website. I found it on the DENT a while ago, but did not feel it was ready to release what I was hiding. I wasn't ready to deal with the unknown. I thought it was safer that way. It has only been in the past 6 months that I have begun the release.
Two years ago I was sexually assaulted. It was my freshman year of college, and I thought I was invincible. I had never been to a party where everyone there were virtually strangers, but trusted a couple of girls that I had met a few weeks earlier and naively, a guy that I recognized from an orientation get-together. He walked me home in my hazy state of consciousness, and I collapsed in my room. (A week and a half later I was told that ro-hypnol had been found at the party, and the person in the kitchen found it next to the drinks that I had been consuming) Shocked into a weak and partial realization of my environment, I saw a dark shadow forcing himself upon me. I will never forget his face, his hair tossed over it in waves as I fell in and out of consciousness. The way his bitter sweat smelled even more acrid than it usually would, and how I couldn't keep myself alert enough to do more than cry and helplessly writhe under his strength when I *was* conscious. My roomate was in the room the entire time. She was sleeping with someone that she had met at the party, and had turned the music up so loud and was laughing at what she thought was an ironic situation, she couldn't hear anything. The next afternoon when I awoke, I was alone. My roomate had gone to work, and the only things remaining to prove to myself that it had unfortunately not been a nightmare, were the soaking red sheets and a sock of his that had fallen behind the bed. I was so shaken, that all I could do was cry and shake, pull the sheets off of the bed and walk downstairs to the washer and dump them in. Then I sat in the floor of our shower until the hot water turned cold. I called my best friend, but she was the only one who knew. I didn't tell anyone else. I *couldn't* tell anyone else. My parents are extremely conservative, and at the time I thought that if they found out I drank, it would become even more of my fault. Then I started to believe that myself. "If you had not gone out, this never would have happened. If you had not worn J-'s new sweater, this never would have happened. If you had not gone to the party without your best friend, this never would have happened." Until recently, I had almost created a victimized element to my attacker I was the one at fault and deserved it.
Tori Amos was already a part of my life, and it pained me at the time to know that the one song I hoped I would never identify with was all of a sudden a part of me. I saw her perform in my hometown only weeks later, and during "Me and a Gun" brokedown in convulsing tears, shaking in my best friends arms. I had forced myself to curtail any emotion or thought about what happened since the day after it occurred. It was her performance that opened the doors for me to confront and feel what had happened to me. During the "Plugged" tour, I was able to give her a letter at one show, and briefly speak about it with her about it at another a few days later. To know that she had read it and hopefully realized one more person that she had touched and pulled through a sexual assault meant so much to me. I was suddenly growing to believe that I wasn't the one who should feel all of the blame. I knew that I wasn't faultless because of some of my choices, but I was beginning to not feel responsible for his lust, greed and anger.
It has taken two years for me to grow into a safe area again. About 3 months after the assault I met someone who grew to be my best friend, and slowly...the love of my life. He is an amazing person and a blessing to me. He understands what happened, and has been a light through all of the pain I still relive...through all of the healing.
Yes, I am still healing and don't believe it will ever end. The nightmares still come both in my sleep when I relive even some moments I don't remember in their entirety, and day after day when I hear of other people being raped and attacked, knowing that whether there were preventative measures or not, no one deserves such pain and destruction in their life. Because that is exactly what it does to you. It destroys you.
To this day, I cannot speak the word rape. Maybe it is because I feel that by just saying it I will be returned to those moments that I remember only in horrific pieces. But even though I cannot speak the word, I have lately begun to realize that by releasing the pain or sharing about what happened to me may prevent similar destructions for others. I don't know if this will help anyone, but every time that I write a little about it, somehow another small piece of pain peels away like old paint.
Sometimes in the middle of the night the city wakes me up
and i can almost sea the shadows emerging from the gloom
ready to enter my dreams again
Are they really there? or are they just figments haunting me? Stories i made up from the past that i’ve started to believe in that i’ve mixed in with my reality that was once only fantasy that was a man hiding somewhere in my room with open arms and open mouth that spoke no words but had vicious breath that smelled of evil that breathed in my face that filled my lungs with fear and my stomach with grief that pushed inside that tore me up that made me forget that made me remember at times like these
when i am alone
and vulnerable
‘Cause sometimes they come back
The monsters
The nightmares
The gore
The man in my closet seeps out sometimes
The man that i’ve kept out of my brain
The man hidden in my dreams
The man kept locked up in my MOUTH for so long
The evil man with a tweed coat and a scratchy face that changed my
view of the world from swing sets to cages from kaleidoscopes to mocking
birds from innocence to rage from
the little boy i was watching sesame street and screaming when they
showed a close up of big bird’s beak and wondering why WHY i was alone
in that big place with a sinister soul waiting in another room to eat me
up
waiting there with no face - just two big hands that could tear me
in two - why? why? why?
Copyright: 1998
Russell Anthony Boyle
I'm worried that the next time a guy touches me it will make me feel like it's R. I'm scared that the next guy is just waiting to rape me when he gets the chance. I mean, if a guy I was friends with raped me, then what's a guy who has no connection to me going to do?
Will I ever be normal? Or will I always be this scarred person? The rape continues to permeate every aspect of my life. It's like a tumour. And I'm so sick of being the victim. I just want to go on with my life like that night has been erased. I know that won't happen, but after all the shit I've been through I feel like I deserve it.
I don't know how to trust men anymore. It feels like all they want to do is reduce me to the space between my legs. I feel like even with my male friends the face they put on is not their true one. Deep-down I feel like they are all monsters. And that's so sad. But I feel like that's the secret I've learned from this experience. I wish so much I didn't feel this way, because it can't be accurate. Please God, let me find out it isn't accurate.
I think I'm broken. And I hate that. And I wish I could just get over this. I don't want to waste anymore of my life being messed-up. Feeling dirty and used and like a shell of what I once was. I want that part of me back that R. took that night. The joyousness that made me unique, the ability to trust and care for others, the ability to look at a man and not see a rapist. When does the fact that R. raped me quit being the forefront of everything in my life? I want to be me again, not me, the rape victim.
How can he live with what he did? I could barely live with what he did. I hope the guilt is so bad that he can't sleep at night. Like I can't close my eyes without thinking about it. There are some things that you can't forget and some things you can't forgive. I don't want to be the kind of person who can't get over hatred, but this runs so deep. It makes me feel like a horrible person because I've never hated anyone, but I can't forgive him.
I have been so down lately. I'm trying to figure out how to let go of who I was before the rape, and embrace the person I've become. I thought I was just an interim person right now. I thought I'd be different for a bit and then go back to who I was before. But I guess that girl doesn't exist anymore. And that's so I was seven years old. My neighbors and babysitters, "Easy" and Alice, who had been there for so long, moved to a retirement community. Little did I know that a nightmare would move in and take over my world. It has only been recently that I have stopped denying this tragedy. I great part of my childhood died when I was seven. I didn't realize it, all the damage that was done. I have never told anyone. Not my mom, not my dad...it took them a while, I think they realized it, but by that time...it was too late. After the new neighbors moved in and settled, our family simply showed a little good southern hospitality with a pie and some coffee, introduced themselves and met their family. They had two sons. One was away in the military, the other about 15 or 16. My parents thought, when they met him, he was a nice guy, and since there was a lack of a babysitter, he looked responsible enough. How decieving people can be, how cruel. My parents would leave for the evening on the afternoon and it would begin. The touching was frighteningly cold.
I wasn't old enough to know who or what I was, much less, what was going on. Then there were the threats, how he would hurt or kill my little brother, or tell my parents how horrible I was, if I told. I couldn't let that happen, but I was seven. My little brother was my soft spot and I was Daddy's girl... What did I know? He knew where we played. He was twice my size and lived next door, peering through darkened windows, but always feeling the piercing gazes. It continued for about a year or so. My mom said later it was because I acted strange when he was near. She decided he didn't need to be around... Although she could never quite put her finger on it and I counldn't tell her....Since those days, I have regretted many actions, not getting too close to people for fear of the deception people are capable of.
I have let the relationship between my brother and I go sour. I think I resented him for a very long time, he wasn't even aware of what was going on. How do you explain to a child it not his/her fault? That they are wonderful & precious when there is so much anger and hate and self-hate in his/her heart. How does an adolescent overcome the awkwardness of puberty when there is no self-esteem? I have started the journey. I am lonely a lot. I know others understand, but, I have yet to speak of this to anyone in person. Maybe I never will. I am 22 now. I am not whole, but I am gaining ground everyday. Soon.... Very, very soon....................
I saw something tonight that has helped me make a connection between events in my past and these feelings. There was a story on 20/20 about Tori Amos and rape survival. I was raped as a freshman in college. It was not a life or death situation, a friend's boyfriend was waiting for her in my room, he was drink and angry, and he raped me. I decided not to fight, I knew it was not my fault, nothing I had done. I was unsure of what to do next. I never pressed charges, I don't know if it was fear, or a belief that nothing would happen to him, or that even if it did, it would not change what had happened to me. I tried to tell his girlfriend, to warn her, but she called me names and did not believe me. So, I decided to move on. I was lucky enough to know that it was not my fault that this had happened, happy that this had not been a violent episode (though if it had been I would have been more likely to report the incident- and I wonder why I did not). I decided that I would not let this break me, would not let him take anything from me, and would not let him win. Would not let him possess my confidence, my joy, my ability to love, and my ability to trust. I thought I had won.
Until tonight.
Life has been less than perfect for the last few years. I have lost numerous friendships due to what I believe was my own inability to be a friend. I stayed in a bad relationship (not abusive, certainly not physically, just not good for me) because I believed that things were bad because of me. My boyfriend told me I was materialistic and "needed" too much from him. And like a fool I believed that my dreams of a nice house, financially stable life and a loving, affectionate PARTNER, were not based in any reality. I began to hate myself, to gain weight, to believe that merely living from day to day is as good as it will get for me.
I am working on my friendships, trying to develop new ones, and cultivating the few I have left. I have a new boyfriend who is ambitious, loving, kind, intelligent, and employed :). I have a wonderful relationship with my family. So why do I still feel so inadequate? I know it is because those external things cannot make me who I want to be. I do not remember losing myself, but I realize that it has happened. I have lost the ability to forgive myself for small things. I have lost the ability to look at myself in the mirror and see a beautiful woman. I have had this strange obsession with reading everything I can find about women and the issues they face, today and historically. Not to become a "feminist" as that has so many negative connotations these days. No, to find out what it means to be a woman. To find our history, our stories, and create a place for myself as a successful woman. Not in the financial sense, but to be the "womanest" woman I can be. I think that we are beginning to define women by how much like men they can be. I don't want that. I want to embrace womanhood, the joy and the pain. Only I don't even think I know what that is. There is no singular female figure that we all embrace. Women still seem to be measured on the virgin/whore scale. I am neither. I think that quest comes from my experience as a rape survivor. I have become a eunuch (if that is possible for a woman). I thought it did not get to me, but since that time I have come to the realization that he did take things away from me. That I let him take those things. That he did win.
It is so hard for me to be sexual the way I once was. If he could treat me that way, maybe everyone can, and will. I can accept men into my bed, but there is always a nagging thought in my head. I am afraid to talk to men in bars, or on the street, or in my home, unless there are a lot of other people present. I always have that fear in my head, that it could happen again. I have tried to let my current boyfriend into my life. I let him move in with me. I trust him, but how much? Sex so often feels like something I have to do, not something I want to do. I find myself becoming very cold when things move beyond holding hands. Of course, I realize that this has nothing to do with him, and everything to do with me so I try to remain supportive, and give him the things that he needs from me, the emotional support, the physical closeness. I don't even know how to go about working on myself in this case, so I don't tell him. I talk to him about a few issues here and there, but not the whole thing. I don't even know what to say. I know he would be supportive and help me, but I don't even know what to do.
I want to love myself again, to believe in myself, to see my beauty. To reclaim myself, to emerge the victor. I know I should not look at this as a win/lose situation, but that is what it feels like. I remember in college when one of my residents was sexually assaulted. I was so angry when she decided to leave school. So angry that she let this man's actions get to her. So angry that she could not do what I had done, not rise above the situation and be stronger. Now I think I was angry because she could not do what I had not done. I think that was the first time I had any sign that I had not worked through my own issues. Only I refused to see it. Now I realize she did what she thought she had to do. Just as I had done. I know she went through counseling, and I wonder how she is today. I wish I had supported her, her decision, stood with her. I always thought I was different, on the other side. Now I realize that I am no different. I have not even begun to fully explore myself. Well, maybe I have begun….
After writing this, I realized one of the steps to recovering is to talk to those closest to me. If I share my story and my feelings, I can work on destroying these barriers I have built around my heart.
