June 18, 1998. My grandpa had just been diagnosed with lung cancer, so I went to Southern California to stay with my grandparents for a few weeks, visit my cousins, get a tan, and chat with old friends. I had grown up in cali, and moved out of state when I was 10. Before I moved, my uncle met a woman. She had 2 kids of her own, a boy a year older than I, and a girl a few years younger. They decided to get married, and my cousin was thrilled at the prospect of siblings--she was an only child. I met my uncle's soon-to-be-wife and her kids, and then moved and didn't see them again until I was fifteen. My cousin wanted me to spend the night w/ her before going to Disneyland the next day, so I did. Her step-brother and I "messed around" a little that night, but nothing more. And then I didn't see Him again until June. Again, my cousin and I made plans to spend a day at Disneyland, and again I spent the night with her. That night, my uncle and new aunt went out, leaving my cousin, her step-brother, and I at the house alone. My cousin took a bath--she wanted to shave her legs for the theme park the next day--i was lying on the bottom bunk with a book when He came in. He told me that he still wanted me, that I was beautiful, that he wanted to teach me about "love." I told him no, that I wasn't interested, that I was involved with someone else. He ignored me and forced himself on me. I was still 15, and a virgin. I remember closing my eyes and forcing myself to keep quiet, to protect my cousin, I suppose. We heard the water start to drain, and he left. I laid on the bed until my cousin came out, and told her I was going to wash my hair. I scrubbed myself raw in the shower that night. I came out looking like a lobster. I didn't say anything about what had happened.
A few months ago, I wrote this:
she was only across the hall
you'd think she'd have known--
heard my stifled cries
and ragged breath
or sensed--
something
something amiss in the power structure
something not right
on their sister's bed
but then again
I smoothed the sheets
to feign the
illusion
that nothing had happened
When I was ten years old I began using drugs. By the time I was 12 I was a full blown addict. I met Mike. He was 23 and gave me whatever drugs I wanted. I thought he loved me but he was very abusive and when I finally realized that it wasn't normal for a 12 year old to have a 23 year old boyfriend I tried to get away from him. He went into a rage and raped me. I was a virgin at the time. I never told anyone about it. I masked my fears with more drugs.
I spent the next six years in total denial that anything had happend. I became very involved in sports, especially surfing. I made lots of friends, was a cheerleader, homecoming princess, and was involved in just about every extra curricular activity at my school. I figured that if I looked okay on the outside and kept a smile that I wouldn't break and that my dark secrets wouldn't slip out. I took all the internal fear, pain, and anger and released some of it thru surfing. But I was always raging inside. No amount of drugs, friends, or physical activity could ease my pain.
Highschool ended. I moved and knew that I had to do something about the rage I knew was eating me up inside. I began going to counseling and sought help for my drug addiction. Things were getting better. And then it happend again. It has been six weeks since I was raped again. I went to an unsafe place and was met by two drunk men. They held me down and raped me with a beer bottle. I wanted to lay down and die when it was over. I had spent a year in counseling, convinced it would never ever happen again. Things are so complicated in my life now. I do not feel safe. I do not trust anyone but a few select people. I am back in counseling and I am riding on faith that I will make it through this. I have been ridiculed by many of the people I have shared this experience with for not going to the police. I was afraid and I still am most of the time. I will fight back by not giving up, and not allowing them to take my life from me. I will no longer be the victim!
.. I will rise above this and find myself again. I am not a victim I am a survivor.
I came inside the house, and all I wanted to do was take a shower 'cause I felt so filthy and I hurt. I couldn't, though all I could do was curl up with a teddy bear and cry. The next morning, I still hurt bad, and there was blood. Now, I don't know if I'm even really a virgin anymore. In the sense that there has never been..ya know, in me, i still am, but i don't think everything is in tact down there anymore. That makes me so mad. That and the fact that I couldn't do anything. Granted, yeah, i know now that silence doesn't mean consent, but still,every now and then, i get those feelings of guilt, like I could've done something, I could've stopped it. I don't know, that part hurts too much to think about.
After that, i didn't think about it much. he was fired soon after, and i didn't think i'd ever see him again. But, as my luck goes, he signed back into school in October. He wouldn't say anything just stared, with completely unnerves me. Um..back in February, the threats started. I was threatened, my best friend, also, of being raped and/or killed. Eventually, I was pretty much forced to get a restraining order on him. The hearing was the following Monday, and the judge looked at me, and then looked at him (with his blue streaked hair) and granted the order. The other night, my best friend, Kristine (who is like the greatest person in my life) said to me "We beat him". He hasn't shown up at my workplace or at school since the hearing. We did beat him, in a sense. I didn't let him get the best of me anymore. i say 'anymore' because for months I was miserable, cutting myself, everything. But it's been 9 weeks now since I've cut myself. =) I still tend to disassociate a lot I've discovered various...beings, i guess you could call them in me. They come out mostly in my writings. It's a little freaky to read it later on, actually. =)
I don't know when it shifted, but it did. I think it was with the phrase "We beat him". I'm not a victim anymore I'm a survivor. Yes, I still have some real bad days, mood swings, everything, but I'm ALIVE. I still have major problems with relationships, but that'll come in time...i hope. But I'm here, and that's what matters. Shannon, Heidi - I just wanna say thanks for having this page. You two have SO much courage I admire you for that. I admire anyone that can get thru such a hell and then come back and help out others. You're amazing. =)
I would like to hear from fellow survivors, whether for advice or just to chat. I'm always willing to listen.
Kristen
http://www.gurlpages.com/writing/pandora_girl/
The second case involves six neighborhood boys and me. I'm older now, in the third grade, and most of my friends are boys. I'm playing with four of my guy friends when two cousins of one of my friends show up. They start putting us down saying that we are playing children's games. (At this point the age range in the group is 8-13 years.) They tell us of a game called Cowboys and Indians where all the boys are cowboys and all the girls are indians. Of course, I'm the only girl so they appoint me Indian Princess and pull me behind my garage because they are "kidnapping me for ransom." The cousins order four boys to hold my arms and legs against the side of the garage. I remember them giving a huge lecture about how I was being crucified and that I'd have to hold real still and that noone should say a word about to anyone else about our game and that everyone would get a turn if they wanted one. I remember the look of victory in the older cousin's eyes as he came toward me and slobbered his tongue inside my mouth. He pawed and my chest as if I had breasts to grab. He asked if anyone else wanted to try and a couple did but most looked too afraid to do anything but stand as still as stone. I could see the look of fear and pity for me when they had the guts to glance into my eyes. Fade to black. I assume more happened because try as I might, my memory won't let me know what happened.
I've been raped a few times...or attempted. The one that most stands out in my mind is the one that I let happen and I should have known better. But it was just instinct for me to go slack and to let whatever was going to happen, happen. The faster it is over with, my dear. I had met a guy at a Renaissance Faire. He was tall and pale with dark hair and light green eyes. He acted all proper and elegant and even spoke in different accents to entertain me. We went on a walk around the Faire one day and ended up making out in a tent behind the faire grounds. Most Ren. Faires have tent towns so it wasn't odd to see people walking behind the "city" walls. This first date was heaven and we promised to visit each other. My gut told me not too...but I wanted to see him again just to see what he was like off of the faire grounds. Most of our first date was rather nice. He gave me the directions to his home (but not the address) and his cell phone number if I got lost. I visited and had a good time talking with him, watching an old movie, and making out. Then he said he wanted to show me around his house. It was a really beautiful house. His mother is into Egypt so there was alot of Egypt stuff around the house. And the backyard was large surrounded in back with a small wooded area that was being developed. Well, he took me back there under the pretense to see some wildflowers. I still had no clue that he was going to do what he did. We started making out again under a tree. He was putting his hands all over me and I told him I wasn't comfortable with that because someone might see us. He let me go enough for me to start to walk away. But he grabed my arms from behind and pulled me back against him. I was wearing a long dress which he pulled up in back and started...started anally raping me. I told him to stop but he didn't. I tried to pull away but that just made him pull me back harder against him and that hurt me more. So I figured to just let him have his way and then I could get out of there. After all, he was bigger than me and behind me. I had no way of attacking him. Stomping on his feet didn't seem to bother him...he just found the struggle more appealing. He finished, finally. We started walking back to his house. All I could think of was that I had to go to the bathroom, pick up my purse and coat, and drive away. As we got near another tree to the side of his house he took me again. I tried just not standing up but he held me up like a rag doll while he kept at me. I went blank. I stared at the small garden around the side of the house. The rock and the green plants. The dirt. I tried to get away again because I kept thinking that I didn't want this to happen, that I'm a strong woman, why should this happen to me? But he caught me and put me against the trunk of the tree. I eventually did leave and on the drive home I kept thinking, "What just happened to me?" I didn't go to the hospital. I just went home. Eventually I told some friends who said, "Do you realize that he raped you?" I honestly didn't.
My parents broke their rule when his father died. I went to his family's house and insisted on staying there overnight - I felt the need to prove that I loved him and would be there for him. Yet, I still had the belief that I wanted to wait before having sex.
When it was time to go to bed I learned that his family thought it OK ofr a 16 year old girl to sleep in the same room as her 20 year old boyfriend. I was a little shocked, but didn't want to seem uncool, and I did love him. So I went to his room. I wasn't out to deny him or hurt him. He decided that some pretty permissive foreplay might satisfy him. I agreed to that.
It wasn't until later that I realized he had taken my virginity. My immediate response was that it would have happened sooner or later. This was just sooner. I felt that I had to be strong enough to handle this. I knew what he had done to me was rape but I didn't want to turn into one of those bitter people who hates all men because one of them has hurt her. I was determined to not be that kind of person.
He broke up with me a couple months later saying he had found someone else. I figured I was done for if even a rapist didn't want me. I began shoplifting even though my family had enough money. I shoplifted for 2 and a half years. I felt that the world owed me something. When I was finally caught, I was scared. I told my parents about the rape then - maybe thinking that they would go easier on me if I played the victim. They were sad and hurt - AND THEN THEY NEVER MENTIONED IT AGAIN. I was hurting but they were overwhelmed or something. I was 18 and on the verge of going to college. I believe my parents truly loved me, but they couldn't talk to me. For me the silence has been the hardest thing to come to grips with in the healing process.
When I went to college, I began to feel I had two lives: I was the virginal girl by day and by night, I began having sex with a lot of different guys. I would do anything to prove that I had indeed wanted it the first time. I trusted them despite my fears, but what I lost was the trust in myself. The shame and guilt that would torment me were awful. I was never able to talk about it or understand how to truly be myself. I became adept at playing roles - seeming to be good, but feeling that I was very bad. Most of the men I knew (I rarely had a standard "boyfriend") did not treat me well. I liked to always feel that I had done everything in my power to make a relationship work, but I did not expect the same of them.
Somehow, despite my completely fucked up self, I met a man who treated me really nicely and wanted to get married. Again I felt that this was a role I needed to play. The problem was that my husband wanted more than sex. He wanted me to want him and desire him sexually and emotionally. We started having terrible fights about our sexuality. I never understood at the time that my experience of rape could still be hurting me and preventing me from being intimate with my husband. He knew that I had been raped by my first boyfriend, but didn't really know anything else.
Eventually we grew distant, and I got terribly depressed. I isolated myself from my friends, family, and my husband. I did what I had to do to keep up the appearance of normalcy - but no more. My husband began getting very angry with me and my unwillingness to do things. Then I met someone else at work. He was handsome and charming and he thought I was great. He was only at my work for one month. I felt so connected to him - but I didn't want to be an adulteress. I told my husband about my feelings of disconnection in our relationship. He was too angry to discuss that. He got mad that I had spent money buying him a Valentine present. I cried that whole day, and felt that my marriage must be over.
The next week I had sex with the other man. Once we had sex, I think I thought I would have him hooked, that he might be the one meant to rescue me. He left a week later. For awhile I thought I really loved him and that I had to think of how I wanted to change my life. I had just gotten health insurance with mental health benefits, and I entered therapy.
For me therapy has helped the most. It gives me one place in this world where I will be safe no matter what. It is a place that challenges me within myself no matter what. It has been a lot of hard work - but it is now enabling me to be more authentically me. The very word rape overwhelms so many people. It is hard for them to try to understand that someone they love could have been through such a horrible thing. Sometimes I like learning what about my reaction is normal and why it sometimes feels so bad.
I think the other thing that has helped is reaching out and breaking the silence. I am glad that something finally affected me enough so that I got help. My rape 15 years ago cannnot be an excuse for the way I act the rest of my life. I have attended a local support group and am trying to make some net connections so I have some people to talk to who have been where I am. I am writing poetry and fiction and feel that maybe I can be a whole person again one day.
Back to Barbados....