My story begins in a decent Italian restaraunt in London, England. I was fourteen years old and having the greatest time of my life. (Somehow I had convinced my parents to let me go on a trip to Europe which included destinations like London, Paris, Amsterdam, Cologne, and various other places with a group of about eighteen other people of many different ages.) I was sitting in the seat closest to a stairway leading to the empty basement/private dining area and there was a lot of talking and noise going on. About halfway through my meal, the waiter comes to me and asks me to go downstairs with him because he has "something to show me". Taken by surprise and not knowing what to do, I reluctantly agreed and went with him, my exit was unnoticed by the others around me. Once down there I found myself alone with him in a dark area that had a bar and a dance floor and some tables and so on. Standing in the middle of the small dance floor, he asked me to wait where I was and disappeared into a smaller room with no door. He turned on a dim light mounted above a picture and asked me what I thought. I was beginning to feel really uncomfortable at this point and quickly mumbled with as much interest that I could possibly muster that it was beautiful while turning to go back upstairs. He walked after me, took my arm and asked me to stay for one more minute, that the picture wasn't all there was. I knew something was wrong, that "gut feeling" had kicked in. He leaned toward me and tried to kiss me but I pulled away a little and told him I needed to leave. He disregarded that and tried again but I shook his hand off my arm and tried to walk around him again to the stairs. That's when he got pissed off...he grabbed my throat pushed me backwards against the wall opposite the stairway and shoved his tongue down my throat. I was really scared at this point and trying to fight him off by pushing. He started fumbling around with his left hand (his right still grasping my throat) to open the door beside us. He managed to muscle me into that dark, dark room, lock the door, and shove me on a couch. I hit my head pretty hard on what I think was an armrest and tears started streaming down my face. I couldn't make a sound and my head felt as if it were exploding. Then he straddled me and I felt his hands tearing at my pants. He pulled those down to my knees and I felt his weight come down on my chest and his hand take its place back on my throat. I had never had sex before this and each thrust was a new kind of pain for me that I never imagined existed. His hand was clenched on my throat through all of this and got tighter with every second that passed. It became a great struggle just to breathe and I knew he was going to strangle me. After an eternity, he stopped and loosened his hold on my neck a little. I naively thought he was finished and that my hell was over. My mind had left me a long time ago but my body felt him turn me over and force anal sex upon me also. He couldn't hold my throat, but his arm was wrapped around my neck and I could feel his chest against my back. Time, life, nothing was real to me at this point except excruciating pain. This lasted an entire lifetime before he stopped. He took a second to catch his breath and sit me upright on the couch. He placed his hand on the back of my head and even though it was pitch black in there I could feel him standing up in front of me. This is when it all became too much for me and I could not let him violate me anymore. I kicked toawrd him with all my fear and rage and humiliation...I kicked him in just the right spot. I heard him moan a little and fall to the floor. This is when I scrambled on hands and knees for the door and by some miracle found it, managed to unlock it, and crawl to the restroom upstairs. I sat in the corner of that bathroom holding my knees against my chest and staring into oblivion forever. Someone knocked on the door and brought my mind back to the hell I was living. I took to my feet and stumbled out of the restaraunt, shaking tremendously. My hotel was only a few blocks down and I "walked" like a drunkard to it. I ran a scalding hot bath, sat down in it still shaking and stayed there, violently scrubbing my now filthy skin, until the water became too cold to bear.
This happened a little over a year ago and I'm still not fully recovered from it, I know that I never will be. I miss my old self terribly sometimes, but just being here today and sharing this story makes who I am now very proud. Thank you for taking the time to read this.
I wrote out my story recently to a friend of mine in an e-mail. (this is basically the e-mail but with some detial ommissions) I told him i had been raped but god for the life of me i couldn't tell this to him face to face. I trust him a lot and think he is a wonderful person but i can't tell anyone about this. Writing it has helped but the pain is still there. At least here someone can know this occured. WEll, here is my story ... I hope it helps someone to know they are not alone.
I'm just going to start this.There is no easy way to start this. There is no right time really.
well, As I said it was december 17, a friday. I'd been going out with this person for about 5 weeks. It was one of those friend of a friend's boyfriend's friends deals (I don't if I typed that right but, I didn't know him proir is the point, neither did my good intentioned friend) But anyhow I meet him up at Highland Hills Chruch.. my mother would have gone nuts knowing I was going out with a 19 year old... I made up some excuse then left my home. Well, thank god he never went to my house. I think i would have died of fear thinking he knew where i lived. There is a broken lock on one of the doors... and no one was in the church sowewenton in.Well, we went through the chruch before we went out cause, at the time, I went their and it was important to me and I wanted to share that with him. He really wasn't a bad person at first,otherwise I would not have gone out with him. I trusted him alot.
We where their for about a half hour... just playing in the gym, got food from the kitchen. We wherehavinga nice time. Then we went into the santuary through the back way. We went up t the bapistry cause I wantedto show him how pretty it looked with the stain glass, it was where i was baptised. There is dark hallway with changin rooms on the side. He started to kiss me there and I said no we are in a church. I should have resisted more cause he tried to again and I said what the hell. He tried to put he hand up my shirt I said no. I know I said no. I remember. He knew I don't belive in sex before marriage but he started talking...Like come on baby I get nothing from you but kissing. I said i think we should get out of there and go out and just have a nice night. Something changed. I knew he had a temper. He was a bigger person then me by like a head. He grabed my arm and tried to force me into on of the bapistry changing rooms. I screamed, I kicked,. I rang through the door ! into the bapsistry but I fell on the stairs... and I hurt my ankle and I couldn't get could get back up. If only i had't fallen i could have gotten away. The wind was totally knocked out of me. He came after me. He had a knife. I thought i was going to die. I thought he would have killed me right there. He put is hand out my mouth and face and said if I screamed or resisted he'd kill me. He put his hand over my mouth and nose for about a minute or aleast til I started to black out. After that I just remember being hit. Hit on my stomach, he never touched my face. he was alot bigger than me so he pinned down my chest with his arm. I remember thinking I will die here. Then he ripped off my skirt... I tried to kick but he had me pinned. I felt like i wassliping in and out of conscienceness... blacking out I guess it is called. I can't belive now what happened. How her hurt me like i was nothing, not even a person. What he did. I justcan't get into those detials... it hurts to mu! ch... When he was done he told me if I told anyone he would find my house and kill me. Or if not him someone who wouldn't think twice about it.
I couldn't get up. I laid theere looking up at the light on the window.I coughed up blood or something at one point. I bled. I don't think i realized fully what went one> What I had done. I eventually got up and called my friend paula if we could go out. SHe picked me up at the chruch and asked my why my skirt was torn. I told her I riped it trying to find something I left in a loft the chruch. She has mass clothes in her car so i changed in the back. I don't think she saw the blood. I threw away the skirt. I told her I just had a fight with my boyfriend (i rather not tell you his name) that was why I was acting sort of odd. I went over her house and showered cause I told her I felt scumy, she didn't think twice about it. Anything I could filed charges against was gone. A few days later it hit me oh god what if I'm pregnant. Well, I wasn't for the main reason I can't become pregnant because I have had a server eating disorder for 4 years(at that point)
This summer before I was accepted to Mercy Minstries (a in'home reatment place for myeating disorder) you have to get tested for STD's and thank god I didn't have any. It worried me but what have i told my mother- mom can i go get tested for aids cause come guy raped me. No. No one can ever know. No one knows why I hate that church so much an won't go back there. I can't go back there.
i was gang raped, tortured, put thru the "initiation rites" for childhood prostitution/sexual exploitation when i was eight. the law enforcement that were supposed to be helping me actually forced me into some of these situations, they were trying to use me as live 'bait' to bring this drug/prositution ring down..it didn't work..they lost control of the situation...and i went thru hell. i don't forgive my parents for giving them permission to do this.
BUT...as horid as all that was, and as much as i swore it would never happen again...it did.
a friend called, i hadn't seen him in six months, so i said he could come over...we later went out to dinner with another friend of his... the two comments i remember distinctly were ' i broke up with T because i told her i was in love with someone else' (stareing straight at me).. and that he didn't have any place to stay that night. since i'd known him for two years, i said he could stay on my couch for that night... he only left two weeks later after being arrested for domestic violence. it would take too long to tell all the details, but he did everything...even slip prosom (the legal, presription sister drug of rohypnol) in my drinks when he knew that i reacted badly (life threateningly) to it, and that i was already on ambien , another sleep med, and strong opiate pain killers. i remember 8 rapes...and one was so bad my now ex-landlords have photos of the bloodstains in the carpet where he had dragged me down on the floor. at one point he had me so terrorized i couldn't even tell my best friend to come get me, i curled up on the couch and wimpered..she came anyway, i DON'T react that way to anything, so she told him i was leaveing (by then he had convinced me i wanted to stay and work things out)..he had the guts to give me a plastic bracelet that said 'smile' as a i'm sorry gift...i walked out of my apt because i wasn't safe.
and when i finally got up the courage to report it (obviously, i hate cops from what they put me thru when i was younger) the guy was a complete dick... he kept belittleing it, saying that it wasn't valid since i waited 8 months to report, saying that it was only 4 counts of possible assult (2+3+2+1= 4? since when?), that i should have physically fought back (huh?, i was drugged, he weights over 100lb more than me, and i have a rare disease that causes bruised/traumatized soft tissue to bone...um, not i'm not stupid)... even the rape crisis center advocate was pretty pissed at him. so we'll see what happens... that was this morning since 4 this afternoon someone(s) been throwing things at my door and windows, i'm assumeing its my rapeist's friends (he himself is in jail for stealing a moped then trying to outrun the cops on it).
I am 26 years old, and I see alittle of myself in each of you. I cry as I read this and remember. Sometimes, I dont know why I survived, It would have been easier to have died and let go of all the pain and agony. I have tried and struggled to stay strong for so long. Fighting back my fears, tears, weaknesses and the memories. I have built a brick wall of feelings and most times I am an agry person. I cant get along with my mother, my family,etc. I dont have very many friends. and when I meet someone that becomes close to me, I usually find a way to befriend them for fear of them learning about me and for fear of being hurt. Alone as I always will be. I dont know how I will continue to survive. Today is a bad day for me. I am wearing black as if I am to attend my own funeral. I know that I want to live an experience a life that I never had, but why must I think...why must I remember? I look at my wrists where I slit my wrists when I was in high school, I count 5 different times I slit my wrists but I was spared by doctors and god himself. I have learned to accept the fact that I cannot even do this right. I have had several experiences. You see, I was a victim of child abuse and sexual abuse. It started when I was just a girl, maybe 5 years old. Feeling my legs being pulled off the edge of the bed. Screaming, crying. Not ever knowing what really had happened(or is it that I just try not to remember) and blacking out from the humilation, anger, pain.I had nightmares everynite from that day forth, seeing the devil, wicked clowns, trying to place any other face there instead of seeing my father. His drunked face as he forced me to do such things. I can never forgive him. I tell myself it is not my fault. Sometimes I wonder if I could of stopped it. Why the hell didnt I tell someone. I didnt know it was wrong then, I didnt realize what was happening to me. I created another person to hide that part. She died a long time ago, and now I am a different child.
I feel better now, It feels like a ton of bricks coming down when I
start to talk about it. I try not to hate myself, "It's going to be ok",
but I think I live in hell and someday when my spirit leaves my body I
will find heaven. I guess the only way I am going to get over this is to
learn to cope, start to relive again. I dont know how to do this. I
dont know if I can. I dont know how to feel anymore. I feel like my heart
is an empty space. That is the little girl who is talking, constantly
haunting me. she never wished to be born. She never wished for any of
this to happen. Why did this happen. Why cant I stop blaming myself....
I wish to share a poem with you:
(wrote this in high school)
~~~~~~~~~Blame me~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I look in the mirror, what do I see,
Such an evil mask, that thing is not me,
Now I see why, they could never love me,
Hateful words, Painful fists,
I am so lonely,
What will I do now,To try to ease the pain,
Will I make to tomorrow, Will it be the same,
No, it never will, Because I am to blame,
I am that child who you hate and never wanted,
Such a pitiful soul, to those I have haunted,
And now my heart shall burn in hell,
For keeping the secrets, I shall never tell.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
For the woman who birthed me:I am sorry for blaming you but you should
have seen all the symptoms, You refused to look at me. You refused to
love me.
All of you:
I sometimes have to release my anger in order to find my self again. Like I said, Today was a bad day for me, tomorrow will be better. Be stronger than I and Let your heart and soul be loved by god. I understand completely your pain, and I love you whoever you are.
The first time I was molested I was 7yrs old and I was at my cousins house after a bath her boyfriend decided he would put lotion on me and decided to give my vagina a finger message.
The next time I was touched was by my moms boyfriend I was 14 yrs old and it began as fondling my breast and continued until he raped me just before my 15th birthday, he continued to use me until I was 23 years old paying for sex like a postitute.
Somewhere during that time my older brother joined in, I never knew if they knew about one another, but when one would leave the room the other would come in. I never slept. I moved out of the house at 25 and returned home at the request of my mom for help at 30 my brother started again until he moved out of the state. At 32 I was raped by a stanger going to my car late at night, I was drunk and high so I dont remember details, but 5 months later, I was pregnant, I never told my family, they think I just dont want to be bothered with my daughters father. My daughter has downsyndrome and I would be dead now if my mission in life were to protect her from going thru the same things I went thru.
Pretty much I feel like my life sucks! And I would be better off dead. But I dont have that luxury.
The Loss
I was about twelve when I lost my virginity. I think I had just started getting my period a few weeks before actually. I was outside playing or something. I think, if I remember correctly, Just a bit before that day he had kissed me, given my first kiss. He asked me if I knew how to kiss, of course I nodded and sucked in a breath. He spread my lips open with his own and shoved his tongue deep inside my mouth. I think I kind of gagged, but got the hang of it pretty quickly. Well, anyway, the day I had seen him standing near the corner, he motioned for me to walk over to him. He always sort of intimidated me, Maybe cause of his age, he was about sixteen or so. He asked me if I wanted to walk over to his house with him. I asked him why. He said not to be scared cause we were just going to make out. So, I went with him. We entered from the back door. His house was really small. We sat down on the couch and he started to kiss me hard. I kind of pulled away. He pulled me back to him. I looked at his eyes, he has huge eyes. And...Those kind of eyes that made him look like he was wearing eyeliner. I don't remember how long we stayed on the couch, I imagine it wasn't that long at all. He told me that he wanted to take me into his room. He told me to sit on the bed and I did. The room was like, really small. It had a regular bed and a bunk bed in the corner, which was like across the room, but at the same time, about a foot away from the other bed. I don't remember what happened first, if he told me to take off my pants, or he pulled his dick out. But.... I think it was my pants and boots I was first told to take off. Well, He unzipped his pants and held his dick in front of my face, He told me that he wanted me to suck it. I remember almost gagging, just looking at it. I remember saying that I didn't want too. He put his hand on the back of my head and pulled me forward as he pulled himself forward and rammed it into my mouth. I gagged hard, he said that if I bit it or threw up that I would be sorry. I remember that it smelled weird, and it tasted horrible...I can't remember if he came or not. Selective memory loss, I suppose. then he told me to lay on my back and I did so. I don't' know why I did. I guess at twelve I didn't realize what I was giving up. He shoved himself inside of me, then had the gull to ask me why I was bleeding and crying. I told him I had never had sex before. He said something, I can't remember what though... I can't remember when it ended, I can't remember walking out of his house...And I only remember bits and pieces of the next few years....but....in that while, I would be harassed every time I walked out of my house....taunted and teased until I succumbed to them, went back to one of his and his friends house...the alley, wherever..to suck one of them off....all of them perhaps. It ended some time after turning 15...when I got a real boyfriend.... Gus, I told him what had been happening.... He beat up Jose and I didn't have to be afraid anymore.
Cheryl
icq - 82934961
aim - ourladyofsorrow
msn - noangelcame@hotmail.com
My name is Sophie and i am a 12 year old girl. This all happened about two months ago and it was actually a very big suprise.
my parents were going away for two days so i was to stay at my friends house. my parents trusted them as i had been friends with her for three years. When i was dropped off we went insde and we stated to play around. We were watching tv whaen the dad came and stole our gum so we chased him into the bedroom. then he put it down his shirt. So we took his shirt off.
Then he just started fingering me and my friend. She didnt really do anything. Just sat there and had a big grin on her face. then he looked at us and said will you have sex with me. My friend emidiatly said yes and then looked at me. I broke away and said i really dont know. My friends dad got up and grabd me and said you have sex with me. He through me on the bed and ripped my clothes off. My friend still had the grin on her face. But she stopped him and wispered somethimng in his ear. He smiled went and locked the bedroom door and then came back.
My frind stripped off and went to the draws and got some tape. They tied my hands to each corner of the bed. Then this part really scared me. My friend started licking me all over and then her father started to. I started to scream but then they put tape over my mouth. He asked my friend to stand aside while he raped me then he let her rape. Then they had sex with me at the same time. I t was so scary. After this they put me in a chair and made me watch them have sex.
the next day was pretty fine but my friend kept pashing me and her
father. This was an experiance i will never forget and i am supposed to go
there next week.
this is a story not only about the horror of rape, it's also about the trauma of losing the one who helped you heal.
i have a best friend. i think. someone who listens, someone who cares, someone who means something to me...and someone who doesn't think it wrong to pretend to "rape" a woman if she asks and gains pleasure from it.
yes, i was raped.
yes, i usually wish i were dead.
yes, one night i did a stupid BULLSHIT thing and followed some guys out
to a field where they held a knife to my throat and took turns on me
for hours.
in a way i guess what happened to me was a long time coming. i was a drunken, drug addicted whore by all accounts. i used sex as a toy and drugs and drink to block out the pain of sex. i only followed those guys cause they said they would get me some weed.
(my dad's best friend used to take me out behind our house when i was 5 and make me suck his dick. i guess that's how i got to be so good at it. i had a lot of practice from an early age.)
i got pregnant. i pretended i wasn't but i was. on christmas eve, a couple of weeks after my fifteenth birthday, i went to the bathroom and had a baby. it was dead. i flushed it down the toilet as i thought to myself that if it was a girl i would have named her charlotte anne.
the first mind allowed privy to my pain was my teddy bear. after that i was silent for almost a year. after that cold jelly-like blackness settled over the earth and my life. then my secret spilled out without warning one afternoon to someone i barely knew. somehow i fell in love with this person and gave myself to him in a way i never thought i could. then, things happened. then, i found myself alone again. suddenly...i wasn't good enough anymore.
i was raped and had a baby- does anyone understand what this means for me? i'm SOILED and TARNISHED and FILTHY. i'm a lot of things i thought i could never be. i'm also a lot of things i always knew deep down i was but fought against with all my might.
i was also decieved and abandoned by the one person i thought i saw love in the eyes of. does HE understand what the means for me? i think he does. once upon a time he gave his everything to someone who gave nothing back as well. he still hasn't fully recovered. yet he doesn't seem to understand that the road to healing is best traveled with another.
i went through more in one night than most people go through in an entire lifetime. how dare i be thought immature in his mind.
my cousin dated a guy for quite a while, and was very much in love with him. i suppose that's an understatement- they meant everything to each other. eventually, as usually happens with teenage romances, they broke up. however they remained the best of friends, and she told me once that every secret she had he knew and that he was in on the things about her she could never show another.
one night he got wasted and passed out on some train tracks, and took every secret he had about her to his early grave.
a day later she showed up unexpectedly to a party my family was throwing for me because i was leaving for three weeks in europe the next day. we went for a walk and we happened across some rotten apples lying in the middle of the sidewalk. we discovered they made green marks, so with the apple she wrote J+B Forever on the pavement. her initial plus the initial of her ex, the deceased. after a few moments i bent down and wrote the same thing, except it had different meaning for me. the name of my beloved and the nickname he had bestowed upon me early in our relationship. we stared at our little writings for quite a while, not daring to speak. she had still loved him, and the fact of that was heavy in the july air around us. but there was a difference between us in that the one she loved could never love her back again.
now we are more alike, she and i. we both allowed these men into our lives, past our previously inpenetrable walls, inside the deepest inner workings of our minds, right to our most terrifying secrets. we offered our bodies, flawed as they were, and recieved love and pleasure in return. we knew for the first time what it was like to love and be loved before that power was cruelly taken away from us.
but....he is still my best friend. more than that. but what, i don't think either of us knows.
yes, i was raped.
yes, i usually wish i were dead.
yes, i did a stupid bullshit thing.
but no one seems to care anymore.
The Difficult Kind, 17
'doesn't take much to rip us into pieces...'
Go ahead. Post my name. He's dead anyway and after twenty years of hiding it, I'm sick and tired of blaming myself.
Where do I begin? The rape was my stepbrother. I was three, maybe three and a half - he would have been about twelve. It was happening during my afternoon naps.
I remember the pain, the noises, his weight on my chest as he held himself up, the green paint on the walls, the flapping of his brown hair in my line of sight, watching the clouds through the lace curtain, the smell of vaseline, the whispered threats that he would kill me if I told, hiding under the kitchen sink so I wouldn't have to go to sleep, rolling over and holding my A&W Root Bear and begging it to eat him in the night...
I remembered everything. I never really forgot any of it. There was no penetration that I recall -- pressure and a lot of pain, but if he'd entered me, there would have been bleeding and I don't remember that.
I've managed to put a huge pillow of sorts between me and it, and after five years of intense therapy, I still struggle with nightmares and triggers all the time. The stupidest things will set me off. For example, I went to visit my sister, who happened to have a large tub of vaseline in her bathroom, and had a panic attack that lasted three and a half hours. I read a story about a child who got raped in a casino and bawled for an hour. I watched Blue Velvet and walked around with the shakes for a week.
I don't pretend to understand what happened. I'm struggling to honour it though. At this year's Samhain ritual, I put in a memorial not only for him, to break the power bond, but for the little wee one he tried to destroy.
When my parents divorced and I was sent to live with my mother, I thought I was safe. I told her what happened and then spent weeks convincing her that I didn't want to go to court so she could get even. I didn't want therapy. I just wanted to forget it. Heck, I was six. I didn't want to go to court. But at least she validated my memories and my behaviour at the time, and sympathized with me.
Besides, this was the early eighties. False memory syndrome had just been invented and even at six, I knew what happened to kids who talked about rape. Nobody believed them, they got thrown in foster homes where they got abused worse, and the person who raped them in the first place hunted them down and killed them for 'lying.'
The abuse from my mother was really innocuous at first. Asking me to rub her all over with talcum powder, sitting on her tummy and stroking her breasts. Having her pull my nipples or yank at my developing pubic hair while I was growing up. Being forced to endure listening to her talk about her sexual fantasies and frustrations.
In retrospect, I realize that what she did was just as terrible, if not more so, than my step-brother did, because she was supposed to protect me from that.
The inner battle rages on. I love Mom but I hate her but I don't respect her. I didn't even consider what she did abusive until about two years ago when someone else pointed out to me that it wasn't normal to have your mother massage your breasts to make them grow.
When I was in college, I started writing about my experiences. I was too busy in college to do more than write - I never actually felt anything. A classmate of mine loaned me Little Earthquakes and I listened to it several times before it really soaked in. Once I graduated, all hell broke loose as I suddenly started to feel again after two years of dredging and suppression.
My parents are both alcoholics, and I only got into therapy about five years ago because a friend from college who I was rooming with insisted I go when I got addicted to the Net and started playing out my childhood power struggles with her. She threw me out and told me to get help and I lover her to death for it. I almost didn't make it through that first winter.
I listened to my copy of Little Earthquakes a lot. I ended up having to replace the tape because I wore it out. I kid you not. The guy at the store thought I was kidding too.
It took me until about two years into counseling to accept that what happened wasn't my fault. The bizarre part is that it wasn't anything anyone said that did it for me - I found an old family picture from the time of the initial rape. I looked into the eyes of that cerubic, shining little face with its hair askew and a big-ass grin and cried for hours. How could anyone blame her for what happened? How could anyone have hurt her?
I've been through one relationship that turned out to be a disaster because he was paranoid schizophrenic and basically left me in the caretaker position. I think I might have found someone I can spend the rest of my life with, and while he knows about my past, I'm still afraid how he'll react the first time I flip out.
About a year ago, everything snowballed and I was diagnosed with clinical depression. Eight months off work and a raft of pills later, they deemed me fit to rejoin society.
Too bad. I disagree.
I have people. It's difficult for me to describe myself as disassociative or multiple personality because I don't 'lose time'. But they're there all the same and they make their presence known when I'm stressed. Especially the three year old and the violent, defensive one. I've had to learn to live with the little voices in my head. They're part of the reason I write - to escape them.
After five years of therapy, I've come a long way. I'm certainly not perfect, but I've reached a place where I can support myself a lot better. I've reached a place where I know all the 'right' answers. I know the hole is there, I see it, and yeah, sometimes I crawl on in there and have a weenie roast for a week or two. I've reached a place where dragging myself through the emotional mud once a week is becoming counterproductive. I need to start walking my walk, even if I'm wobbly and scared.
It's not easy, but nothing worth doing ever is.
By the same token, I know I'll need support. I have my friends, my sister (who went through something similar) my new partner, my net.friends, the people I've met through therapy, my books, my notes, my worksheets, my cats - and especially myself. I'm finally on the right side of my own battleground after 25 years. And I don't always feel much like fighting the battle, and I know that I still displace and screw up and make mistakes and forget and beat myself back into the hole, but I keep trying.
When I started therapy, I didn't want to do it because I thought it was for crazy people. Well, now that I'm on meds, I officially qualify as a crazy person, I guess, so it doesn't bother me anymore. Yes, I'm nuts. Going to make something of it? Yeah sure, brownies. Whee!
Humour has been important. Sometimes I laugh at things that really REALLY aren't funny as a panic reaction, but I've always been able to see the absurdity in everything given long enough to look. I guess it comes of living in a household where you laughed or you cried and crying usually got you slapped in the head because then you'd have a REASON to cry, dammit.
I've never met Tori. I've never even seen a Tori concert except on the telly. I'd love to meet her someday but she's never been to my city, and I can't afford to travel to see her right now. It's on the cosmic wish list. Maybe someday.
I sit here listening to Vangelis' Dreaming In An Open Place and blink back tears. All these years and it still hurts to talk about it. It still stings to admit it happened, to define myself in terms of having experienced something so hideous that it caused my brain to split into pieces, that twenty years later I still wake up screaming at night, that I'm terrified of petroleum jelly and mint-green paint, that I still have panic attacks that immobilize me to the point where I can't construct a coherent sentence.
But there are a lot of other things I can define myself by as well, and those are the things I struggle to hold on to. I am a wonderful writer, a great listener, a steady friend, I have a marvelous sense of humour, beautiful hair and eyes, I'm smart, I've got a job I'm fairly good at, I have people who love me very much and I've survived.
Living well is the best revenge.
I'm working on it.
Yours in solidarity -
-Betty-
http://shadowsinger.dhs.org
ICQ: 3673956
