Rape.
It’s a weird word to say. It sounds
dirty coming out of people’s mouth, at least to my ears. I prefer sexual
assault or sometimes I even refer to it as “the incident”. It doesn’t get any easier to say. It doesn’t
get any easier to deal with, at least not yet.
There are so many different
reactions you can get from someone when you tell them you’ve been sexually
assaulted or raped. Some people are speechless, which I prefer. This happened
to me. Let me talk. But other people have their opinions they need to share
with you. They want to hear the entire story. Which if they thought about it,
how sadistic is that? They are asking a trauma victim to relive the traumatic
event they went through. They wouldn’t ask a person to recount their
significant other dying. That might seem a little harsh, but for some victims
of rape, it’s close to death. A piece of them dies. But there are also those
people who don’t even ask about the story but they want to know what the victim
did after the fact. Did you report it? Did you tell someone? Did you let
everyone in the whole universe know that you were violated, emotionally and
physically? Well why not? And if the victim did tell someone, was it to late?
To soon? Did the cops believe you? Who’d you tell?
I think
sometimes what friends and family don’t understand is that when we tell them
about our “incident” we don’t want feedback. We just want to get it out there
in the universe. We want to acknowledge something very serious happened to us.
We don’t want to relive it. We don’t want their judgment or advice. We
understand they are not therapist or trauma counselors. We just want to tell someone. We want someone
to sit with us and pat us on the back and tell us that we will get through this
because sometimes we don’t think we will. Sometimes all we see is what happened
to us. It’s not in the past but directly in front of us blocking happiness and
laughter and sunshine. We want someone to help us realize there can and will be
sunshine again.
That’s
depressing isn’t it? Rape isn’t always pretty. It’s actually never pretty. I
think sometimes people have misconceptions about how rape or sexual assault is
an event that can be put behind a person after an allotment of time. And it can
be. But it pops up. It rears it’s ugly head
at the worst and the best times. At night, when I’m alone and I’m tired is the
most common time. I start thinking about why I’m alone, and if I’m always going
to be alone. That leads to thinking about the last time I was with someone, and
what he did. That leads to thinking about the trust issues I have, and so the
cycle begins. It usually ends with crying, maybe a very depressing movie, maybe
a very happy one to try to lift my mood. In the morning I wake up, wash my
face, and pretend it never happened.
This isn’t
a healthy cycle. I am not promoting lack of therapy to ANY victim. But I don’t
like therapy. More bad experiences when I was a child and honestly I just don’t
have the energy to shop for a good therapist. And I understand that not
everyone does. And it’s those people, those victims, who know that I am not
perfect and I sometimes have no idea what I’m talking about and that I just put
my fingers to my keys or my face to the camera and tell them what I’m feeling
in hopes that they will not ever, EVER feel alone in this.
Because if you’re reading this, and
you’ve even felt anything familiarity with this, you are not alone love. There
is someone who understands you, who will sit with you and pat you on the back
and tell you that the happiness, laughter, and sunshine will return. Maybe in
an hour, maybe in a day, maybe in a few weeks, but it will return, and until
then, you have me. <3
I love you.
