part 19

2006 was the “year of the rape.” That second flashback that I didn’t want to talk about in my last post was about when I was raped by …I guess you could say “an acquaintance” – when I was 15. I spoke of this in one of my first posts – I don’t want to go over it again, but if you can’t remember what I am talking about and want to be refreshed, here is a link to that previous post:
http://rayannsbadassbullshit.blogspot.com/2010/05/laying-it-all-out-there-part-3.html

So anyway, that second flashback about “that really shitty thing that guy did to me that time when I was 15” was confusing for me, because I had not considered what he had done as “rape.” I knew that he had hurt me, I knew that I was very angry about it, and I knew that he carried some culpability because I had told him “no” over and over again. Even I, in my naïve delusions, could not deny that if someone says “no” over and over again, it means the other person shouldn’t do whatever it is they are doing.

But I still had not considered it “rape,” not for a single second – and then I had this flashback and started going to therapy. Before I got to an actual therapist, I did an intake interview, or an assessment, or whatever, and in the process repeated the story of the flashbacks a number of times. Each of these times the person asking me questions about it referred to that incident as “the rape.” I may have corrected one of them once or twice – I explained it was more of an “assault,” but by the time I got to an actual therapist and SHE called it a rape, I brought up my confusion.

I told the therapist that people I had spoken with kept referring to the incident as a “rape,” as she also did, and I wanted to know what that was about. Did she think what happened to me was rape?

Yes. Yes, she did.

That really knocked me on my ass. I went from considering this incident as …well, an “incident,” for fifteen years, and now all of a sudden I am a victim of rape. It was horrifying. I really didn’t accept what the therapist had said was rape, and I looked up the definition of rape in the dictionary and then I looked up how it is defined in the law – in several different states.

According to these reference materials I considered valid, what happened to me was, in fact, “rape.” According to various mental health professionals, what happened to me was also, in fact, “rape.”

Oh my god – just flat on my ass.

I don’t know if I can accurately convey how it felt. It was a feeling I experienced repeatedly over the next few years. It is kind of like walking along, minding your own business, and then all of sudden your blood is replaced with cement. It just felt so HEAVY. I could not even consider how I felt about feeling this way, because I was completely knocked on my ass.

There was a lot of confusion and anger in the following days and weeks and months, and then finally, for an entire year – hence the categorization of the year 2006 as the “year of the rape.”

At first, I was just very stunned at the idea that I had been raped – fifteen years after it actually happened. I had to redefine myself as someone this had happened to. Before that, I was someone who could only imagine the horror of rape, and be very empathetic to those who had been victimized in such a way. But then, all of a sudden, I was someone who had been raped.

It may seem like I am going over and over the same points in this description of my experience, but that is how it was in my brain. Just around and around and around, searching for ways to make it not so.

During 2006, I experienced a lot of the symptoms a rape victim experiences. I was very, very, very angry; I had an instant distrust of any male, no matter who it was or how long I had known them; for months, it was very difficult for me to think of anything other than the rape and everything that went with it. I wanted desperately to point my car toward the ocean and not stop till I got there – just run away. I wanted so badly to run away. I didn’t know what running away would accomplish exactly, but that is what my brain and my body were telling me to do.

I am having a hard time writing this post. I am shaking and nauseous and my whole body is tense. Recognizing how I am physically feeling, though, in response to the subject matter, is actually a good thing. Knowing that I am right here, right now, and that no one is going to hurt me right here and right now, and being aware of the sounds of construction equipment and a train whistle in distance – all of that lets me know that I am “grounded.”

It is a very therapeutic word, but a very important one. I have a dissociative disorder, which often accompanies Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Maybe I have tried to explain it before – I don’t remember. Some words often used to describe a state of dissociation are: disconnected, separate, surreal, apart, away, distanced. I’m sure anyone could recognize a pattern emerging in those words – they basically mean that even though a person is physically present somewhere, they are not necessarily mentally connected to what is going on around them.

I don’t like the words or phrases that attempt to describe a dissociative state. They do not convey what it feels like. Some of you may have already seen the five minute film I did – it’s called “dissociation.” I felt really good about that short film because it was the first time I felt like I was able to communicate what it felt like to be in my head. I cannot stress enough that for a long time these feelings are CONSTANT, and very difficult to get around in order to go about the ordinary tasks people do every day to take care of themselves.

I am much better today, after A LOT of therapy, but I still have flashbacks every now and then – just had some pretty vivid ones yesterday. However, when I was first experiencing what it felt like to be a rape victim – in 2006 – I had no idea how much worse it would get long before it got better.

The word “rape” repeated over and over in my head, regardless of what I was doing. I went from being able to tell myself I was consciously having a drink (and another and another) every night to a state of mind in which my body moved itself to get the vodka and make the drink and drink it and do it all over again, every night, until I had cried myself to utter exhaustion and could sleep, or just pass out. Actually, it was both of those things – crying and passing out - every night. EVERY NIGHT. For MONTHS. (I have been told that people live like this for decades, completely at the mercy of alcohol, or whatever else is helping them to get as far away as possible from what is real.)

Dealing with the rape was a hellish nightmare. Once I was able to basically function on some level of normalcy (a process that took months), I took a break from therapy. It was exhausting, and I was all therapy –ed out. I went about six months of no therapy, just resting up, because I knew that the rape was not all that was going to emerge in my brain and my body and my very being.

There was still that first flash back that I had not addressed in any way – the one involving my dad. There was still my dad. Although up to this point he would come up occasionally in therapy, I had very effectively taken that can of worms and put it up on a shelf. Doing so allowed me to deal with the rape and to process that trauma and I guess to practice what it felt like to live in hell before I actually became a long-term resident.

2007 was the “year of my dad.”